By: Mariana Baabar
ISLAMABAD: British Foreign Secretary William Hague and UN Special Envoy actress Angelina Jolie in a jointly written article, ‘Ending sexual violence’ have refrained from mentioning rape being used as a weapon of war in held Kashmir for several decades now.
The authors detail “50,000 women and an unknown number of men raped during four years of conflict, but 20 years have passed without justice for the vast majority of those victims.”
Their article comes after more than three quarters of all of the world’s nations have endorsed the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict we put forward last year.“And this week, we will host representatives of over 100 governments (including Pakistan), the heads of eight UN agencies and nearly a thousand experts in London——to launch the first-ever International Protocol on how to document and investigate sexual violence in conflict. “
Over a year in the making and the work of hundreds of experts, it will help investigators preserve information and evidence in the aftermath of an attack, improve the chances of successful prosecutions and protect victims from trauma.
Hague and Jolie also write about these “crimes are happening as you read these words: in Syria, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and other countries”, but there is not a single sentence or mention of crimes of the same nature continuously taking place in Held Kashmir even though European writers as well as the western media have pointed to these rapes of Kashmiri women by security forces time and again.
“Why would anyone expect anything different from these writers?” a senior official told The News when asked about the omission.“What else is new?”, asked another when this was pointed out . The authors turn to victims such as school girls in Nigeria or refugees in Syria but again skip Kashmir.
While point out that “rape has been used as a weapon of war repeatedly in our lifetimes, on every continent and in every major conflict”, the authors stay clear from the sub continent in one of the oldest conflict zones.
The News
