Sexual violence against girls reeks of terrorism

Close your eyes for a while. Now think of eight-year-old Asifa Bano. She was a member of a nomadic Muslim tribe who was drugged and raped for five days by several men inside a Hindu temple in India's Jammu and Kashmir state. Keep your eyes closed. Now think of the prime accused Sanji Ram who plotted the rape and murder. He was the temple custodian who you trusted as a middleman in your business with God. Keep your eyes closed. Irrespective of your religion, caste or creed, think of Asifa, who was bludgeoned to death after an orgy of sexual violence, as your own daughter or sister. If you still don't think your silence is "criminal", keep your eyes shut. Chances are India is sliding into a dark age.
Now think of Yazidi nomadic girls in Iraq who were held captives and raped for months by Daesh terrorists who had swept across vast swaths of Iraq and Syria. Their husbands were shot, children were recruited as soldiers and they were kept as sex slaves or sold in accordance with the theology of terrorism. Some of them were raped in front of their children to inflict maximum savagery. "We didn't have food or water. We were drinking our tears," one of the survivors later said of the horrendous life under captivity.
Now think of thousands of Rohingya women and children who were systematically raped and killed by uniformed Myanmar soldiers in the recent ethnic purge, which saw more than half-a-million members of the minority community flee into neighbouring Bangladesh. Screaming women and girls were assaulted and killed in front of young children amid the ruins of their burned settlements in Rakhine state.
Now think of the more than 20,000 Muslim girls and women who were raped in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1992-1995 Balkan war. According to a European community fact-finding team, impregnated girls were forced to bear their enemy's children so that they will contribute to the Serbian population.
Now think of the harassment and persecution of Sri Lankan Tamils had faced since 1958. Every time the island nation suffered a relapse of ethnic killings, scores of girls were raped as retribution. Thousands of minority women were systematically raped in the decades of civil war that ended in 2009. Even men were not spared in the country's post-war crimes. Male members of the Tamil minority were reportedly raped, burned with cigarettes, beaten with iron rods and hung upside-down in Sri Lankan jails.
Now open your eyes and think of what's common about such genocide across the world. It's the politics of rape, stupid! According to the world body UNHCR, the use of rape as a weapon of war was widely adopted in conflicts such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Croatia, Georgia, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Nepal, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, and Bangladesh where an estimated 200,000 women raped during the battle for independence in 1971.
Now open your eyes wider and think of what's common about the rape in such conflict zones and the rape of Asifa in Kathua in Jammu. In all these cases, rape wasn't just an attack on a woman's body, but was used - as mentioned in a UN resolution  - to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or an ethnic group.
Sanji Ram, the 60-year-old retired government officer  - who allegedly executed the crime with the help of police officers Deepak Khajuria, Surender Verma, Anand Dutta and Tilak Raj as well as his son Vishal, nephew and his friend Parvesh Kumar - used rape as a weapon to terrorise the Bakarwal tribe into leaving Jammu. The shepherds, who lease land from landlords or use public and forestland in Jammu for grazing, had become an eye sore for some Hindu residents.
Asifa, described as a chirping bird and darling of the community, was grazing horses on January 10 when a farmhand lured her away. She was confined in a small Hindu temple, drugged, raped for five days by the accused and killed with a rock. Dozens of Hindu lawyers and other right-wing groups are out in force to sabotage the case. Two Hindu ministers in the state coalition government have attended a rally in support of the accused.
It's the politics of rape in the Kathua incident that makes it different from the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape, considered to be the India's #Metoo moment. The savage attack on a girl returning after a movie with her male friend touched off an unprecedented wave of agitation across the nation. While the common man's theory of rape as a result of uncontrolled sexual desire may be applicable in the Nirbhaya case, it's the link between rape and power in the Kathua case that worries the nation, especially at a time when atrocities against minorities are on the rise. According to media reports, in Rajasthan in December, a man reportedly ranted about Hindu nationalist causes as he filmed himself killing a Muslim migrant labourer. In March, a religious procession in Jodhpur city reportedly included a float that appeared to honour the killer.
The Daesh terrorists who brutalised the Yazidi girls aren't much different from India's new brigade of rapist-terrorists. There isn't even a thin line between Daesh and the Kathua killers. The objective was the same. The methodology was the same. The mindset was the same. All the lawyers, ministers and members of the Hindu group that has been set up to protect the criminals are devotees of rape-terrorism.
Sadly, the death of Asifa is unlikely to unleash a Nirbhaya-type tsunami of sentiments because of its religiopolitical dimensions. The crime scene is a temple. The geography is a volatile Muslim-majority state. The killer-rapist is a Ram. The abettors are upper caste Brahmins. The victim is a poor Muslim. Fear factors that would hold back tears. The silence is deafening. Failing to react to a brutal crime carried out under the nose of your beloved deities is an act of sin. Your conscience wouldn't forgive you. The clouds of anger and agony slowly gathering over Kathua will one day rain down like a deluge. People in power who play the proverbial three Chinese monkeys every time a national tragedy unfolds better watch out. Till then it's time for all civilised Indians to stand up for Asifa. Come fill the streets. Every nook and corner. Asifa is our daughter. She is my daughter.
-suresh@khaleejtimes.com