‘India using sexual violence as suppression tool in IIOJK’

Special Correspondent: Days after a four-storey mosque was demolished in Jaipur, authorities have razed four more mosques following the issuance of notices to 17 mosques and madrasas in BJP-ruled Rajasthan state’s Barmer district.

According to Kashmir Media Service, the demolitions come in the wake of Indian Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to Bikaner, where he held a meeting with collectors and police officers and issued directives to remove alleged encroachments. However, activists and community representatives have said that the drive is being selectively used against Muslim religious places.

Syed Saadat Ali, state president of the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), strongly condemned the action, terming the demolitions “complete hooliganism.” He pointed out discrepancies in the process, stating that notices dated June 11 were served only on June 17, while some mosques were demolished on June 18.

“Authorities are acting arbitrarily. If the state adopts the ways of hooliganism, how can justice be ensured?” he said, adding that legal procedures were being ignored and Supreme Court guidelines were being violated.

Ali further said that only mosques and madrasas were being targeted while temples were left untouched. “There is a village where 100 percent of the population is Muslim, and even there structures were demolished,” he said, questioning the fairness and intent behind the drive.

Local political leaders, including MLA Harish Chaudhary and Barmer MP Umedaram Beniwal of the Congress party, also criticised the demolitions, describing them as an attempt to disturb communal harmony. They added that the actions were politically motivated and warned that such measures could further deepen tensions in the region.

Meanwhile, women are the worst victims of Indian forces’ atrocities and inhuman acts in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir as Indian establishment is using rape as a weapon to suppress the Kashmiris’ righteous demand of plebiscite as per United Nations resolutions of right to self-determination.

A report released by Kashmir Media Service on the occasion of International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, today, revealed that Indian forces’ personnel had sexually assaulted over 11,278 women during the last 38 years in the occupied territory.

The report said like Kunanposhpora, Kupwara, mass rape on the night of February 23, 1991, Shopian double murder and rape, murder of a minor girl in Kathua and other rape and arrest incidents during house raids and cordon and search operations under draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) depict the brutal face of Indian forces in the occupied territory.

On May 29, 2009 two women, Aasiya and Neelofar of Shopian, were abducted by Indian men in uniform, gang-raped and subsequently killed in custody. Their bodies were recovered from a shallow stream in the area the next morning.

An 8-year-old Muslim girl, Aasifa Bano was repeatedly gang raped by Indian policemen and communal Hindus in Kathua area of Jammu in January 2018.

Around a hundred women were gang-raped by Indian troops during a cordon and search operation in Kunanposhpora area of Kupwara district on the night of February 23, 1991.

The report maintained that, so far, not a single Indian soldier or policeman involved in such heinous crimes in the occupied territory had been punished.

The report pointed out that Kashmiris would never forget the horrific incidents of mass rape in Kunanposhpora and several other such inhuman incident in IIOJK. It urged the world women rights organizations to raise their voice in support of the Kashmiri women. Kashmiri women continue to endure the trauma of sexual violence by Indian troops

The International human rights organizations have documented numerous cases of rape and gang rape in IIOJK while impunity prevails as no Indian soldier has been punished for rape in occupied Kashmir.

On the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, it is responsibility of world conscience to act against sexual violence used as a weapon in IIOJK. The world must not ignore sexual violence by Indian forces in the long lingering dispute of Jammu and Kashmir.