ISLAMABAD - Pakistan yesterday said India was using rape as a weapon in occupied Kashmir to suppress the freedom struggle.

The foreign ministry said India was employing rape, torture, degrading treatment and killings of Kashmiri women as ‘instruments of state-terrorism’ in the occupied territory.

“These state sanctioned heinous crimes have further intensified since India’s illegal and unilateral actions of 5th August 2019,” the foreign ministry said in a statement, basting the Indian barbarianism.

The foreign ministry recalled the horrific incident of mass rape of Kashmiri women in Kunan and Poshpora villages of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir on February 23, 1991. “The fateful day continues to remain a scar on collective memory of the international community,” the statement added.

The foreign ministry said that lack of accountability of perpetrators and absence of justice for victims continued to define India’s deliberate disregard for rule of law and human rights.

The incidents of systematic violence and mass rapes in IIOJK have been documented by a number of independent commissions, human rights organzations, global media and civil society organizations, including the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, it stressed.

The foreign ministry emphasized that the day should serve as a solemn reminder to the internatioal community of the need to address the systematic violence against women in IIOJK.

The Kunan Poshspora incident was a mass-rape that occurred on February 23, 1991 when units of the occupant Indian security forces launched a so-called search operation in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora, located in the remote Kupwara District.

Villagers said many women were raped by occupant soldiers that night. The First Information Report filed in the police station after a visit by the local magistrate reported the number of women rape as 23. However, Human Rights Watch asserts that this number could be between 23 and 100. 

While India try to divert the world attention from the incident, the international human rights organizations expressed serious doubts about the integrity of these investigations and the manner in which they were conducted.

The Human Rights Watch said the Indian government had launched a “campaign to acquit the army of charges of human rights violations and discredit those who brought the charges.”