India’s breach of article 370 of its constitution, which gave special status and autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, is indeed a human rights tragedy (Kashmiris mark Eid with fear and fury at Delhi’s security lockdown, 13 August). But if seen through the gender lens, the enormity of the suffering must surely impel the international community to respond. Women are the uncounted unheard victims of 20 years of conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. Thousands of men and boys have been abducted, forcibly disappeared, from their homes, workplaces, fields, the streets, leaving huge numbers of “half-widows”. The lives of these women are even more wretched than those of the widows, who at least can bury their husbands, grieve and find some closure.
The wives of the missing, striving to raise their children, experience severe and complex economic, legal, social and psychological problems. Unable to inherit, ineligible for pensions, their poverty drives many into depression, and suicide. These abductions have continued for over two decades to the present day, but these women, ceaselessly searching for their husbands, face intimidation and threats from the Indian authorities when they attempt to obtain information.
Ironically, India is one of the governments signed up to the ICPPED (international convention for the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance). The UK, with its close ties to India, should be using all of its options – diplomatic and in context of our aid policies – to put pressure on Narendra Modi to rescind this revocation and cease oppressing the Kashmiri people.
Margaret Owen
Director, Widows for Peace through Democracy
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