On the wintry night of 23-24 February 1991, an Indian Army unit systematically executed a mass-rape in Kunan and Poshpora villages in north Kashmir’s Kupwara region. The Army cordoned the villages, forced the men out of their houses and then took them into custody. The troops barged into houses under the guise of a search operation and raped the women. Survivors and human rights organizations report the number of raped women— between the ages of thirteen and eighty— to be over one-hundred. While women were raped, the Army tortured over one-hundred men. This continued until morning. Since then, India not only turned a blind eye to evidence of the mass-rape and torture, but also covered up the case through its institutions in Kashmir. However, India’s institutionalized violence and injustice has only strengthened the resolve of the affected women to resist a militarist-masculine state. “The Indian Army might have raped us over two decades ago, but today it is India which stands naked before the world. Our struggle will continue,” explained a survivor. She shared this during the first conference of its kind. On 22 June 2013, mass rape survivors came together to speak to a large gathering of students, activists, doctors, journalists, lawyers in Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar. During the meeting, organized by a human rights group, Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), survivors, defying the culture of silence that India has been carefully nurturing, narrated their stories of gross brutality and spoke of their struggle. One woman shared
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 04:43:04 +0000
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