SRINAGAR: More than 2,337 women among 95,469 civilians were martyred in occupied Kashmir during the last 30 years due to the unabated acts of Indian state terrorism.
According to a report, on the occasion of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Indian troops raped 11,175 women during this period. It maintained that Kashmiri women have been the worst victims of the harrowing conflict, which rendered 22,910 women widowed since 1989.
The report deplored that the troops had been routinely involved in sexual harassment of Kashmiri women to suppress the ongoing liberation struggle.
It further pointed out that although men had been subjected to enforced disappearances, but women were adversely affected because of being related to the disappeared persons as mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.
The report said that women constituted a considerable number of mental patients, which was well over one hundred thousand, due to the violence perpetrated by Indian police and troops in the occupied territory.
On the other hand, near half a dozen women including top women resistance leader, Syeda Aasiya Andrabi, Fahmeeda Sofi and Naheeda Naseen are under illegal detention in India’s infamous Tihar jail for the past three years. Meanwhile, government of India and its armed forces are using molestation of women in the territory as a weapon of war to suppress the Kashmiris’ just struggle for securing their right to self-determination.
Kashmiris resistance leaders and human rights groups always demanded an impartial probe into the cases of rape, murder and other human rights violations against women including Kunanposhpora mass rape and Shopian tragedy.
Over 100 women were gang raped by Indian troops at Kunanposhpora in Kupwara in February 1991 while two women; Aasiya and Neelofar were abducted, raped and subsequently killed by Indian men in uniform in Shopian in May 2009 while last year, a 9-year old girl Asifa was abducted and gang raped by Indian police and a Hindu priest in Kathua area of Jammu region.–Agencies
