Shopian incident adds to insecurities of Kashmiri women

Srinagar, June 13: While in rest of the world women empowerment has been achieved to a considerable extent, Kashmir is yet to grant its women the safety and life security they deserve. Leaving their empowerment aside they do not even have safety to move out independently.

Incidents like Shopain and Tangmarg have continued to occur during the last 18 years. Hameeda Nayeem, English professor in Kashmir University and a women activist, said, "Last so many years have brought so much insecurity to women.  Personnel of Indian Army, SOG, CRPF and other renegades have played havoc with the lives of Kashmiri women. Our dignity has been trampled and they have used rape as a war weapon. Border areas women are more vulnerable. Many girls have dropped from schools to protect their chastity. They prefer illiteracy to insecurity."

It is not something new that women in the valley have become victim to such heinous crimes. Eighteen years back the horrible Kunan-Poshpora incident came to light. The incident shocked not only the whole Valley but the whole world was traumatised to see such incidents occurring in the world history.

It was on February 23, 1991 when the soldiers while launching a cordon and search operation in Kunan-Poshpora, one of the remote villages in Kupwara district; gang raped the women folk of this village. Even till now the figures of this incident are not clear.

Situated in the Kashmir's remote area, these women who were till then hidden in those mountains from the whole world, involved in their household chores and quite proud of their life, became victims of the carried out largest scale acts of mass rape in the history of Kashmir conflict.

The sun could never rise the same way for them; they felt the shame and disgrace of which they were not responsible. Most of the women complained of social ostracism from their families and communities because of the tragedy that befell them. Some of the victims reportedly committed suicide after the incident.

According to a report, not a single marriage proposal had been received for any women, raped or not, in the village for three years after the incident. Women aged 13-80 suffered in this incident and even the police investigation was not done, according to the villagers.

Though on March 5, villagers filed a complaint with the then Kupwara district magistrate S.M Yasin. He visited the village on March 7 and in his final report, he had even stated that the soliders behaved like wild beasts.

The intensity of the crime was so huge that on March 17, Mufti Baha-ud-Din Farooqi the then Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court who led a fact finding mission to Kunan-Poshpora over the course of his investigations, came to known that all the 53 women he interviewed admitted to have been raped by the security men (Indian troops).

Time could not even avail the justice to these women who suffered and over the years even their wounds and the social stigma attached to them persisted. Still they are called the Kunan-Poshpora women, they could not get that better name nor could they get the perpetrators of the crime hanged.

Like this event there are a number of other rape cases in the valley which went unreported because of the social taboo attached to it. Rape and then murder of these innocent women has become an everyday affair in the valley.

A leading human rights activist of Kashmir valley Khurram Parvez and a member of Jammu and Kashmir Coalition for Civil Society (JKCSS) puts it as, "About 95 percent rape cases in the valley go unreported. Hundreds of such cases are there which have gone unnoticed. The sexual harassment, the verbal harassment and molestation has eroded the safety of women in our valley. They have been disgraced and barred from social life after such crimes have been committed with them". Arifa Gani [Kashmir Times]