Gujarat State Fails to Protect Women from Violence (Summary Report)
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Contents: INTRODUCTION 2 VIOLENCE AGAINST GIRLS AND WOMEN 3 IN GUJARAT WOMEN SEEKING JUSTICE 4 THE CASE OF BILQIS YAQOOB RASOOL 4 THE BEST BAKERY CASE 5 STATE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ABUSES BY PRIVATE ACTORS 6 AREAS OF STATE FAILINGS 7 POLICE FAILINGS 7 Failure to prevent violence 7 Failure to protect victims 8 Connivance in the violence 8 Failures to register complaints 8 Failure to investigate 9 FAILINGS OF THE STATE JUDICIARY 10 INADEQUATE STATE MEDICAL SERVICES 11 HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS NOT PROTECTED 11 INADEQUATE RELIEF, REHABILITATION AND COMPENSATION 12 LET DOWN BY THE LAW 13 GOVERNMENT REACTION 13 HOPES FOR SOME VICTIMS – BUT NOT FOR OTHERS 15 RECOMMENDATIONS 15 RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF GUJARAT 16 RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA AND THE LEGISLATURE 17 RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF amnesty INDIA 17 international International Secretariat Peter Benenson House 1 Easton Street London WC1X 0DW United Kingdom Website: www.amnesty.org INDIA Justice, the victim – Gujarat state fails to protect women from violence (Summary Report) which describes in greater detail the failings of the Introduction governments of India and of the state of Gujarat to secure the human rights of Muslim girls and women “The state shall not deny to any person equality before law or in Gujarat. the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.” Article 14 of the Constitution of India. The report focuses on the consistent failure of the state of Gujarat to fulfil its and obligations under “Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by a competent national and international law to exercise due national tribunal for acts violating the fundamental rights diligence with regard to the state’s Muslim minority, granted him by the constitution or the law.” Article 8 of the particularly girls and women. This obligation entails Universal Declaration of Human Rights. efforts to prevent abuses and ensure that abuses by state and private agents are effectively and independently investigated and perpetrators brought Over 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in to justice. The state and the central governments also targeted violence in the State of Gujarat in Western have obligations to address crimes that violate India in 2002. The violence followed a fire on a train international law some of which amount to crimes at Godhra on 27 February 2002 in which 59 Hindu against humanity. (For details see section on state activists had died. While the cause of the fire remains responsibility for abuses by private actors below and disputed, state officials and right wing Hindu groups in the main report.) Gujarat state agents failed to claimed that local Muslims had planned and started it. prevent sexual abuses as police stood by or In the subsequent large-scale violence against participated in the violence. Once the abuses had Muslims, girls and women were particular targets of occurred and victims sought redress, elements of the Hindu mobs. By systematically and brutally abusing criminal justice system, including the police, the Muslim girls and women, they intended to humiliate judiciary and the public prosecutor’s office, failed in and pollute the whole Muslim community. Several their constitutional duty to record and investigate hundred girls and women were verbally abused, complaints objectively and prosecute offences. threatened, publicly stripped naked, raped, often Medical documentation of abuses was frequently gang-raped, had swords thrust into their bodies and fraught with deliberate or careless inaccuracies which were thrown onto fires while often still alive. frustrated survivors’ attempts to secure justice. Pregnant women and children were particular targets. Deficiencies in penal provisions relating to rape, This document summarizes Amnesty International’s though long recognized, have not been addressed. As report, India: Justice, the victim – Gujarat fails to protect a result, existing laws failed to fully criminalize the women from violence (AI Index: ASA 20/001/2005), range of abuses suffered by women in Gujarat and so AI Index: ASA 20/002/2005 Justice, the victim - Gujarat state fails to protect women from violence hampered women’s efforts to seek justice. Three before the Supreme Court. The State Government of years after the frenzy, virtually none of those Gujarat called the full report “one-sided” and denied responsible for rape and murder in Gujarat have been allegations in the report that it failed to prevent and brought to justice. investigate properly the crimes against the Muslim community and in cases even participated in the The Gujarat state government led by the Bharatiya violence. These and other comments of the Central Janata Party (BJP, Indian People’s Party) since 1995, Government and the State Government of Gujarat has for years failed to curb hate propaganda against have been reflected elsewhere in full report. Muslims and to maintain a non-discriminatory attitude to the state’s minorities. It assumed a partisan role during the Godhra incident and subsequent Violence against girls and women violence, failed to co-operate with the judiciary to in Gujarat provide legal redress and to ensure the impartiality of The state of Gujarat has a history of “communal public prosecutors. It also resisted public scrutiny, violence”, a term used in India to describe violence failed to fully cooperate with the National Human between religious communities. Unlike patterns Rights Commission (NHRC) and to protect human reported earlier, the violence following the fire on the rights defenders and victims and witnesses seeking train at Godhra on 27 February 2002 was almost redress. It made it hard for victims to obtain relief, exclusively directed by Hindu right wing groups and compensation and rehabilitation. mobs at members of the Muslim minority. According The Central Government of India, which up to May to official sources, 762 persons were killed but human 2004 was also led by the BJP, failed to distance itself rights groups believe that over 2,000 people, mostly from the state government despite its clear failings to Muslims, were killed. protect the human rights of members of the state’s Over the past two decades, a group of organizations Muslim minority. In doing so, it failed to fulfil its collectively called the Sangh Parivar (the collective obligations under Article 50 of the (International Hindu family, which includes the BJP and other Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) ICCPR.1 political and religious organizations) has advocated Amnesty International was not able to directly and spread Hindutva, the political ideology of an investigate the violence. The organization’s request exclusively Hindu state which portrays Muslims and for visas to conduct research in the state in 2002 was other non-Hindus as hostile to Hindu India, not granted within the mutually agreed timeframe. threatening Hindus and eroding their rights. Its The present report is consequently not based on distorted history of India describes Muslim invaders original evidence from girls and women affected by of the past as violators of Hindu women and the violence. It does not document the rape, torture metaphorically, of “Mother India”. The image of and killings perpetrated in the state – on which a large Muslim men as violent and sexually aggressive has number of investigative reports have been issued by been further reinforced by the widespread projection Indian women’s and civil rights groups. This report of Muslims as “terrorists” in the US-led “war on relies on such investigations but also on court terror”. Proponents of Hindutva have consequently documents which are in the public sphere. While not only called for the elimination of Muslims from keeping in mind the wider picture, it focuses on two India but also defined women’s bodies as the cases in which women, who are survivors or battleground on which the struggle to establish a witnesses of abuse. Hindu state was to be carried out. Girls and women were targeted by Hindu mobs in 2002 specifically Amnesty International, in accordance with long because they were seen as the biological and cultural standing practice, provided the Government of India reproducers and embodiments of the Muslim the opportunity to comment on the full report before community, which Hindu right wing activists saw as publication. The Central Government of India stated their duty to defile, violate and destroy. in its response that it “wholeheartedly condemned” the 2002 violence in Gujarat and pointed to an In 16 of Gujarat’s 24 districts, attacks on Muslim ongoing commission of inquiry and pending cases homes, business enterprises and properties resembled each other: mobs apparently using data from official tax lists, electoral rolls and other official records 1 ICCPR, Article 50 states that “the provisions of the present collated well in advance, targeted Muslims shouting Covenant shall extend to all parts of federal states without the same slogans and made use of the same Hindu any limitations or exceptions.” 3 Justice, the victim - Gujarat state fails to protect women from violence (Summary Report) AI Index: ASA 20/002/2005 symbols. Unlike in earlier violence reported in India, to approach the police and file complaints; others women were particular targets of attack. Hundreds of were occupied with searching for missing family girls and women were dragged out from their homes, members or caring for traumatized children and other stripped naked before their own families and family members. Many had lost all their belongings thousands of attackers, who taunted, insulted and and had to search for food and shelter. Fear of threatened them. They were then raped, often gang- leaving makeshift shelters close to other members of raped, beaten with sticks, Hindu tridents and swords, their own community and apprehension of further had their breasts cut off and their wombs slashed assault by Hindu mobs also paralyzed victim open and rods violently pushed into their vaginas.