Invitation - Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression

WOMEN AGAINST SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND STATE REPRESSION

Overview: In October, 2009, about 25 organisations from across India met in Bhopal to address the increasingly rampant use of sexual violence as a method of State repression. While women’s organisations in states under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) have long protested the gory list of rapes, murders and disappearances of women in their regions, the State, rather than heed the call of justice and contain its security forces and police, is continuing its violence across even more regions of India. Even as the women of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Jammu & Kashmir continue to reel under the ongoing brutalities committed by both the armed forces and the insurgents, the deployment of the paramilitary, the army regiments and the state police commando units in substantial parts of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal makes a mockery of the State’s Constitutional requirement to protect its own citizens. Under the broad banner of "Women against Sexual violence and State repression” we have come together to strongly and unitedly demand that the State take immediate and active steps to stop the sexual violence against women across the country- through conflict resolution and through containing its armed forces .

As a part of our campaign’s strategy of women physically gathering and publicly protesting in areas that are under active armed deployment by the State, we, together with women’s organisations in Chhattisgarh, held a Convention in Raipur on 12-13 December, 2009. Now, in deeper solidarity and with more voice, intent and power, this national Campaign is concretely moving forward to show our opposition to the ongoing violence against our sisters in the Northeast of India. If justice is to be served, we need a strong and powerful coalescence of women across India to prevent more rapes and sexual torture of women by the armed forces and police, to punish those guilty and to ensure that the State does not turn a blind eye to its own agencies’ gross violation of women’s right to a life without violence.

INVITATION!  TO OUR NEXT MEETING
You are invited to participate in our next meeting on 5-6 November, 2010 in Imphal, Manipur. This meeting is jointly hosted by various women’s rights organisations of the North-East, who have been
protesting against the unabated and unresolved violence dominant in the seven North-eastern Indian states for nearly 40 years. Civilian freedom has been oppressively curtailed in these states and security forces have been given special powers and significant immunity in all their violations. Despite the 2005 report of the Ministry of Home Affairs explicitly and unequivocally calling for both the repeal of the AFSPA (1958) and significant amendments to the UAPA (1967, amended 2004), innumerable women continue to be subject to sexual violence, rape, abduction and killing; many youth and children don’t know a life away from violence. It is time society across India wakes up to the injustices meted to these societies through sheer civilian indifference, State callousness, Union ineffectiveness and army brutality. Your physical presence here is a statement of solidarity with our sisters in the North-east in asking for judicial justice, executive fair play and legislative accountability in the dealings of the State in all areas of the Indian Union. On 6th November we will also join various other organisations in solidarity with Irom Sharmila on the 10th anniversary of her hunger-
fast for the repeal of the AFSPA.

Contributions: You can also support us by sending a money order or cheque to this Campaign; receipts will be provided. This is a non- funded grassroots effort by women from across India to stem the violence being perpetrated upon our bodies and on our societies both by the State’s forces and by the inability of our government to resolve conflict in a meaningful, sustainable and effective manner. Please contact Abu (neikesanuo@gmail.com), Kalpana (saheliwomen@gmail.com), Pinki (pinki.verma67@gmail.com) or your local representative to join us, endorse this call and/or to contribute monies.

Women against Sexual violence and State repression (WSS) WSS is a network of women's rights, dalit rights, human rights and civil liberties organisations across India.