Abstract
The physical and psychic violence of counterinsurgency is written on bodies and space. The frequently used term “human rights violations” carries in itself a deeper truth, pointing to the violation of meaning, body and world. Rape and torture are individual as well as collective wounds. From the gendered violence of counterinsurgency, where men are tortured, killed, and disappeared, and women are raped, molested, humiliated and left alone to fend for their families and themselves, to the large-scale destruction of the environment, the state of siege is a total phenomenon. Yet these convergent forms of violence come to define not the triumph of military domination but the sites of resistance. Thus in 2008, the rape and murder of two young women in Shopian in central Kashmir became the focus of mass protests that returned the Kashmiri struggle for independence to its roots as a mass movement. And in 2009, the environmental destruction represented by a proposal to transfer land to outsiders1 along an aggressively expanding Hindu nationalist pilgrimage at the shrine of Amarnath was challenged and stopped by popular protests. Deforestation due to timber smuggling, carried out with the tacit support of the army, produced devastating floods in Srinagar city in September 2014.
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Notes
Majid Maqbool, “The Shame of Kunan Poshpora,” Milli Gazette, December 29, 2012, http://www.milligazette.com/news/5288-the-shame-of-kunan-poshpora (accessed May 25, 2013).
Abhinav Verma, “Kunan Poshpora: SHRC Recommends Action against Then Director Prosecution for ‘Deliberately Scuttling’ Probe,” Greater Kashmir, April 5, 2013, http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2013/Apr/5/kunan-poshpora-shrc-recommends-action-against-then-director-prosecution-for-deliberately-scuttling -probe-74.asp (accessed May 25, 2013). Also Amnesty International (1993) India: Reports of Rape in 1993; and (1991) India: Rape and ill-Treatment of Women in Kashmir: Zarifa Bano, Bakhti, and Many Others; Datta 2013.
A. G. Noorani, “A Flawed Inquiry,” Frontline 26, 17, August 15–28, 2009, http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2617/stories/200908282 61703500.htm (accessed May 30, 2013). Also International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK), “Militarization with Impunity: A Brief on Rape and Murder in Shopian, Kashmir,” 2009, available at http://kashmirprocess.org/reports/shopian/ShopianReport.pdf (accessed May 25, 2013).
Haley Duschinski and Bruce Hoffman, “Everyday Violence, Institutional Denial, and Struggles for Justice in Kashmir,” 2011, Race and Class, 52
GK News Network, “Police Thwart Shakeel’s Sit-in,” Greater Kashmir, December 28, 2010, http://greaterkashmir.com/news/2010/Dec/28/police-thwart-shakeels-sit-in-55.asp (accessed April 19, 2011; Arundhati Roy, “Kashmir’s Fruits of Discord,” The New York Times, November 8, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/opinion/09roy.html?_r=2&hp=& pagewanted=all (accessed November 10, 2010).
Umar Sultan, “Police Puts Shopian Majlis, Victims’ Families on ‘Security Index’? Most Members of the 155-Member Grouping Denied Passports,” Kashmir Reader, November 30, 2012, spxhttp://www.kashmirreader.com/11302012-ND-police-puts-shopian-majlis-victims’-family-on-’security-index’-7882.a (accessed December 25, 2012).
Baba Umar, “Lesson in Irony: Gallantry Award Goes to Rape Accused,” Kashmir Dispatch, August 24, 2012, http://www.kashmirdispatch.com/conflict/24089068-kashmir-lesson-in-irony-gallantry-award -goes-to-rape-accused.htm (accessed January 31, 2015).
For example: Kalpana Tikku, “Major Prisons, Minor Detainees,” Greater Kashmir, October 5, 2012, http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2012/Oct/5/major-prisons-minor-detainees-34.asp (accessed January 31, 2012); “JK Police Handcuff Minors, Take Them to Court,” The Kashmir Walla, September 28, 2012, http://www.thekashmirwalla.com/2012/09/jk-police-handcuff-minors-take-them-to-court/#.VM0Bo4Y8KrU (accessed January 31, 2015). 21. Bharti Jain, “‘Give Political Prisoner Status for People with ‘Dissenting Political Views’: SAR Geelani,” The Times of India, December 23, 2012, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Give-political-prisoner -status-for-people-with-dissenting-political-views-SAR-Geelani/articleshow/17726131.cms (accessed January 27, 2015).
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© 2016 Shubh Mathur
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Mathur, S. (2016). Shopian and After. In: The Human Toll of the Kashmir Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137546227_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137546227_7
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