Qaisar Mansoor
On 22 April 1997, several Indian armed forces personnel entered the house of a 32-year-old woman in the village of Wavoosa, Srinagar. They had molested her 12-year-old daughter and raped three other daughters, aged 14, 16 and 18.
Another woman was beaten for preventing the rape of her daughters by soldiers. The horrific acts of violence, mental torture, aggressions and ruthless brutalities against women had turned life into a worse nightmare in the valley. The women of IIOJK have been faced with an unending ordeal of terror and trauma due to frequent abductions, sexual violence, illegal detentions and molestations at the hands of Indian security forces on the pretext of ‘Cordon and Search Operations’. Modi’s Hindutva supremacist government continues to use rape and molestation as a ‘weapon of war’ and ‘collective punishment’ in the occupied territory to suppress the legitimate right to freedom of the innocent Kashmiri people. It is a sheer violation of the international humanitarian and human rights law and UN Security Council’s resolutions.
According to Human Rights Watch, Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) shields the Indian security forces from prosecution from their crimes of sexual violence. The draconian nature of the act has been described as breach of the international human rights law by members of the international community. India’s resort to sexual violence in IIOJK has been documented by two reports of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and global media and society organizations. But lack of accountability of perpetrators and absence of justice for victims of rape in the region continue to define the deliberate disregard of India for rule of law and human rights. The world must wake up from deep slumber to contain sexual violence being used as war tactics in the occupied territory.
It is necessary to mention here that Over 100 women were gang raped by Indian troops at Kunanposhpora in Kupwara in February 1991 while two women, Aasiya and Neelofar were abducted, raped and subsequently killed by Indian men in uniform in Shopian in May 2009.
Kashmiri leaders have consistently demanded impartial probes into the cases of rape, murder and other human rights violations against women including Kunanposhpora mass rape and Shopian tragedy and Wavoosa rape victims.
