Asifa’s Just Killers!

In 2012 when Jyoti Singh had been raped brutally in a moving bus in Delhi, the massive protest that went for several days could awake the then government which then constituted the Justice Verma Committee and made amendments in the criminal laws relating to rape. However, in January 2018, the socio-political situation is completely altered. Ironically, a Hindutva government is ruling the secular India, so, when an 8-year-old Asifa Bano is grotesquely raped and murdered in Kathua, the dynamics of the situation have completely altered. People on social media this time fiercely debated if this minor deserved to be raped because she belongs to a Muslim nomadic community while the corporate-owned media spilled venom while propounding false theories. Attempts have been made to subvert the process of trial by the group of fanatics who shielded the murderers and justified the rape as a nationalist act while swaying the national flag. They demanded acquittal of the accused persons. Supreme Court intervened to direct in-camera proceedings of the trial and transfer the matter to a different location. Otherwise, the silence of the chauvinist authoritarian state screamed loudly to give up only when pressurized by the outrage. The trial is still on yet this case depicts the rise in larger culture of hate, communal polarization and violence in which a child is brutally targeted. This essay examines these socio-cultural changes that have been taking place where the rights of those at margins are further being pushed because of the apathetic biased attitude of the totalitarian fascist regime which while imposing the ideology of hate is giving rise to the culture of impunity while dismantling the legal system. It ruminates on the socio-legal context relating to violence where the body of a minor is brutally targeted to divide the otherwise layered hierarchical society into `Us versus Them’ while paving the way for the majoritarian hegemony and `othering’ non-Hindus. This is having adverse impact on the situation of women. The impact of miniscule transformations made in law immediately post-Nirbhaya incident got subverted by the rise of patriarchal orthodox elements which are forcefully trying to impose the repulsive communal agenda. The need is therefore to reimagine the gender just society while focusing on the current socio-political context. Key Words: Rape, Violence, Kathua, Nationalism, Fascism, Patriarchy, Genocide, communal rape, hate, culture of violence, post-Nirbhaya, Otherisation.

Journal of Genocide Research, 12: 1, 1 — 18

Conflict, Security, and Development issue 13.1, King’s College London, 2013

This paper, which is based upon the author’s experiences in Aceh from 2006 to 2010, illustrates the dangers inherent in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) policies that allow for the transfer of reintegration assets through ex-insurgent command structures. The manipulation of such transfers in Aceh, Indonesia, led to the creation of a new insurgent group, the Pasukan Peudeung, from the ‘splintering’ corpus of the Free Aceh Movement. The author argues that Aceh’s DDR process, while widely heralded as a success, was inherently flawed in its execution and contained within it numerous discrete, and violent, failures; the emergence of the Pasukan Peudeung was emblematic of this. GAM’s conflict-era economic activities, encompassing illegal forms of extraction and other rent-seeking behaviours, did not end with the conflict: they simply evolved, as did Pasukan Peudeung. Further, GAM was and remains in its current iterations a criminal network; its members constantly reinterpret their ideologies to suit their actions and interests, usually in reaction to crimes committed by members.

Fascist Warfare, 1922-1945: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation, 2019

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Violent Conflict in Indonesia: Analysis, Representation and Resolution, Charles E. Coppel (ed.), 2006

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the mass violence in Indonesia in recentyears is its inscrutability. If the violence could be explained, the solution toprevent it from occurring again would appear more or less obvious. Under theSuharto regime, it was fairly easy to understand most cases of large-scaleviolence as state violence. Even the ‘mysterious killings’ of neighbourhoodhoodlums in 1983–1984 were not so mysterious, as it was an open secret thatthe military was organizing the executions. Indeed, it was too easy to explainmass violence. A dictator and an omnipresent military, with its myriadterritorial commands and freedom to conduct covert operations, could beblamed for just about every case of mass violence, from the mass killings in1965–1966 onward. However, once the Suharto regime, the major cause ofpolitical violence in the past, disappeared from the scene, the violence did notabate. Having only this paradigm of state violence, many analysts ofIndonesian politics have been caught flat-footed in trying to understand recentcases of mass violence that have emerged from complex social conditions. Analysts have either tried to fit these cases into the paradigm of state violence(trying to determine who among the army officers and Suharto’s cronies wasthe hidden mastermind, or dalang, and what his political motives were) orhave reverted to the Suharto regime’s own perspective: that the Indonesianpeople are primitive and prone to conflicts over primordial identities – religion,race and ethnicity (Siahaan 1998; Mangunkusumo 1999).

2024

The Kwa-Zulu Natal province is at the centre of attention regarding the prevalence of political assassinations. The province is termed as a killing field, where political assassinations are used as a method of political contestation. The assassination of politically active individuals in KZN is not a new phenomenon. Anti-Apartheid activists, local civilians, political party members, followers, and public office occupants have been victims of this violent event in remote times. Political assassinations have been an issue of concern in KZN for over four decades. Political assassinations in KZN are intertwined with other forms of provincial concerns, such as the assassination of local chiefs and violence in the taxi industry. This research project investigated the extent in which an assassination can be considered to be political and may be a form of political violence. The study also investigated the causes and consequences of political assassinations in the KZN province. The study searched for the reasons behind political assassinations in KZN in order to understand why such killings are mostly prevalent in this province. The research views political assassinations as a type of political violence. Given the fact that the KZN province is prone to such violence, the study then investigated how such assassinations affect government functioning and the social wellbeing in KZN. The study gathered qualitative data in an effort to address the research question on the reasons for and effects of such assassinations. The research was carried out as a desktop study, using existing publications to collect and analyse data. The study was informed by realism and the conflict theory, to understand the foundation on the regular occurrence of political assassinations in the province. The two theories explain the society and how it becomes violent, and how such violence shapes and affects society.

In: Islam, Politics and Change: The Indonesian Experience, ed. Kees van Dijk and Nico Kaptein, pp. 269-94. Leiden: Leiden University Press , 2015