#Kashmir- Decades of Inaction Mass Rape by Indian Army #KunanPoshpora #Vaw

The Kunan Poshpora incident occurred on February 23, 1991, when units of the Indian army launched a search and interrogation operation in the village of Kunan Poshpora, located in Kashmir‘s remote Kupwara District. At least 53 women were allegedly gang raped by soldiers that night. However, Human Rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have reported that the number of raped women could be as high as 100.Although the Indian government‘s investigations into the incident rejected the allegations as “baseless,” international human rights organizations have expressed serious doubts about the integrity of these investigations and the manner in which they were conducted, stating that the Indian government launched a “campaign to acquit the army of charges of human rights violations and discredit those who brought the charges.
According to reports, on February 23, 1991 at approximately 11:00PM soldiers from the 4th Rajputana Rifles cordoned off the village of Kunan Poshpora to conduct a search operation. The men were taken from their homes and assembled in an open field for interrogation overnight. Once the men had been taken away, soldiers allegedly gang raped a large number of village women overnight till 9:00 AM the next day.Local villagers alleged that up to 100 women “were gang-raped without any consideration of their age, married, unmarried, pregnancy etc.,The victims ranged in age from 13 to 80.The village headman and other leaders have claimed that they reported the rapes to army officials on February 27, but the officials denied the charges and refused to take any further action. However, army officials claim that no report was ever made.On March 5, villagers complained to Kupwara district magistrate S.M. Yasin, who visited the village on March 7 to investigate. In his final report, he stated that the soldiers “behaved like wild beasts”and described the attack as follows: A large number of armed personnel entered into the houses of villagers and at gunpoint they gang-raped 23 ladies, without any consideration of their age, married, unmarried, pregnancy etc… there was a hue and cry in the whole village.
He went on to state: I found the villagers were harassed to the extreme possible extent. In the morning after 9 a.m. when the Army left, the village men folk were released and when they entered their houses, they were shocked to see that the Army forces have gang raped their daughters, wives, sisters, etc. The armed forces have forcibly taken No Objection Certificate from the locals as well as from the local police after doing the illegal action… I feel ashamed to put in black and white what kind of atrocities and their magnitude was brought to my notice on the spot.
The United States Department of State, in its 1992 report on international human rights, rejected the Indian government’s conclusion, and determined that there was “was credible evidence to support charges that an elite army unit engaged in mass rape in the Kashmiri village of Kunan Poshpora.
#Every heart cried and every eye shed tears in the intervening night of the 23rd and 24th February 1991, when the young and energetic, but inhumane, Indian troops of the 04 Raj Raffles of 68 Brigade C/o 56 APO launched a search operation in the village of Kunan Poshpora, just 5kms from the main township Kupwara, and toed all humanitarian principals with the raping of as many as thirty women, including teenage girls and a near 100 year old frail grandmother.-kashmirglobal.com

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