Since the Indian government crackdown against militants in the disputed territory of Kashmir began in earnest in January 1990, both security forces and armed militants have used rape as a weapon: to punish, intimidate, coerce, humiliate and degrade.110 Rape by Indian security forces most often occurs during crackdowns, cordon-and-search operations during which men are held for identification in parks or schoolyards while security forces search their homes. In these situations, the security forces frequently engage in collective punishment against the civilian population by assaulting residents and burning their homes. Rape is used as a means of targeting women whom the security forces accuse of being militant sympathizers; in raping them, the security forces are attempting to punish and humiliate the entire community.111 Rape has also occurred frequently during reprisal attacks on civilians following militant ambushes. In many of these attacks, the selection of victims is seemingly arbitrary and the women, like other civilians assaulted or killed, aretargeted simply because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Kashmiri militant groups have also committed rape. In some cases, militants have raped women whose family members were believed to be informers or supporters of rival groups. In other cases, women have been raped and killed after being held as hostages for their male relatives. Although some militant leaders have condemned these abuses and vowed to take action against those who have committed rape, few have been able to discipline their own members, and the abuses continue.
The significance of rape as a gender-specific form of abuse in Kashmir must be understood in the context of the subordinate status of women generally in South Asia, as in much of the rest of the world. Women who are the victims of rape are often stigmatized, and their testimony and integrity impugned. Social attitudes which cast the woman, and not her attacker, as the guilty party pervade the judiciary, making rape cases difficult to prosecute and leaving women unwilling to press charges.
110 The following material was adapted from Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, "Rape in Kashmir: A Crime of War," A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 5, no. 9 (May 1993).
111 Male detainees have been subjected to sexual molestation. For more on this see Asia Watch, Kashmir Under Siege (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1991), p. 73.
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