In Remote Corners of India, Immunity for Soldiers Who Kill and Rape Civilians

[mota bhai 2,675]

By GARDINER HARRIS

JULY 19, 2014

MAYAI LEIKAI, India — A dozen soldiers burst through the front and back doors of a small home here in the middle of a July night, dragged Thangjam Manorama into a room and began to torture her. Her older brother tried to stop them and was badly beaten. Her mother rose to defend her and was knocked unconscious.

After about an hour, Ms. Thangjam was taken out of the house. The next morning, the family found her bullet-ridden body by the side of the road three miles away. Soldiers later claimed that Ms. Thangjam was an insurgent who was shot while she was trying to escape. A medical examiner determined that she had been shot from close range while lying down, that stains on her dress were semen but that multiple gunshots to her ####### made any determination of rape impossible. There was little doubt who was responsible: the soldiers made little effort to hide their faces.

Ms. Thangjam’s death led to months of local protests, including one in which a dozen women stripped naked in front of the local military headquarters carrying a red-lettered banner, “Indian Army Rape Us.” The circumstances of her death were so outrageous that even the prime minister at the time, Manmohan Singh, promised redress.

But a decade later, no one has been arrested or charged with a crime. Activists, lawyers and ordinary people here say they know exactly why: a colonial-era law in effect in India’s periphery that gives blanket immunity from prosecution in civilian courts to Indian soldiers for all crimes, including rape.

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In Kashmir, there are thousands of unmarked graves in secret cemeteries created by the army and the police to hide their crimes. Even when civilian officials confirm that innocents were slaughtered, nothing is done.

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An investigation last year by a panel appointed by India’s Supreme Court into six representative cases from Manipur State found official explanations of killings so entirely at odds with common sense and available evidence that it concluded that the victims, including a 12-year-old boy killed in view of his parents, had all been murdered. Still, no one has been arrested. One of the suspect officers was given India’s highest peacetime honor for bravery.

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Defense Minister Arun Jaitley said on June 15 that the immunity law would remain in place until peace was secure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/world/asia/in-remote-corners-of-india-immunity-for-soldiers-who-kill-and-rape-civilians.html