SIGN TODAY! Urgent Appeal Calling For an Independent International Inquiry into Sexual Violence Cases in Jammu and Kashmir
4/19/2018
Dear Activists –
We have just launched an urgent appeal demanding an independent international inquiry into sexual violence cases in Jammu and Kashmir. Please join us, sign the appeal, and share widely with your friends and networks.
Activists are calling for an independent, impartial investigation of cases of sexual violence and a United Nations fact-finding team to investigate human rights violations perpetrated on a massive scale by Indian Armed Forces in Indian Occupied Kashmir.
On 10 January 2018, an eight-year-old Muslim girl belonging to the Bakarwal community of nomadic shepherds went missing from the vicinity of her home in Rassana village of Kathua, a Hindu-majority district of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. Seven days later, her mutilated body was found in the forests of Rassana. The girl, who the world today knows as Asifa, had been raped and then bludgeoned to death. The Crime Branch investigation has revealed that the child was kidnapped and held captive for five days in a local Hindu place of worship, where she was sedated and repeatedly raped.
The rape and murder of 8-year-old Asifa needs to be understood in the paradigm of widespread militarization in Jammu and Kashmir, which is the densest military occupation in the world today. The conflict has claimed more than 70,000 lives so far, and continues to generate a vast range of unimaginable forms of violence, including tens of thousands of victims of severe torture. The systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war by the armed forces is a common feature of this militarized violence. Accompanied by legal and political impunity and zero records of prosecution of crimes by the armed forces, non-state actors too have felt emboldened to perpetrate sexual violence as a tool of hegemonic politics.
One Billion Rising and V-Day is calling on our network to sign on, for Asifa - who was tragically raped and murdered - and for the countless other women and girls who have been killed and assaulted in Jammu and Kashmir. Already hundreds of activists have signed on including Eve, Anthony Arnove, Rosanna Arquette, Noam Chomsky, Jodie Evans, Jane Fonda, and Naomi Klein.
To sign, visit onebillionrising.org/asifa
In solidarity,
All of us at V-Day, One Billion Rising & City of Joy
PS - Sample social media posts are also on the page, as well as downloadable images.