REPORT SAYS WOMEN TARGETED
DURING INDIA'S VIOLENCE
INTERNATIONAL
By Barbara
Crossette - WEnews correspondent
(WOMENSENEWS))--In
the Indian state of Gujarat,
where attacks on Muslims by
Hindu mobs have killed at
least 1,000 people in the
last three months, a shattered
woman named Jannat Sheikh
lives in helpless agony.
In one terror-filled day,
this Muslim mother saw her
husband tortured and burned
alive, her baby niece doused
in gasoline and set on fire,
her mother-in-law raped and
teen-age girls in the neighborhood
rounded up and stripped before
being sexually abused in the
street.
"The police
were on the spot, but helping
the mob," she told a
group of Indian women of mixed
religious backgrounds who
set out late in March to document
what they feared most: that
Muslim women in Gujarat have
become primary victims of
behavior that ranks with internationally
recognized war crimes.
The delegation,
sponsored by a civic organization
in Ahmedabad called Citizen's
Initiative, found that at
least 100,000 Muslims remain
in overcrowded refugee camps
in the state and others are
in hiding or living with family
or friends. Among them are
countless women whose stories
have never been heard. Their
men dead, their homes and
businesses destroyed, these
vulnerable women have no hope
of returning to a normal life
any time soon. Their stories
echo those of abused women
who survived the ethnic cleansing
of Bosnia or the genocide
in Rwanda.
"We have
been shaken and numbed by
the scale and brutality of
the violence that is still
continuing in Gujarat,"
the six-member team of women
said in their report, published
privately in India in April.
"Despite reading news
reports, we were unprepared
for what we saw and heard;
for fear in the eyes and anguish
in the words of ordinary women
whose basic human right to
live a life of dignity has
been snatched away from them,"
reads the report, titled "How
Has the Gujarat Massacre Affected
Minority Women? The Survivors
Speak."
Diverse Group
of Intellectuals Express Alarm
over Gujarat Attacks
The six women
who went to Gujarat to document
the victimization of Muslim
women represent a variety
of independent organizations,
including the Muslim Women's
Forum in New Delhi and the
multi-ethnic National Alliance
of Women in Bangalore. They
join a growing body of Indian
intellectuals expressing outrage
at not only what is happening
to Muslims in that state,
which has a Hindu nationalist
government, but also the failure
of the federal government
in New Delhi, also led by
Hindu nationalists, to act
decisively. The filmmaker
Mira Nair has called the events
in Gujarat a "pogrom."
Others say the Hindu attacks
tarnish the secular image
of India and strip it of credibility
when it berates Islamic militancy.
The violence
in Gujarat began on Feb. 27,
when a group of Hindu militants
returning from a pilgrimage
were attacked after their
train stopped at the town
of Godhra. The Hindus, some
reports say, may have taken
food without paying Muslim
vendors at previous stops;
when they reached Godhra,
angry Muslims on the platform,
possibly incited by unidentified
provocateurs, set fire to
the train. Fifty-nine people
died. The women's investigating
team noted that many of the
Hindu dead were also women.
In the wake of the attack
on the train, Hindus in Gujarat
began a massacre of Muslims
in many neighborhoods.
"In many
ways," they report, "women
have been the central characters
in the Gujarat carnage and
their bodies the battleground."
The government's
tepid response to well-organized
attacks on Muslims in Gujarat--the
birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi--has
led to the resignation of
one minister in the national
coalition government led by
the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya
Janata party, which survived
a censure motion in Parliament
only on a narrow, partisan
vote.
In Gujarat,
it took politicians, led by
Chief Minister Narendra Modi,
and the police three days
in early March to stop the
initial violence against Muslims
and attacks still go on--except
in a few places where local
leaders have taken a strong
stand against it or Hindu
neighbors or rural tribal
people have come to the aid
of besieged families.
Women Bear
Brunt of Violence
The targeting
of women in mob violence is
not new, but international
law experts and women's organizations
say that this tactic has become
common in the civil disturbances
and guerrilla wars that have
come to symbolize conflict
over the last decade worldwide:
Women, who bear the sons of
the "enemy," must
either be destroyed or impregnated
by other side. The women collecting
testimony in Gujarat in March
said they saw video footage
of graffiti on charred buildings
saying, "Muslims quit
India or we will ---- your
mothers!" Women told
them of being gored in the
stomach, having a fetus ripped
out or having sticks inserted
in their vaginas.
Saira Banu said
at a camp called Shah-E-Alam
that this is what happened
to the sister of her sister-in-law:
"She was nine-months
pregnant. They cut open her
belly, took out her fetus
with a sword and threw it
into a blazing fire. Then
they burnt her as well."
When the visitors asked a
child of 9 whether she knew
the meaning of rape, the little
girl answered: "Rape
is when a woman is stripped
naked and then burnt."
The women's
team, which met with local
politicians and police officers,
recommends that an independent
inquiry commission should
be set up, headed by an Indian
Supreme Court justice, to
examine the violence, beginning
with the attack on the train
at Godhra. Victims need to
have their cases registered
and acted on by the police,
the team said, adding that
special courts should be established
to try the accused, including
public officials. The women
also recommend the dismissal
of the state government, which
the Indian Prime Minister,
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has
the power to do. And they
ask India to face up squarely
to sexual violence against
Muslim women and the overall
threat to India's Islamic
minority.
"The issue
of sexual violence is grossly
underreported," the team
said.
Barbara Crossette
is a former New York Times
correspondent in India and
the author of three books
on Asia.
For more
information:
"How Has
the Gujarat Massacre Affected
Minority Women? - The Survivors
Speak": - http://www.ektaonline.org/cac/resources/articles/womensreport.htm
Human Rights
Watch report on State Participation
and - Complicity in Communal
Violence in Gujarat - http://hrw.org/reports/2002/india/India0402-03.htm#P527_94439
"How has
the Gujarat Massacre Affected
Minority Women?" - http://167.216.192.97/gujarat/sec1.shtml
