Treatment of Elderly, Children and Women
People of Kashmir, by tradition, respect their elders. As the parable
goes, 'they wash their
feet and drink that water'. Thousands of elderly people have either
been killed or tortured in a dehumanising manner. Their beards have been
pulled and they have been beaten up. They
have been searched in line-ups on the roads, stripped bare in front
of the members
of community. These elderly have suffered because they would not
reveal the where
abouts of the young ones.
On 13th August 1999, the military moved in and occupied Sichun
village in South Kashmir,
searched the whole village and made arrests after chaotic scenes
were created. Gukam
Hussain, Sheik and Hussian Kada, both elderly, were tortured for
3 hours in a school building
and beaten up with heavy boots and sticks. They carry the scars
around on their bodies along
with poignant memories.
If you are frail, handicapped or elderly, chances are
you will get shot.
A group of reporters were taken in a boat to a village off Dal
lake. This house was full of women
sat waiting round the body of an elderly man. His chest was riddled
with bullet holes. Early that
morning, the army raided the village causing the people to flee
for cover. A woman was killed
trying to escape in a small boat. The dead man, it transpired was
deaf and dumb. He did not
know that the troops were coming.
Children in the maelstrom
"Mankind owes to the child the best it has to give" (UN). The best
the children of Kashmir get is
agony, bloodshed and an uncertain future.
Children and babies of all ages have been killed or injured. They
have all witnessed bloodshed,
violent crackdown operations by the army and live ammunition flying
about everywhere. Schools
have been invaded and massacres have taken place where children
were involved. There are 225
children under treatment for broken bones.
Children were killed in fires deliberately set to their homes by
the army. In July 1995, in Uri, two
children were recovered from the rubble with 90% burns after their
house was set alight by the army; the children had been hiding inside with
fear.
Education came to a halt five years ago; schools are either closed
because the building has been
burnt down or closed by the orders of the administration for some
alleged militant activity (196
schools have been closed). No one takes study seriously when they
have chaos and a state of war in their streets everyday.
Atrocities against women
Mr Radhika Coomaraswamy, the special reporter on crimes against
women, stated that, "During
1992 alone 882 women were gang-raped by security forces in Jammu
& Kashmir".
Women in Kashmir have endured the brunt of the revolution. An estimated
one million women have either been bereaved, tortured or humiliated and
beaten up or killed; many hundreds
have been subjected to barbaric sexual assaults.
Sexual harassment is used as a weapon to subvert people into submission.
Gang-rapes have
made headlines over the last five years. The most frightful incidents
were from Kunan Pushpora,
Shopian, Chanapora in the capital city, Kupwara and Baramulla.
Anywhere, anytime the female
children and older women get the worst treatment. These violations
are unremitting in spite of the
world wide condemnation by the governments and Human Rights organisations.
Mrs Saja Begam, 46, from Shikargah, reported to the local police
that the BSF commander Jai Singh had searched her house six times.
"He wants to commit
rape with my two daughters. I want protection." Two days later,
Singh raided the house with a
hooded informer. Saja uncovered the face of the informer and was
protesting when Singh shot
her in the heart at point blank range and killed her. Residents
came out to protest; they were
beaten up.
The dreaded attack by soldiers and an assault on their honour and
body remains in the
minds of every woman in Kashmir; at all times.
Medical facilities
Medical facilities are stretched in Kashmir. The medical staff
are petrified as some prominent doctors and medical personnel have been
killed, accused of treating injured 'militants'. Many doctors have fled.
Hospitals have no beds for cold surgery, resulting in neglect of the care
of elderly and handicapped. This group of people are therefore either incarcerated
in their
homes, suffering illnesses or surviving with thread-bare care from
relatives or just fading
away into the hands of death, natural or inflicted by the rulers.
Excessive force and number of troops
Wherever you go in Kashmir, Doda, Poonch or Rajori, you can see
troops in camped
bunkers, occupying empty houses in the middle of built-up areas,
on the road veiling guns
with fingers on the trigger, in trucks and jeeps swarming the whole
place like a locust storm. This has been the scene for five long years,
every day and every single night. The regular army is reinforced by the
armed police.
The total number are estimated at 600,000 - One soldier to every
one household in Kashmir.
The armed police include the paramilitary forces especially trained
for operations in Kashmir.
They are Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force
(CRP), Bihar Reserve Police (BRP), Rajasthan Police Force (RPF), Assam
Rifles (AR), Indo Tibetan Border Force (ITBF) and Rashtrya Rifles (RR).
There is a network of the Black cat Force deployed to storm houses.
The intelligence
departments of India working in Kashmir are the CID, Intelligence
Bureau of Indian, and the
most dreaded of all is the counter insurgency forces created for
Kashmir operating in the
midst of the society disguised as Kashmiris.
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