Kunan Poshpora, Kashmir, 23 Feb 1991 : The Horrific Episode of Mass Gangrape by Army and Shameful Cover-up by the State!
Do Not Forget! Do Not Forgive!
22 years ago, on 23 February 1991, a battalion of the 4th Rajputana Rifles of the Indian Army entered the village of Kunan Poshpora in Kupwara district of Kashmir late at night for a ‘search’ and ‘interrogation’ operation. The men of the village were rounded up and kept in custody just outside the villages. At least 53 women – aged 13 to 80 years – were gang raped by the army for several hours together. According to the villagers the number is much higher. What is equally horrific about the Kunan Poshpora incident is the response of the ruling establishment, the media and successive governments. Kunan Poshpora will go down in history not just as an instance of brutal state repression and sexual assault, it will also be known as an ignominious cover up of state repression by the Indian government.
After this horrific incident, the Indian government, and later the Press Council of India claimed that the whole incident was a “well-concocted bundle of fabricated lies” and “a massive hoax orchestrated by militant groups and their sympathizers and mentors in Kashmir and abroad…for reinscribing Kashmir on the international agenda as a human rights issue”. They claimed that the allegations were “grossly exaggerated or invented”. This amazing ‘conclusion’ was reached after highly questionable ‘investigations’: Mufti Baha-ud-Din Farooqi, Chief Justice of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir, who led a fact-finding mission to Kunan Poshpora, has stated that in his 43 years on the bench “he had never seen a case in which normal investigative procedures were ignored as they were in this one”! Several independent investigations and reputed international human rights organisations have publicly stated that the Indian government launched a “campaign to acquit the army of charges of human rights violations and discredit those who brought the charges”.
Today, more than two decades after the horrific Kunan Poshpora incident, the issue of AFSPA, state repression and impunity to rapists in power are once more being discussed. At a time when justice is denied in such a case in the name of ‘protecting the morale’ of the army – what is the Indian State then saying about the morale of Kashmiri women? Aren’t these rapes then committed to break the morale of the Kashmiri people?
In a signed response to an RTI application (Home/RTI/15/2012/1213) filed by Khurram Parvez, co-ordinator of J&K Coalition of Civil Society and a well known human rights activist in Kashmir, on the number of prosecutions sanctioned under AFSPA, the J&K Home Department simply stated that “no sanction for prosecution has been intimated by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Defense to the State Government from 1990-2011 under the J&K Armed Forces Special Powers Act.” No prosecution in 21 years. None. Not one.
Today, on the anniversary of the Kunan Poshpora gang rape, it is urgent for all democratic voices to once again demand justice for the survivors of this chilling incident and scrapping of the protective shield of AFSPA providing immunity to the army and security forces for such horrific crimes!
Do Not Forget! Do Not Forgive!
