Nightmare's
Children
By Sorit Gupto
16 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Yasmin,
a 15-year-old girl of Srinagar , Kashmir, and many other young girls
like her is forced to serve government officials of India, ministers,
police and security forces officials of the rank of SSPs, DSP, and DIG
as sex slave or comfort women a phenomenon which we are fairly known
during the WWII, Vietnam war and so on , However Yasmin was luckier
than of Abeer Qassim Hamza, a sixteen year old Iraqi girl Mahmoudiya
, who was raped and then killed by the 'liberators' US marine. Her body
was then set on fire to cover up their crimes, her father, mother, and
sister murdered.
The coincidences are strikingly
similar in these two regions though geographically they are thousands
of kilometers apart from one another. In Iraq the US and allied forces
are doing atrocities on the common citizen and here in Kasmir the same
thing is being materialize by Indian security forces. India is now deploying
more than 700,000 troops in the valley in the name of War Against Terrorism,
whereas US has deployed tens of thousands of troop to 'liberate' the
Iraqi people from Tyranny.
It is simply the game of
jargons, the use and disuse of certain terms , evolving new words and
replaced it with the word of their choice. For example replace the word
"overthrowing tyranny" and "liberation" with the
word "War against terrorism" and you will transform Kashmir
into Iraq and vise-versa.
Rape continues to be a major
instrument of Indian repression against the Kashmiri people while the
majority of casualties in Kashmir are civilians. There were more than
200 incidents of rape in Doda in January 1994 alone. Rape is used by
the Indian security forces to attack Kashmiri women suspected of sympathizing
with Freedom Fighters. Through rape, the security forces are aiming
to punish and humiliate the entire community.
The Indian security forces
are well equipped with not only sophisticated arms but also with the
various like laws like TADA, Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, The
National Security Act which allowed the Indian security forces to detain
citizens up to one year without formal charges, due process of law,
or any formal trial. Above all The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Jammu
and Kashmir) empowers the armed forces to search houses without warrant,
arrest Kashmiri citizens without warrant, destroy houses and villages
and shoot at unarmed civilians on the streets to kill. For any of these
actions, Article 7 of the act, any member of the armed forces who conducts
the above described human rights violations - summary executions of
unarmed civilians, burning down homes and villages, torture and arbitrary
arrest - can do so with immunity from prosecution.
Like Indian army and security
forces the coalition forces are also guarded by decrees issued by former
US Civil Administrator Paul Bremer. One decree issued 18 June 2003 stipulates
that, "No Iraqi court has legal authority over any member of the
coalition regarding any issue, be it civil or punitive."
Stephen Green, a former member
of the 502nd infantry regiment, was charged last week in a US court
with rape and murder. Mr Green, a former private, was granted an honourable
discharge from the military for a personality disorder before the alleged
rape and murder came to light.
Is this a mere coincidence
that the reported gang-rape of nine women at Shopian in October 1992
by an army unit was dismissed off-handedly after investigation by army
and police, the very units charged with the crime, despite solid medical
evidence to the contrary; no independent investigation by an impartial
agency was carried out.
The reported mass rape of
over 20 women at Konan Poshpura in February 1991 was also handled in
a similar evasive manner; the complaint was not investigated in a timely
manner by an impartial agency and the medical evidence was dismissed
without good cause; one of the victims who was nine months pregnant
during the incident delivered a baby with a fractured left arm.
After the massacre in Haditha
when it became clear that the civilians had been shot by US soldiers,
the marines switched to saying that the deaths were the fault of insurgents
who "placed non-combatants in the line of fire as the marines responded
to defend themselves", just like the massacre of 35 Amarnath pilgrim
In August 2000, where it has come to light that most of the people were
killed in fact by the panic-stricken CRPF jawans who continued firing
for another 20 minutes after the two suspected militants were killed.
According to the PTI release
of 13 september 1998some 2477 civilians had been killed by the Indian
forces in the period 1990-1998 .Killing at Gawakadal bridge, in Sopore,
Biejbehara ,Brakpora, Panchalthan, Pahalgam… the list is endless.
One has so many choice to
name a Haditha of India.
Civilians suspected of having
information about militants, many of them innocent, are routinely detained,
tortured and killed in custody. Methods of torture include severe beatings,
electric shock, crushing the leg muscles with a wooden roller, and burning
with heated objects.
The above paragraph is a
part of the report of Amnesty international on the Kashmir , but can't
it be fitted perfectly with any prison of Iraq?
Renegades are former militants
who have surrendered and changed sides to the Indian forces. Since the
1989 insurgency in Kashmir, renegades have been used for extra judicial
executions of militants (besides human right activists, journalists
and other civilians) and later conveniently dismissed as "inter
group rivalries". Many of these groups have been responsible for
grave human rights abuses, including summary executions, torture, and
illegal detention as well as election-related intimidation of voters.
They are never arrested or prosecuted and go scot-free.
Replace the word renegade
by death squads or The national guard and you will get the picture of
Iraq.
In the name of Liberation,
US has devastated a country by humiliating, repressing and endangering
the common people of the country like Iraq and Indian state is doing
the same thing with a little difference as she is doing same thing with
in her own territory.
US is doing every thing to
make the world a safer place to live in and the logic behind the Indian
atrocities in Kashmir was Unity and Integrity till few years back, now
the cause has changed .Now Indian state is using the same language and
that is 'Fight against terror'
Now at least a section of
US society is out openly against their own state and at this juncture
we the Indian people are lagging behind. We are still disillusioned
with blind nationalism. The coffins of our soldiers and tourists killed
in Kashmir do not make us to raise demand of withdrawal of our soldiers
from Kashmir. We are providing our full support to our ruthless and
rouge state .
Just imagine yourself as
an individual of Iraq or Kashmir. Your sister or mother is raped, your
brother or father is murdered or imprisoned, you are living under constant
fear, your home is bombarded. The humiliation ,cold blooded murder,
rape and above all the immunity provided to the criminals has virtually
transforms the places like Kashmir and Iraq as breeding ground for counter
attacks, the revenge.
The incidence of 9/11 and
recently happened 7/11 , the train attacks of Madrid or Mumbai and a
countless incidence has proved that we the common people are the only
target to all such attacks and that's why we are being tagged as "soft
Target".
It is up to us whether really
want to make our world a safer place to live in, to live with dignity
and respect or become the counterpart of 'terrorist' attack victims
of Madrid, Tel Aviv, Mumbai or New York .