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I started work in Kashmir in April 00 under the VMAP project (Oxfam India Trust) and have been visiting there since. During this period I traveled to different districts including Srinagar. I have visited hospitals, orphanages, shrines, newspaper offices and educational institutions to meet doctors, patients, children, faith healers, journalists, students and teachers. I also visited and met scores of families affected by violence including those of the disappeared persons comprising mainly half widows and half orphans.
Each of my visits in the last two years confirmed my initial doubt that there is a virtual breakdown of governance everywhere with clear signs of a near structural collapse of social services particularly in the rural areas. Health, education and employment have been a major casualty.
With regard to enforced disappearance, due to the whereabouts of these men not being known and their bodies not found, the women (half widows) and children thus affected are not entitled to any government relief or rehabilitation that widows and orphans are entitled to. There are approximately 5000 ‘missing persons' affecting nearly 100,000 family members.
Although my work was not gender specific, it soon became apparent that while there was a pervasive sense of insecurity among people, women and children were more vulnerable. It was clear that the mental health of people was deeply enmeshed with the abuse of their privacy, their access to basic provisions and their rights to education, health and employment, which were severely curtailed as a result of the ongoing conflict/violence.
During the initial phase of my fieldwork I met members of different local NGOs and identified some working on the ground with an aim to mitigate the effects of violence. The three NGOs that I selected to work with are Help Foundation (HF), Hussaini Relief Committee (HRC) and the Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons (APDP), working with orphans and child related issues, community health and families of the ‘missing' persons, respectively. In addition, a research project was initiated with a small group of students from the Kashmir University to document the lived experience of violence and its impact on the educated, unemployed youth. The research findings are based on extensive field visits by the group of students to different colleges in all the districts where discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with the fellow students.
A brief description/history of these NGOs is given below along with their aims/objectives and the collaborative activities of the sub-project.
I. Help Foundation was set up in 1998 by a group of professional/non-professional individuals in Srinagar (journalists, social workers/activists, doctors and government employees). Its work is mainly organized around the needs of violence-affected children, particularly orphans. It runs an orphanage that has thirty children even though the capacity in the orphanage is for fifty but due to lack of adequate resources, the number of children is kept low. The trustees of the Foundation include doctors who visit the orphanage regularly.
The Foundation also runs two schools in two villages of Srinagar and Ganderbal where it is also setting up a hostel for girls. The Foundation provides relief and rehabilitation to destitute women and children and to survivors of rape although on a limited scale. It also runs one sozni center where young girls of 14-16 years are given embroidery training, a knitting center where training is provided to destitute women along with a nominal stipend.
Sub-project support and collaboration:
A survey of number of orphans along with the social and economic status of their families in three selected districts of Srinagar, Kupwara and Badgam.
This project was undertaken in September 00. For every area/block taken up for the survey, the Foundation engaged local educated, unemployed youth to work as surveyors. They visited the affected families in their respective areas and collected the relevant information as per the prescribed proforma. The survey covered 190 families in Srinagar, 996 families in Kupwara and 1089 families in Badgam (total: 2275 families). The survey was restricted to six most affected areas in Srinagar, Lolab and Handwara in Kupwara and Khag and Chadoora block of district Badgam. The survey has been completed and though not representative of the state, the information provides a glimpse of the situation of the families affected by violence and is valuable in the absence of similar information from any government agency.
Play therapy, trauma counseling workshops and provision of books in orphanages:
After the initial play therapy workshop in the summer of 01, it has been introduced as a regular activity in the orphanage run by the Foundation along with its four other institutions where orphans reside. This has been done in view of the fact that children have shown keen interest in this activity and the results, according to the Foundation, have been positive and encouraging.
Half a dozen trauma counseling training workshops have been conducted for the staff of the Foundation including teachers at the orphanages to a) enable them to identify symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder and other related behavioral disorders among children and b) to interact with the children more effectively. As an on-going activity, two trained counselors visit the orphanages twice a week to meet the children in need of counseling. The Foundation has provided textbooks and stationary articles to all the orphans in its four institutions including those at the Shehjar orphanage in Srinagar.
One week professional counseling workshop for Trustees of the Foundation: Two-day counseling workshops were organized for the Trustees and office bearers of the Foundation on three different occasions in year 01. All of them evinced keen interest in these workshops and have requested that this should be done on a regular basis at least once every month.
Publicity of government schemes for orphans and widows:
This activity has not met with the desired result as, inspite of its repeated efforts with the officials of the J&K government, the information has not been provided to the Foundation. Among those approached were the Principal Secretary, the Additional Secretary and the Deputy Director of the Social Welfare Department, which is the nodal agency for such schemes. Once the information is available it would be notified through advertisements in local newspapers.
Setting up skill training centers for ‘destitute' women: A knitting center has already been established in a rented accommodation at Lalhar in south Kashmir district of Pulwama. About a dozen women, including school dropouts have been admitted in the center where five trainers, all of them orphans, have been engaged to provide training. The Foundation provided the raw material to the center. Women who have benefited from this are mainly rape survivors. On their suggestion, the Foundation decided to develop the facility as a production center by purchasing the woolens from here for the children of the institutions run by it. The trainees at the knitting center are paid rupees fifty per sweater. The Foundation is presently negotiating with the Handloom Department for creating a market for the woolens to enable the women to earn a better income.
Survey of child labor in Srinagar: The aim of the survey was to visit sites where there is concentration of child labor to prepare a report based on interviews with children to document their concerns in view of the continuing violence and its social, economic and psychological impact on them. The survey, in its first phase covered two areas of Srinagar, Telbal and Habak where a total of 1272 children were identified and interviewed. It was found that a large number of children had to leave school primarily due to poverty and the family's impoverished state. A majority of children were engaged in shawl making, carpet weaving and embroidery work. The second phase of the survey covered the Dal Lake area where 500 (part of the total) children were identified and interviewed. Apart from the above-mentioned activities, children here also worked as boatmen and farm laborers. According to the work report of the Foundation, “Over the period, the Foundation has made significant headway in carrying out the tasks (survey) in face of heavy odds. The year (November 01) witnessed an escalation of violence…the unabated violence has taken a heavy toll in terms of those killed, wounded and traumatized. Escalation of violence has heightened tensions across the Valley and has increased the overall threat perception. This introduced some inhibiting factors in the activities of the Foundation. In a recent incident its workers had to temporarily suspend their work as a raid by the Security Forces followed their visit to the field. It was with the residents' reassurance that surveyors were able to resume their work”.II. Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons (APDP) was founded in 1994 when a large number of relatives of the missing persons began to visit the local High Court to file fresh petitions relating to the whereabouts of the missing persons or to follow the habeas corpus petitions. Foremost among them was Parveena Ahangar, a mother whose sixteen-year-old son was forcibly arrested by high-ranking officials of the Indian army (National Security Guard) in 1990. She went door-to-door documenting the incidence of enforced disappearances and visited the High Court with more than a hundred cases. It was here that she met a lawyer and human rights activist Parvez Imroz with whose help APDP was established. It helped to transform the individual efforts for justice into a collective struggle with an aim to
Create awareness among people regarding the human right violations in the State.
Ascertain the whereabouts of the missing persons.
Demand that the government constitute an independent commission under the Commission of Inquiries Act to investigate the cases of enforced disappearances.
Urge the government to appoint a Special judge in the high court for exclusive hearing of the petitions.
Rehabilitation of the aggrieved relatives who are mainly half widows and half orphans.
Demand the abolition of draconian laws such as The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).
Build a Memorial to honor the disappeared and their families.The Association has more than four hundred relatives of the missing as its members.
It is also a founder member of the Asian Federation of the Association of the Disappeared. (Needless to say, the government has so far neglected the demands of the APDP but not its activities as those documenting information or seeking justice is routinely harassed and always under a scanner).Support and activities of the sub-project:
Survey of missing persons in the three most affected districts of Srinagar, Kupwara and Baramulla. From a list of more than five hundred verified cases of ‘enforced disappearances', a district-wise break-up has been prepared. All fresh cases are being added to the lists according to the districts from where they are reported.
To prepare family profiles of the missing persons, a 20% sample was taken from the lists. This is to highlight the social and economic changes that the family, particularly women and children, has undergone as a result of the disappearance: education, health, means of livelihood etc. This activity has generated seventy family profiles from Srinagar, Kupwara and Baramulla districts. Apart from the details of the missing person, the profiles are based on interviews with a family member of the missing such as the half-widow, father mother or any other member of the family.
In view of the ignorance regarding their legal rights, a simple manual of legal rights of victims of disappearance has been prepared which has also been translated in Urdu and published. This is being widely circulated in all the districts and used as an educational tool among the families of the disappeared.
Inter-district meetings are being held regularly (once a month) with families visiting each other to generate emotional support, express and extend solidarity, exchange information, share their grief and use the manual as a means to strengthen their legal status. This is to help families to widen their network and strive collectively for justice.
From a list of over one hundred and eighty cases of missing persons that have been registered in the law courts, details of the history of the cases are being prepared to help in follow-up work. Most of the cases are pending in the courts without a single conviction having taken place due mainly to the impunity clause of the AFSPA.
Follow-up of cases of half-widows being forced into remarriage or abandoned by their in-laws as well as the legal contest regarding the custody of children.
In Delhi, a meeting was held with the chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission in December 01. We have been asked to give a presentation to the members of the Commission regarding the problem of enforced disappearances along with a few substantive cases and documents. However, nothing came out of it.
Three local men from the three districts conducted the survey, with one of them also preparing the family profiles. According to the surveyors, due to the high security, particularly in the border districts, the survey had to be done in a clandestine manner, as the information is sensitive. For instance in Uri, Baramulla district where people live close to the LOC (Line of Control) even their relatives are not allowed by the Security Forces to visit them, making it all the more difficult for the surveyors to have an easy access to the families. In such areas the civil administration is ineffective and non-functional, as the army has replaced it with its control.
III. Hussaini Relief Committee (HRC) was initially set up as a blood bank in 1977 by a group of young professionals with an aim to provide blood in cases of emergencies, particularly in remote villages that do not have access to hospitals or doctors on duty. The founders began by donating part of their income to sustain the work, a practice that many of them continue to follow till date. Apart from membership subscriptions, donations are also raised from well-wishers.
Since 1989 when insurgency began, their work has spread in different districts of the State. This was done to help the injured (victims of cross firing, shooting and mine blasts) and provide basic health services to those in need of such care as many primary health centers have either closed down or in a state of neglect. Over the years HRC has organized health camps in many such villages and towns where doctors are available for consultation and medicines are provided free of cost.
HRC has seven thousand volunteers working at the community level in all the districts of Kashmir, particularly in the worst affected ones. The Committee volunteers are the first to arrive at any site of violence, taking care of the wounded and even having to remove dead bodies where the Army refuses to intervene for fear of militant attacks.
Volunteers of HRC are well known in the Valley as they also run a blood bank and have access to all the hospitals where they donate blood regularly.
In terms of the sub-project's support and collaboration, it was decided (in consultation with members of HRC) that health camps would be organized in different districts where provision of basic health care is a critical need.
- From September 00 to August 01, thirteen health camps have been organized in remote areas where the beneficiaries were mainly women and children.
- Two one-day health camps were also organized at the government run orphanages in Srinagar where medical facilities are dismal.
- The Committee members also compiled basic health data covering the three districts of Srinagar, Kupwara and Baramulla.
- With its potential and the long-time experience in making effective, need based and practical interventions at the community level, HRC's work is well recognized in the Valley.
IV. Samman Bal ( student organization) was formed in early 01 at the initiative of a small group of students some of who were also working with local organizations engaged in issues relating to environment/ecology as well as media. The primary objective of setting up the forum was to engage students in playing a more positive/constructive role not only in the campus but also at the community level through different activities. The group has ten students as active members who hold discussion forums on thematic issues, screen films on socially relevant issues for which they mobilize other students. Samman Bal was later renamed SPACE (Students' Platform for Acquiring and Consolidating Experience). It is a Srinagar based organization with a core committee of eleven members.
Sub-project's support and collaboration:
There is no information or report available, official or non-governmental, on the status of students/unemployed youth in Kashmir particularly in the context of the insurgency, counter insurgency and its impact on their lives. After preliminary discussions with the founding member of the group in November 01, it was agreed that we should work towards such documentation in which a group of students themselves would conduct the research, analyze the data and prepare the draft of the report. This would be followed by a two-day workshop in which the findings of the report will be shared and discussed with a larger participation of students, teachers and representatives of a few selected NGOs. Relevant programs would be designed based on the recommendations that will emerge in the course of the workshop.
In February 02 four students from Kashmir University undertook the research in Srinagar, Kupwara and Baramulla and Anantnag. The group traveled to different colleges in the districts and interacted with 200 students as well as conducting detailed interviews with a 100 of them.
The primary aim of the project was to have a comprehensive report of the impact of violence on students' lives and that the process of documentation would benefit the students, as they will acquire research skills and also be able to interact closely with other students at the district level.
The survey was conducted from March-May 02. The researchers then analyzed the data and prepared a report entitled “The Impact of Violence on the Student Community in Kashmir”, containing both quantitative as well as qualitative data. This was followed by a two-day workshop in Srinagar in which forty students; majority of them girls participated actively. Each student/researcher presented a section of the report followed by discussions, recommendations and suggestions for future work. Based on this, several follow-up activities have been designed where a larger number of students would participate and benefit.
This kind of research where students themselves were engaged to do the work was the first of its kind, leading to a lot of interest and enthusiasm among the student community. The report too is the first such documentation.
Other activities/interventions of the sub-project:
In November 00, four trauma counseling training workshops were conducted in Srinagar. The target groups were community volunteers (many of them from HRC), teachers of orphanages, medical interns/ doctors and women from the families of the missing persons. The last one was a therapy workshop meant more as a process to heal than to train.
The main objective of these workshops was to provide basic skills in trauma counseling and to enable participants to identify symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder for timely treatment and to equip them to use the skills in their day-to-day work with the traumatized people, including women and children. The long-term objective was to create a local support group drawn from among the participants who would be able to eventually take over the task of providing trauma counseling without any outside support.
The duration for each workshop was three days for which two resource persons (a clinical psychologist and a child specialist/counselor) from Delhi was invited who designed and conducted the workshops. One follow up meeting and a workshop were held in March 01 and July 01 respectively to assess the usefulness of the earlier workshops.
The outcome was quite positive as some of the participants reported that they had actually been able to integrate the skills in their daily work, particularly in the case of community volunteers and the teachers of orphanages. However, the core support group that was formed has not been able to meet regularly as planned due to their own busy schedule as well as the prevailing situation in the Valley. On the other hand, their requests for more such workshops could not be taken up as there was an escalation of violence after September 11th 01 as well as a time constraint for the consultant as many other activities were now under way. However, two follow-up workshops on trauma counseling were conducted to assess the feasibility of the previous workshops. It was found that the participants were able to effectively use the skills they had learnt in their work among the victims of violence. A request was made that more such workshops should be held.
A two-day dialogue between women from Kashmir and the Northeast was organized in Delhi in April 01 in collaboration with the Women and Conflict sub-project. A total of 22 participants from Kashmir and the Northeast, with fifty local invitees participated in the dialogue. The participants included women who had been directly or indirectly affected by violence as well as those who were working with victims of violence and those involved in negotiations for peace.
The rationale for this initiative was to bring together women from these two regions, which have a history of political conflict. This was to enable them to share their experiences, learn from it and bring the issues to public attention. Another objective was to help women by strengthening their efforts to make links with each other and form viable networks.
It was for the first time that such a dialogue had taken place and it generated a lot of interest and enthusiasm among the participants. The plan to follow it up with another meeting either in Kashmir or the NE, as suggested by the participants, could not be taken up due to several reasons earlier but will be held early next year (03). The women in Kashmir who participated in the dialogue were keen that we bring women from NE to visit them and share their experience. This would help them form women's groups and peace committees as a first step toward a collective struggle against the continuing violence and it's impact not only on them but also on the society.
Assessment:
Doing ‘research' in Kashmir is different and difficult. Trying to get official information can prove to be an uphill task. There was no census undertaken in J&K for the last twenty years. The provisional figures of the census of 2001 do not reflect the changed social-economic reality that the state has undergone in the last decade. The staggering figures of the number of those killed, maimed, injured, widowed, orphaned and missing that one hears directly from the people and the different NGOs working in the field is always at variance with the official figures. People's willingness to talk was in contrast to the reluctance of officials in the various government departments who would either deny the ground reality or attribute it to the endemic resource crunch that the departments suffered from. To crosscheck information has not always been possible.
There have been delays in the activities as well as in follow-up work mainly because of the uncertain and volatile situation in the Valley which is marked by frequent bandhs, hartals etc.
Given the above context, the sub-project's interventions were designed and meant to be practical, taking into account issues that were locally relevant and the needs of the affected people.
The outcome, though limited has been positive especially as the initial mistrust amongst individuals and NGOs is replaced by mutual confidence and trust. This has also brought people together in their work, which was not the case when the sub-project's work first began.
Post-Script:
Most of the work mentioned above with the different NGOs in Kashmir has been completed and the reports are now being prepared based on the surveys and the extensive fieldwork. As a follow-up to the students' report, a resource center for students (SPACE) has been set up in Srinagar to undertake relevant activities that were identified during the course of their survey and workshop. Apart from seminars, discussions and film screening, the other activities at the center also include interactive meetings with doctors/psychiatrists from the hospital for psychiatric diseases who explain to the students the different dimensions of trauma and its impact and treatment. As a follow-up, one doctor has volunteered to visit the center twice a month to provide counseling to those students who may need it urgently. This is done keeping in mind the fact that young people avoid visiting the hospital due to the social stigma attached to it. Another interesting activity is to bring artisans to the center for an interactive meeting with students where they demonstrate their skill, talk about their social-economic situation as a result of the ongoing conflict.
The resource center has acquired special significance as it provides a much-needed platform to students who are denied the basic right to form a students union or association at their respective colleges or the university.
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