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"These women have already suffered and there is no undoing what has already happened to them. But they have to get justice"
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AHMEDABAD,
India, September 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Months after
Hindu mobs rampaged in India's western Muslim-majority state of
Gujarat, many Muslim women who were raped by the zealots have seen no
action taken against their aggressors, with police unwilling to take
their complaints seriously.
Sultana
Firoze, 24, was stripped naked by eight men in her village of Delol.
Her life was spared, she said, only because she fell unconscious
during the assault, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"The
police have done nothing against the accused; they are still
scot-free. But I'm determined to get justice," said Firoze, who
has still not returned home.
Rape
victims face a first obstacle in identifying the men who assaulted
them. But perhaps the biggest barrier is Indian police, who refuse to
listen to the rape victims, and refuse to take action in their cases.
New
York-based Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have blasted the
Gujarat authorities' response to the riots, charging that police not
only failed to prevent vigilante violence against Muslims but were
even complicit in the attacks.
"What
happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising; it was a carefully
orchestrated attack against Muslims," Smita Narula, Human Rights
Watch's senior South Asia researcher, said in a 75-page report
released April 30.
"The
attacks were planned in advance and organized with extensive
participation of the police and state government officials," she
said.
Police
officials who sought to protect Muslims were removed from their
positions, while some police even led distraught victims directly into
the hands of their killers, the rights group said.
The
report said that panicked phone calls made to the police, fire
brigades, and even ambulance services generally proved futile. Several
witnesses reported being told by police: "We have no orders to
save you."
Rioting
broke out across Gujarat, the largest state ruled by Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu-nationalist BJP party.
Human
Rights Watch said as many as 2,000 Muslims have died in the pogrom,
but Indian authorities insist on putting the death toll at around
1,000.
In
its April report, HRW said scores of Muslim women and girls were raped
in Gujarat before being killed.
Witnesses
say sexual assault was systematic.
"All
the girls over 15 years old who were killed in the riots had been
raped," said Mukhtar Mohammad, an organizer at the Kalol camp for
people made homeless by the riots.
"Hindu
mobs burned their bodies to destroy evidence," he said.
S.M.
Lal, who is campaigning to get the rapists punished, said the official
attitude toward violence against women has hampered attempts to
prosecute for sexual assault.
"In
the context of Gujarat, rape cases become even more difficult because
of this whole belief that there was no gender violence during the
riots," he said.
"These
women have already suffered and there is no undoing what has already
happened to them. But they have to get justice for those women who
were raped and killed, and also to discourage men from committing such
crimes against other women in the future," he said.
But
many are pessimistic that the police will take action.
Women's
rights activists say the problem is compounded by the traditional
shame many rape victims feel in India. They also say that many of the
tens of thousands of Muslims still homeless fear the majority Hindu
community will not allow them to return to their homes if they fear
being prosecuted for their actions during the riots.
"These
women are under a lot of pressure to withdraw their statements. There
is a threat to their lives and people from their villages are not
allowing them to return back to their homes unless they retract their
statements," said Nawas Kothwal of the Commonwealth Human Rights
Initiative.
The
easy way out, activists say, is for all sides to say that accused
rapists cannot be found.
Said
Nanavati, the police official: "The accused have not been
arrested because they are absconding."
He
said search warrants have been issued and police informants in
villages are looking for the suspects, "but verification of their
identities becomes difficult."
Bilkees
Yakub Patel, 22, saw 11 people killed in front of her, including her
two-year-old daughter, when mobs attacked her village of Devgadhvaria.
She
does not have a medical examination certificate to certify she was
raped and police did not allow her to file a complaint. But, with the
help of activists, she has pressed her case at a local court.
"I'll
go to higher courts in spite of the threat," she said. "I'll
fight until I get justice. I will not quit half-way."
Communal
violence against Muslims in Gujarat is intimately connected to a rise
of Hindu nationalism in the country and the state, a phenomenon that
is also responsible for attacks against Christians over the last
several years in the state and around the country.
