On 10 January 2018, an eight-year-old Muslim girl belonging to the Bakarwal community of nomadic shepherds went missing from the vicinity of her home in Rassana village of Kathua, a Hindu-majority district of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. Seven days later, her mutilated body was found in the forests of Rassana. The girl, who the world today knows as Asifa, had been raped and then bludgeoned to death. The Crime Branch investigation has revealed that the child was kidnapped and held captive for five days in a local Hindu place of worship, where she was sedated and repeatedly raped.
So far eight men have been arrested for the crime. They include Sanji Ram a former government employee who was the caretaker of the place where Asifa was held, and two policemen. The police say that the crime had been planned for over a month. The main motive behind it is believed to be a land grab, instigated by local developers. The perpetrators, who all belonged to the majority community, hoped they could terrify the nomadic shepherds and drive them off the lands on which they have traditionally camped while grazing their flock in the winter months.
This is borne out by the mass rallies by thousands of men and women who gathered under the banner of the Hindu Ekta Manch (Hindu Unity Forum) waving Indian Flags, demanding the release of the accused men. Members of the Kathua Bar Association also attempted to prevent the Crime Branch from filing a charge-sheet. It was only several weeks after the crime was committed, when reports began to appear in the national and international press, that Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, and member of the Hindu nationalist BJP, saw fit to comment publicly on the crime. Even then, he chose to remain ambiguous: he said “India’s daughters” would receive justice. Implicit in this statement is the fact that the rapes and murders perpetrated by Indian armed forces on Kashmiri men and women—who do not consider themselves to be the sons and daughters of India—do not deserve justice.
The rape and murder of 8 year old Asifa needs to be understood in the paradigm of widespread militarization in Jammu and Kashmir, which is the densest military occupation in the world today. The conflict has claimed more than 70,000 lives so far, and continues to generate a vast range of unimaginable forms of violence, including tens of thousands of victims of severe torture, as well as the recent blinding of hundreds of young men and women who were hit in their eyes with pellets fired from shotguns. The systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war by the armed forces is a common feature of this militarized violence. Accompanied by legal and political impunity and zero records of prosecution of crimes by the armed forces, non-state actors too have felt emboldened to perpetrate sexual violence as a tool of hegemonic politics.
Here are some examples of cases of sexual violence that have taken place over the years. (The documentation for each of these complaints is available in various reports on www.jkccs.net)
These are only a few cases that point to the systematic use of sexual violence in Jammu & Kashmir and to the systematic denial of justice. In most of these cases the families of victims and the survivors have given up hope from the existing judicial remedies. Those who are fighting are often coerced into silence. There have either been no investigations in these cases, or investigations have not led to prosecution and conviction, and inquiry commissions have been an eyewash. Sanctions for the prosecution of Armed forces personnel are either denied or not followed up by the State Government. The perpetrators continue to enjoy absolute impunity.
We the undersigned appeal to International Organizations, Independent Groups, Feminists and Gender and Justice activists to send Independent Fact Finding teams to Kashmir to conduct an impartial investigation into these cases of sexual violence in Jammu & Kashmir.
We also appeal to the United Nations to send a Fact Finding team to conduct an impartial investigation into the human rights violations perpetrated on a massive scale by Indian Armed Forces in Indian Occupied Kashmir.
Signatories:
– Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS)
– Eve Ensler
– One Billion Rising
– V-Day
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