[Reader-list] Remembering Thangjam Manorama On The 10th Anniversary Of Her Rape And Murder By The Indian Paramilitary

[Asit Das]

Remembering Thangjam Manorama On The 10th Anniversary Of
Her Rape And Murder By The Indian Paramilitary

*By Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression*

10 July, 2014
*Countercurrents.org*

*WSS REMEMBERS THE TENTH YEAR OF MANORAMA'S SEXUAL ASSAULT AND MURDER BY
THE INDIAN PARAMILITARY*

FIGHT AGAINST PATRIARCHAL VIOLENCE DAILY INFLICTED BY STATE, CASTE AND
CAPITALISM!!

AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!!

Ten years ago, in the early hours of 11th July 2004, the bullet riddled
body of 32- year old Thangjam Manorama Devi was found in Laipharok Maring
of Imphal East district of Manipur. She had been picked up by the
paramilitary Assam Rifles from her home in Bamon Kampu Mayai Leikai and was
raped and killed. Manorama was suspected of links to an underground
separatist group. Soldiers raided her home around midnight, asking the
family to wait outside while they questioned her. They signed an “arrest
memo”, an official acknowledgement of detention, put in place to prevent
“disappearances”, and took her away. Later that day her semi clad body was
found in a nearby village. She had been fired with several bullets. There
were gunshot wounds to the genitals and semen on her skirt suggesting she
was raped before being tortured and killed. Mass protests in Manipur broke
out as people demanded an immediate investigation and prosecution of the
guilty.

Collective anger and shock over Manorama's rape and murder gripped the
world only as media reports poured in of the most spectacular and militant
protest of our times. On July 15, women from the MeiraPaibi stripped
themselves naked outside the 17 th Assam Rifles headquarters holding up the
banner “ *Indian Army Rape Us *”! Known as the Mother's Front, Meira Paibi
had started as a support group for women family members of the disappeared
and arrested, but had eventually also become involved in fighting against
human rights abuses. They had soon joined the campaign to repeal the Armed
Forces (Special Powers) Act more popularly known as the AFSPA.The case
pertaining to the rape and murder of Manorama is pending before the Supreme
Court. The army and central government have gone all the way to the Supreme
Court to dodge prosecution, even though a judicial enquiry appointed by the
state of Manipur has found the army personnel guilty. Meanwhile the people
of Manipur still await justice even after 10 years.

It was for the repeal of the same AFSPA that Irom Sharmila started a fast,
a fast that continues to date to demand with no response from the Indian
state.

The *Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1958 *gives the army special
powers and liberties, such as:

•  Arrest and search warrants are not required for any operation.

•  Army officers can fire upon and use *lethal force *on an unlawful
assembly of five or more people and for the illegal possession of firearms,
if they feel the need.

•  No criminal prosecution is possible against army personnel who have
taken action under this act, unless sanctioned by the central government.

Friends, acts such as the AFSPA are known to be draconian precisely because
of the power they invest the army with in areas of armed conflict. First,
the impunity enjoyed by army personnel protects them from the crimes they
commit on civilians and the injurious consequences of the crimes. Secondly,
the impunity given to the army implies that women in these areas are being
denied of any legal redress that might have been available to them under
the Indian legal system, however uphill it might be to access those legal
remedies and legal protection. Sometimes, proving a case of sexual assault
itself becomes the toughest struggle waged by a community.

On May 30, 2009, two young women – Neelofar and Asiya – went missing in
Shopian in Kashmir and were found early next morning in a stream that no
one had ever drowned in, in the midst of a high security and heavily
guarded area; spontaneous protests broke out as the women appeared to have
been raped and murdered. Almost the entire town was on the roads demanding
an enquiry and it was a tough proposition for the administration to even
get the post mortem done. After two post mortems and an exhumation of the
bodies 5 months later an entirely manipulated CBI enquiry concluded that
death had happened due to drowning. Long years of militarization and the
continuing imposition of AFSPA since 1989 in the Kashmir Valley have
provided impunity to security personnel in countless cases of rape, murder,
disappearances and fake encounters. The methods of torture used by the army
in interrogation procedures during detention involve brutal sexual violence
on men as well. It would be hard to estimate how many women have been raped
and killed in the valley. Even the notorious incident in Kunan Poshpura,
where the 4th Rajputana Rifles during its search and combing operations on
23 February, 1991, had gang-raped a large number of women in these two
small villages of District Kupwara have only started coming to
light.  Early this year, the Kupwara deputy commissioner broke his silence
and disclosed publicly that he had been threatened and offered promotions
to change his report on the alleged mass rapes in Kunan Poshpura in
February 1991. Justice still awaits the women from Kashmir.

While on one hand, the armed forces deployed in different parts of India
act with complete impunity terrorizing local residents in the name of
national security, the Indian state is also unleashing terrible repression
on people's right to dissent in its frenzied pursuit of neo-liberal
policies in the name of development. In addition to AFSPA, e xtra-juridical
violence of the state continues to be supported by draconian laws such as
Disturbed Areas Act (DSA), Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act
(CSPSA), Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), National Security Act
(NSA) and National Investigative Agency Act (NIA). The pursuit of
“development” that has meant the plunder of natural resources by
corporations – national and international – has brought in its wake untold
misery and human suffering through state repression on dalits, adivasis,
OBCs and other poorer sections across the country, especially in the
mineral-rich states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. The p
erpetrators and state actors continue to be immune from any legal action
whatsoever. They all enjoy de facto immunity from criminal liability.
Capitalist advancement is thus clearly characterized by the use of sexual
violence as part of state repression on one hand and violation of all
environmental laws and other mandatory provisions that the Constitution
decrees on the other. This continuum of violence is evident as we go from
areas of armed conflict to other states in India. Custodial rape and sexual
violence at the hands of paramilitary and within police stations continues
unabated.

The 36-year old school teacher Soni Sori from Dantewada district in
Chhattisgarh, who is today acquitted completely of six of the seven cases
against her alleging links with Naxalites, stayed in prison for almost two
and a half years. She was tortured so brutally that accounts of the sexual
violence inflicted on Soni Sori sent a chill down the spine of people
across the country. During interrogation, the police had shoved stones deep
inside her private parts causing immense abdominal pain and discomfort in
walking. She also sustained annular tears on her spine. Women's groups
demanded severe punishment for SP Ankit Garg who was responsible for the
repressive tactics used. Far from investigating his role in the custodial
violence suffered by Soni Sori, the Union of India awarded him the Police
Medal of Gallantry on the 63 rd Republic Day of the nation, on the
recommendation of the Chhattisgarh government. The open rewarding of the
perpetrators of sexual violence speaks volumes of the patriarchal state
that endorses sexual violence and does not hesitate to use it as a weapon
of war.

On the morning of August 20, 2007, eleven Kondh women of Vakapalli village
in Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh were raped by Greyhound
personnel. A sustained agitation came up across the State seeking justice
to the women by punishing the rapists. After four years on April 26, 2012,
the AP High Court ordered in the women's favour. The policemen moved the
Supreme Court and obtained a stay. The role of the state administration and
police was as complacent as it always is in such cases. The women still
await justice in this long struggle to bring the perpetrators of sexual
violence to book.

A PIL filed against the operations of Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh had
testimonies of 99 adivasi women alleged to have been raped by the members
of Salwa Judum. Five women had bravely filed private complaints after their
complaints were not acted on by the police, but conviction is a far cry in
Chhattisgarh. After repeated adjournments over a period of six years, they
have now finally been forced into withdrawing the cases. Such rampant
sexual violence is an integral part of the offensive launched by the
Government of India in the name of curbing “Maoism” and ushering in
“development” involving not only the army and police personnel but also
state protected vigilante groups and private armies.

In this culture of impunity and immunity where perpetrators of sexual
violence go scot-free, the domination of the upper caste is often manifest
in sexual violence. Sexual assault on minor dalit girls and women by the
Jats and Yadavs is on the rise in parts of North India like Haryana and
western Uttar Pradesh. The complicit role of the district administration
and police is evident as WSS findings reveal. The rape and murder of two
minor girls who were found hanging from a tree in Badayun district of UP is
an open display of patriarchal and casteist power that is endorsed by a
patriarchal state. It is a reminder of the brutality of medieval times that
will not go unchallenged: resistance to such gruesome acts is growing every
day. Evidently, perpetrators of sexual assault who are the upper caste
enjoy the same immunity and the police and the administration work hard for
their protection. Even the record or evidence of sexual violence gets
completely erased out as seen in the casteist violence unleashed on 29
September, 2006 at Khairalanji of Maharashtra. Surekha Bhotmange was
brutally assaulted and killed along with her two sons and daughter in
Khairalanji village of Bhandara district by the dominant caste people of
the village. They were dragged from their hut, strapped on to a bullock
cart and paraded naked. This humiliation was followed by an orgy of
violence, sexual assault and murder. The sexual assault of the mother and
daughter went ignored as it was turned into a murder case alone. The
administration and police failed to file charges of sexual assault or even
invoke the Prevention of Atrocities Act as it sought to let the
perpetrators go off on light charges. In the barbaric communal violence
wreaked out on Muslims by sections of the Jat community on 6 - 7 September,
2013, in the villages of Muzaffarnagar district in UP, there was a huge
exodus of Muslim dalit landless families living in those villages since
hundreds of years. Several women have been reported to be sexually
assaulted in these incidents. There is no desire to return back to the
villages as the most palpable and outspoken fear is the safety and security
of the women. These women and families continue demanding justice even as
they are being evicted from the camps that were made for them in the
aftermath of the violence.

You, I and each one of us have a role to play in ending such systemic
violence against women. There is no other way but to intensify our struggle
as women for dignity and liberation! We cannot leave it to the legal
machinery alone as we see how some of the significant recommendations made
by women's organizations and all other democratic organizations and
individuals to the Justice J.S. Verma Committee in 2013 were blatantly
ignored. The government had constituted this Committee after the   Nirbhaya
  case in Delhi in December 2012 and the widespread protests,  to look into
the possible amendments in the criminal laws related to sexual violence
against women.

The   Committee   (2013)   observed that   ‘impunity for systematic or
isolated sexual violence in the process of internal security duties is
being legitimised by the AFSPA' and ‘women in conflict areas are entitled
to all the security and dignity that is afforded to citizens in any other
part of our country'.   The committee recommended that the requirement of
sanction for prosecution of armed forces personnel should be specifically
excluded when a sexual offence is alleged and they   should be tried under
normal law,   and also suggested to 'take special care for the safety of
complainants and witnesses in cases of sexual assault by armed personnel'.
However the Central government discarded these   important recommendations
given by Justice   Verma   Committee.   The complete lack of political will
of the state and its military and administrative apparatus has to be torn
asunder to put an end to sexual violence on women. At the same time, let us
also resolve to make people conscious that our bodies are no longer to be
assaulted, lynched and mutilated in the deepening orgy of patriarchal
violence.

Friends, let us seek to strengthen all democratic movements against state
repression by drawing attention to the continuing sexual violence inflicted
on women. Today, on July 11, as we remember Manorama in Manipur who was
raped and killed ten years ago by the Indian Army, let us resolve to unite
across all states and raise our voices against:

•  The increasing use of sexual assault by the state forces and other
perpetrators as a means to intimidate the community and suppress struggling
women, especially in areas and situations of conflict.

•  The daily atrocities and sexual violence faced by the dalit community at
the hands of the upper caste and their protection in a caste-biased
patriarchy.

•  The police who do little to secure justice for survivors of sexual
assault and consistently undermine the struggle for justice by deliberately
fouling upinvestigations.

•  The draconian laws that permit the presence and provide impunity to the
armed forces amidst civilian populations, which have been responsible for
the burgeoning of sexual crimes against women, torture and killings, and
also the complete disruption of normal life throwing safety, security and
even livelihood options to the wind.

DEMAND THE REPEAL OF THE ARMED FORCES SPECIAL POWERS ACT!!

ASSERT WOMEN'S ABSOLUTE RIGHT OVER BODILY AUTONOMY, SAFETY AND SECURITY!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*About WSS*

*Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) is a non-funded
grassroots effort initiated in November 2009, to challenge and put an end
to the violence being perpetuated upon women`s bodies and societies. We are
a nationwide network of women from diverse political and social movements
comprising women's organizations, mass organizations, civil liberties,
student and youth organizations, mass movements and individuals. We
unequivocally condemn state repression and sexual violence on women and
girls by any perpetrator(s).*