Security forces target women with impunity during Kashmir crackdown
Nowhere to turn to women facing violence in Kashmir
On a cold night in mid-September last year, Haseena*, her teenage son, and her daughter were asleep when Indian security forces stormed the house, breaking down the door and shattering their windows. They were looking for her son.
“It was dark and my heart was sinking,” she said.
Haseena and her family were one of many Kashmiri households targeted in night raids that routinely followed government-led crackdowns in the region.
About a month earlier, on August 5, 2019, the Indian government, led by Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), unilaterally revoked the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir by scrapping Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution, thereby stripping the state of autonomy after seven decades.
Article 370 permitted the state to draft its own constitution and allowed it the freedom to make its own laws for the region, particularly pertaining to residency and property ownership. Article 35A granted some special privileges to its people while forbidding Indians from permanently settling, buying land, holding local government jobs, or winning education scholarships in the region.
Jammu, the Hindu-dominant part of the territory, were always content to be part of India; Kashmir, on the other hand, has a Muslim majority, and many saw this decision as a longtime effort by India’s government to change its demographic identity to a majority-Hindu population.
A strict crackdown was imposed in the region shortly thereafter. Tens of thousands of Indian troops had already been deployed to the region and hundreds of people — including politicians, lawyers, and Hurriyat leaders (a separatist group in Kashmir that India considers as fringe elements) — were arrested. A communication blackout was quickly imposed, under the pretext of stymieing terrorism, to curb dissent and lasted for six months: postpaid mobile phones only began working again after 71 days, and high-speed internet is still restricted in the Valley.
Even then, protests erupted across the state, and Haseena’s young son had joined them.
“[They] started dragging my daughter out,” Haseena said. “I was pleading with them to leave her, but they did not listen.” She told the men that if they had to take anyone to take her son, and begged them to leave her daughter, fearing that her rape — if not her murder — would soon follow. Haseena said she didn’t want to face “the shame of her daughter being taken away by security forces.”
The men dragged Haseena’s daughter to the door, kicking her as she screamed for help. Bruises later pockmarked her body, but thankfully, she was otherwise unharmed. Haseena believes that the men meant to send a stern message of what could happen to the women of the family if her son continued protesting.
“I did not take her to the doctor or discuss it with anyone,” Haseena said. “If anyone [found out], they will stigmatize my daughter and who will marry her?”
The family live in a small village in south Kashmir, too far from the next residential area for anyone to have heard their screams. Though no one was taken that evening, the event itself lingers as a constant reminder of how vulnerable they are — anything can happen now.
“If we report, what will happen? Will justice prevail? Will anyone believe us?” she asked rhetorically, knowing full well the answers. “Instead, we will get threats and face more violence.”
Kashmiri boys and young men are often held under suspicion by security forces as militants; top police and army officials reportedly told Catch News, an India-based digital news outlet, that those who have joined armed rebel groups are “highly motivated” and “do not fear death.” Security forces, therefore, have been targeting and intimidating women in the families as a tactic of control.
As Women Under Siege has long documented, sexualized violence — even the threat of it — is a cheap and effective weapon, used to terrorize or humiliate communities, to glean information about rebels, or to retaliate or exert power.
Indeed, women in Kashmir have faced harassment, abuse, and sexualized violence from security forces since the ’90s, when separatist militant groups first emerged in Kashmir. A 1993 report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights corroborates how India’s security forces back then intentionally and tactically deployed rape as a weapon for the very reasons we have identified: raping female members of a suspected militant’s family as a form of punishment, to humiliate the entire community, and to demoralize them. Women also have been raped and killed after being held as hostage by security forces looking for their male relatives.
Since 1990, rape by Indian security forces had been used as a means of targeting women whom security forces accused of being militant sympathizers. In one well-publicized case from May 1990, Mubina Gani, a young bride, was detained and raped by the Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers while she was traveling from the wedding to her husband’s home. Her aunt was also raped.
In another notorious incident the following year, on February 23, 1991, armed personnel of the 4th Rajputana Rifles raped between 23 to 100 women in Kashmir’s twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora during a cordon-and-search operation to trace militants. Victims are still fighting for justice.
When protests erupted last August, it stoked fear within communities that Kashmiri women again would be used as tools to ensure that anti-India protests were kept in check and dissenting voices were silenced.
Just a few miles away from Haseena’s village in south Kashmir, a group of local men sat huddled together. Last October, Indian security forces had come to the village and allegedly tortured and terrorized villagers, with reports of beatings and electrocutions.
Security forces allegedly also questioned local men in the village to name and reveal the information about women and girls. They demanded that villagers “name the most beautiful girls in the village,” sending shivers across the village. Women were then restricted by their families to stay within their homes.
“We are helpless and have nowhere to go. We have confined our women to their houses and do not allow them to move outside of their homes,” said one of the older men in the group.
“The security forces can [return] at any moment, and what they will do, we have no clue,” said another man in the group, who appeared to be in his twenties. “Better to stay silent and not invite further harassment. If we go out and protest against India, [they will] target our women.”
After that first incident, female students in the village did not submit their examinations. “How will we study in these conditions? We are not able to focus,” said 17-year-old Muskan*. “We sit in our homes and keep glancing out through windows to keep a check on security forces.”
In Central Kashmir’s Soura area, mass protests led by women were held over several days in August and September. Women in hordes marched through the streets to protest the abrogation of Article 370, as well as the succeeding communication blackout under which night raids were conducted in dozens of homes, like Haseena’s. In one instance, a 10-year-old girl was kicked repeated while she was asleep. Where the night raids became routine, women and girls moved to other villages or cities considered “safer zones” with less harassment from security forces.
The Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, with the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, released its “Annual Human Rights Review 2019” documenting human rights issues in J&K from January 1 to December 31, 2019. The report detailed cases of sexual abuse and harassment by male army personnel, especially during night raids, with collected testimony from civilians alleging that security forces “frisked women and sexually abused them. If they resisted, they were physically tortured.”
Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS), a women’s advocacy network, visited Kashmir Valley in September 2019, during the clampdown. A representative from the group sent Women Under Siege an excerpt from its latest book titled, Zulm Zakhm Azaadi — The Voices of Kashmiri Women, with its findings from that visit: “The entire Valley of Kashmir is reeling under a silence. School-going girls have to walk past army camps and are sexually harassed by the men in uniform. Often security forces standing at the roadside with their pants unzipped and pass lewd comments and make lewd gestures.”
“Women do not talk or report about what they are facing because of shame,” said a spokesperson. “They asked us, ‘Don’t you know what happened in Kunan Poshpora? What happened to Neelofar and Asiya? For whose security is India keeping the army for?’”
On May 29, 2009, two young women, Asiya, 17, and her sister-in-law Neelofar, 22, went missing after leaving their family orchard in the Nagbal area of South Kashmir’s Shopian. Their bodies were found the following morning. An investigation concluded that the two women were raped and murdered by “men in uniform.” More than a decade later, their family is still trying to seek justice.
“Sexual violence, whether against women or men, is a weapon of war. It is used to instill fear,” said Khurram Parvez, a Kashmir-based human rights activist and coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society. “Sexualized violence has been used as a tool by the security forces to brutalize and dehumanize society. This remains least reported because of the absolute impunity enjoyed by the armed forces and the fear of reprisals.”
“Not a single security person has been prosecuted in civilian court even after being charged,” he said. “If they were prosecuted it would have become a deterrent. Not prosecuting them says that there is state or institutional support for the crime they commit. Women never get justice; instead, they get scandalized.”
Expressing his grave concerns about Kashmir, Khurram Parvaiz said that the entire population in Kashmir, specifically women, will continue to suffer until there is a policy change or an initiation of dialogue by the Indian State. “There is legal impunity that the soldier enjoys in Kashmir. Soldiers see the Kashmiri population as suspect, and their political bosses tell them to control this population at any cost. This will continue until India accepts to engage through dialogue.”
On March 31, less than two weeks after India went into lockdown to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Order, which contains provisions to change the special status of J&K. Under this new reconstitution, central laws will override any written in the J&K constitution, thereby dissolving the constitution as well as its local assembly. New domicile laws will also permit non-residents to buy property in the region and apply for government jobs there.
Regional political parties in the state have condemned this move, raising the alarm over what looks to be a veiled effort to change the demographic makeup of the territory under the cover of the pandemic, while people are unable to organize in large groups or be outside.
Kashmiris have improvised, taking to social media to voice their outrage. In response—otherwise, in a pre-emptive strike—state police are tracking online conversations and identifying users suspected of “instigating” any civil disobedience, whom authorities are prepared to arrest or take similar action against.
Meanwhile, a challenge against the abrogation of Article 370 is sitting with the Supreme Court, as are all the decisions made after August 5, 2019.
The chess pieces appear to be set for more clashes in the Valley. If the past serves as precedent, then the likely outcome of these measures will be more violence, and women will never be immune from the fallout.
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The threat of violence against women is escalating amid coronavirus lockdowns around the globe. But one region that has lived through a military clampdown for nearly a year – Indian-administered Kashmir – could have foretold the surge.
Being shut in by government order is nothing new in Kashmir, nor is the resulting spike in gender-based violence, women’s advocates say.
The region has seen decades of conflict, militarisation, protests, and violent crackdowns. Kashmir has essentially been on lockdown since August 2019, when India scrapped the region’s semi-autonomous status, bringing the former state of Jammu and Kashmir under direct control of the central government. Authorities imposed a communications blockade and security forces patrolled the streets, shut down public transportation, and closed markets.
Though some restrictions continued to ease in early 2020, India-wide coronavirus lockdowns beginning in March extended clampdown conditions in an already militarised region – and kept survivors of domestic violence shut in with their abusers.
Cases of domestic violence and general violence against women surged tenfold to more than 3,000 a year during a previous clampdown in 2016 and 2017, according to statistics from the Jammu and Kashmir State Commission for Women, a now-defunct government institution established to protect women and children’s rights and ensure quick prosecutions.
Today, Kashmir’s women face both the military lockdown and the pandemic, but there’s little help available for survivors of gender-based violence.
There are no domestic violence shelters in Kashmir. Blockades on mobile phone connections are frequently re-imposed, while movement restrictions hamper NGOs from doing their work. And India disbanded the women’s commission last year along with Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood – axing a government body that advocated for survivors of gender-based violence.
Locked in with abusers
Rafiqa, 39, says the military clampdown and the coronavirus have pushed her to a crisis point with her husband.
She spoke to The New Humanitarian on condition that her and her husband’s names be changed to protect her safety.
Rafiqa said her husband, Mushtaq, started hitting her a year after they were married, in 2006.
“He would often beat me with a leather belt,” she recalled. “Even an argument would lead to serious beating and abuse.”
The violence grew more intense after Mushtaq lost his job last August. Rafiqa said he started demanding that she turn over her salary from her government job.
“I handed over my salary to him. Now, he was asking me to get money from my father,” she said. “I refused. He picked up a cricket bat and beat me.”
Kashmir’s transportation shutdown and a mobile phone blackout that lasted until early 2020 kept Rafiqa from reaching her parents. Finally, she turned to a local religious leader for help.
“He would often beat me with a leather belt. Even an argument would lead to serious beating and abuse.”
Her husband was persuaded to stop hitting her, but he retaliated by pushing their children to distance themselves from her, Rafiqa said. The children are no longer allowed to sleep near her, or help with the twice-weekly dialysis treatments she has depended on for four years. She remains in her home with her husband.
Attorney Vasundhara Masoodi Pathak, who headed the Jammu and Kashmir women’s commission when it was disbanded last year, said she is now flooded with calls from women in need amid the coronavirus lockdowns. She said she rarely received urgent calls directly from women while the commission was operating.
Shops have largely stayed closed and security forces still patrol the streets; an overnight curfew is still in effect as COVID-19 cases rise. Military crackdowns on suspected insurgents, as well as escalating border tensions with China in neighbouring Ladakh – formerly a part of Jammu and Kashmir state – have kept the region on edge.
“In this lockdown, the tormenting husbands and in-laws have got an opportunity to harass women,” Pathak said. “Working women, who before the lockdown would somehow vent their pain and grievance either with peers, family, or friends, now find it very hard to spare even a jiffy to speak out, as they are under continuous and unwanted surveillance.”
Nowhere to turn
Since the women’s commission was shut down, victims of domestic violence no longer have a dedicated avenue for reporting abuse. There is only one women’s police station in the entire Kashmir valley, and male officers aren’t trained to handle domestic violence.
Unless a woman has severe injuries, most male police officers decline to take such reports, telling victims instead that the assaults are a family matter, said Shah Faisal, state director of the Human Rights Law Network, a collective of Indian lawyers and activists who provide legal support to vulnerable populations.
“Since most of the state machinery is engaged to fight COVID-19, there is no quick respite for the victims,” Faisal said. “With [the] women’s commission no more, women have no access to the justice system and are more vulnerable than ever.”
Women who have been attacked also lack access to medical facilities, because many out-patient departments in public and private hospitals have closed.
“Women have no access to the justice system and are more vulnerable than ever.”
The government’s social welfare department reported 16 rape cases and 64 molestations in Jammu and Kashmir during the first month of coronavirus lockdowns, 20 March to 29 April. But Pathak said that government data is almost certainly an undercount, as there has been confusion about how to report gender-based violence during the full military lockdown that followed the region’s August shutdown. The same department reported zero allegations over the six months before the pandemic.
Nighat Shafi Pandit, a women’s advocate and chairperson of the Srinagar-based Help Foundation, said that “COVID-19 has impacted women badly.”
Nighat, who runs a resource centre for domestic violence survivors, said she never feared venturing out to help during the military lockdown last year, but she has restricted herself to her home during the pandemic.
“One cannot meet the need in person and can’t know their needs virtually,” she said. “Even if women complain, we cannot help or reach them because there is no shelter in the entire Kashmir valley where women can take refuge.”
With few resources for survivors, women like Sameena, a 29-year-old Kashmir resident, are trying to break the cycle of violence on their own.
She said her husband started beating her days after their wedding in September.
The abuse continued through the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when she suffered a miscarriage after her husband raped her.
She spent two days in an emergency ward before a doctor discharged her early, fearing COVID-19 infections.
With nowhere else to turn, she went home to her parents – even though they pushed for the arranged marriage in the first place.
“My parents will tell me to compromise, but I have made up my mind” to divorce, Sameena said. “If he can kill our child, he can kill me as well.”
