A global movement for ending sexual violence against women, One Billion Rising has started an online campaign appealing for independent international investigation into episodes of systematic sexual violence in Kashmir, from Kunan-Poshpora to Kathua.
One Billion Rising is a global movement founded by Eve Ensler, an American playwright and performer best known for her play The Vagina Monologues. It was started in 2012 as part of the V-Day movement. The “billion” refers to the UN statistic that one in three women will be raped or beaten up in her lifetime, or about one billion.
The campaign which expands each year was started in the aftermath of the horrifying gang-rape and murder of an eight year old child in Kathua that sparked a global outrage.
“We the undersigned appeal to International organizations, independent groups, feminists and gender and justice activists to send independent fact finding teams to Kashmir to conduct an impartial investigation into these cases of sexual violence in Jammu & Kashmir,” reads the online campaign started by the international pressure group.
By Wednesday evening the online campaign was endorsed by more than 700 signatories from around the world.
“We also appeal to the United Nations to send a Fact Finding team to conduct an impartial investigation into the human rights violations perpetrated on a massive scale by Indian armed Forces in Indian occupied Kashmir.”
The rape and murder of 8 year old needs to be understood in the paradigm of widespread militarization in Jammu and Kashmir, which is the densest military occupation in the world today,” the campaign reads.
The online appeal also criticises Prime Minister Narendra Modi for speaking up only after the horrific incident was reported in the national and international press.
“Even then, he chose to remain ambiguous: he said “India’s daughters” would receive justice. Implicit in this statement is the fact that the rapes and murders perpetrated by Indian armed forces on Kashmiri men and women—who do not consider themselves to be the sons and daughters of India—do not deserve justice.”
Speaking of “vast range of unimaginable forms of violence” visited on people of Kashmir, including torture and wide scale blinding caused pellet guns in recent years the appeal laments missing prosecution of perpetrators.
“Accompanied by legal and political impunity and zero records of prosecution of crimes by the armed forces, non-state actors too have felt emboldened to perpetrate sexual violence as a tool of hegemonic politics,” says the online appeal.