Rape in the line of 'duty'

By Jawed Naqvi

IN a way I agree with Indian Army chief Gen Bikram Singh that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), without which his troops would be open to charges of rape and murder in Kashmir and Manipur, should neither be diluted nor withdrawn.
Removing or weakening the AFSPA is not the issue, ending the military occupation is. Which army in its senses today would allow its troops to be subjected to civilian jurisdiction? The Americans don't or else the jails in Baghdad and Kabul would be packed with a range of derelicts sentenced by local judges.
It is true that India's Justice Verma Commission had recently proposed a package of measures to curb sexual violence against women in the aftermath of the shocking gang-rape of a student in a bus in Delhi. He had also argued for changes in the AFSPA to make Indian troops accountable to civilian jurisdiction, chiefly with regard to charges of sexual offences.
However, that would have still left out wilful murder and disappearances, which often accompany rape in conflict zones, from civilian scrutiny. And why are we willing to accept a sanitised military occupation, if such a thing is possible, anyway? That was not the spirit even behind the Verma Commission report.
Let's take the civilian compulsions for accepting the Indian army's stand on AFSPA. The Indian parliament on Tuesday passed a facile anti-rape law with one-third of the MPs present and voting. The rest were busy saving or subverting the government, which lost its majority this week after a key Tamil ally pulled out citing New Delhi's reluctance to act on the widely reported rape and carnage of Jaffna Tamils by Sri Lankan troops.
Two factors threaten to retard India's enthusiasm, if it ever had any, to intervene against Sri Lanka in a US-sponsored human rights vote due soon.
First, India is genuinely worried about losing its waning influence in Colombo to China and Pakistan, the two countries that are deafeningly silent on the rape narrative in Sri Lanka. But equally important, India fears a jilted Sri Lanka as it could wreak serious revenge.
To forestall New Delhi's support for a severe UN vote the Lankans have hinted at unravelling the thinly veiled secrets in Kashmir, Manipur and elsewhere where Indian troops are accused of running a system of human rights abuse. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh desperately needs the Tamil ally to stay the course until May 2014 when elections are due, compulsions of "national interest" have reportedly sent him looking for alternative allies to keep his government afloat.
In other words, the rulers are prepared to lose the crucial support of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) but not be forced to pursue the documented exposés of rape and mass murder by Sinhalese troops.
That troops rape and murder civilians with impunity in any conflict zone is axiomatic. That non-state actors do likewise is a given. Be they Pakistani troops in the erstwhile East Pakistan or Sri Lankan troops in Jaffna or Indian troops in Kashmir or Manipur, they do what others have done in similar circumstances. They get away with it because they are the holy cows.
We are familiar with the horrors of Japanese soldiers' use of Korean "comfort women". We are aware of the perennial tribulations of women caught in countless internecine conflicts raging in Africa. The Bosnian nightmare too is well-documented. But memory fades with time.
The number of rapes committed by US servicemen in Germany at the close of the Second World War was estimated at 11,040.
As in the case of the American occupation of France after the D-Day invasion, many of the American rapes in Germany in 1945 were gang-rapes committed by soldiers at gunpoint.
Although non-fraternisation policies were instituted for the Americans in Germany, the phrase "copulation without conversation is not fraternisation" was used as a motto by United States Army troops.
The Soviet example was not too different. An order issued on January 19, 1945 and signed by Stalin said:
"Officers and men of the Red Army! We are entering the country of the enemy … the remaining population in the liberated areas, regardless of whether they're German, Czech, or Polish, should not be subjected to violence. The perpetrators will be punished according to the laws of war. In the liberated territories, sexual relations with females are not allowed. Perpetrators of violence and rape will be shot."
Yet estimates of rape by Soviet troops in Germany are placed in tens of thousands. The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone.
At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. American troops were equally governed by strict codes of combat duty but that didn't deter all the soldiers all the time from committing the crime.
A war correspondent from Australia who served with the American troops during the war, wrote:
"After the fighting moved on to German soil, there was a good deal of rape by combat troops and those immediately following them. The incidence varied between unit and unit according to the attitude of the commanding officer. In some cases offenders were identified, tried by court martial, and punished. The army legal branch was reticent, but admitted that for brutal or perverted sexual offences against German women, some soldiers had been shot - particularly if they happened to be Negroes."
What we have observed here is not the absence of rules to prevent rape by soldiers. AFSPA is not the problem. Military occupation is.
—(Courtesy: Dawn/Kashmir Times)