 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Shaila Rashid, ex-Vice President of JNUSU and political activists. And we will be discussing with her the issue of the Kathua rape incident, the politicization of it, the communalization of it, as well as what her experience has been in talking about the issue and in responding to the issue. So welcome Shaila. Thank you. So before we get into the Kathua incident, let us talk about online trolling and online abuse, which you face a lot. When you talk about Kathua, you get a lot of these responses. So what can you respond to this? And your family members, your loved ones, how do they deal with it? Look, first of all, online trolling and online abuse. We should differentiate two things. Trolling can be done in a way that you are asking me a question repeatedly or you are giving rhetorical responses that why this has not happened, why this has not happened. This is fine, we have no problem with it. But abuse, where straight away the abuse of mother and sister, the comment on your body, the comment on your sexuality, when these kinds of comments start coming, they go into an unacceptable category. For example, on Twitter, there are many online trolls who say that they have put a notification alert. So when I tweet, the 10 seconds, 17 seconds, 18 seconds start getting responses. The responses are always like this, you are like this, you are like this. So these kinds of hateful comments always come on gender lines, on religious lines. Now as a political activist, you try your best to engage with people and answer them. But because of this, the most difficult, the most important thing that has happened is that you cannot respond, even the comments in your favor or the genuine response, the genuine criticism, you cannot respond to them because the abuse is so much that they flood your mentions. So that is a problem because that also gives the impression as if everyone is against you, which is not the case. And there is one important thing, when we go outside, say when we go for functions, when we go for rallies, people love and support us a lot. But online it gives an impression as if there is no one with us and everyone is against us. So this is how a perception is created. The online trolling you face, the online abuse you face, would be different from say the trolling or abuse someone else faces like Kanhaiya Kumar or some other prominent activist speaker. How is your experience different from them? See, first of all, we are both trolled as leftists and as JNU people, right? So there's always this JNU may condom mila, JNU may cigarette mila. So that's like, that's baseline, okay? That's for both of us. Just to give you an example. But I will be additionally targeted for my gender, for my religion, for my Kashmiri identity. So that adds like layers of abuse. And for a woman, you can always, you know, sort of try to shame her by referring to her sexuality. So that is something that happens very, very often that you know, oh, you slept with so and so, oh, you slept with so and so. So that's like another layer of abuse that you get. There's one important thing that I want to talk about. If you are supporting me, you know, if you are saying that, oh, well, you know, great job done, great, go on, etc., you will be attacked. People will say to you, hey, how are you a Hindu? How can you support this? You should be ashamed. How do you come out? How do you support such people? So your support systems are also attacked. And particularly focusing on Kathua, how do you get messages? What is your criticism of your statements? Like I always say this, when there was a dispute, we had no idea at all who the girl is, from where she lives, what language she speaks, from which region, from which religion. We didn't mean to do this, we protested. In the case of Kathua as well, the JNU Student Union is being protested from January on this issue. When did this issue take place? The reason for this was when the Hindu-Ekta-Manch started rallying in February. You are supporting the rapists with Tiranga. Chaudhary Lal Singh, who is now the full cabinet minister, says that if a girl dies, what will happen? When your cabinet minister, your state cabinet minister says this, there is an activist, Talib Hussain, a very good activist. He hasn't worn a slippers for three months until he gets justice. The Hindu-Ekta-Manch has given a 6 lakh reward on his head. So, the political party starts from there. But when we protest against the political party, against the communalization, when we raise our voices against it, we are accused of everything. You will be accused of your religion. You will be accused of your gender. You will also be accused of the fact that the Kashmiris should be raped. The Muslims should be raped. If you are talking about the politics and the communalization, this incident was in the communal angle from the beginning. In fact, it was meant to incite communal hatred. It was meant to instill fear into a community. You have also been accused of politicizing the issue. Then what do you say about that? On the contrary, we are trying to clean up the mess created by the ruling party. I mean, the ruling party forms a Hindu-Ekta-Manch. The ruling party is, and I am talking about BJP. BJP's cabinet ministers attend their rallies. They give commonly insightful speeches in the rallies. That's not me. I didn't do that. We could have also, from the very start, we could have formed a Muslim-Ekta-Manch. As some of the activists from Katwa have said, we could have very easily formed a Muslim-Ekta-Manch for this one communal line, saying that a daughter of our community has been raped by people of other communities. We could have very easily made it a Muslim-Ekta-Manch issue. We didn't. We are the ones who are saying that don't communalize this issue. Let everyone be united. We are the ones issuing appeals for peace and unity among people of JNK. We are the ones asking everyone to be united on this issue. So the accusation is completely wrong. The main accusation, I think, also was that you started talking about this late when the whole Hewitt cry in the media broke out. Only then you also picked up the issue. That is one of the accusations which has been the strongest one. So in response to that... I don't mean to do one-upmanship on this. See, first of all, the issue was obviously first raised by the local activists. It was raised by the locals. I mean, you know, honestly, I have grown up in JNK, okay? And honestly, when the issue first came to light, I mean, there were protests by JNU Student Union, et cetera. I didn't expect justice in this case. And it's like people will think that I'm, you know, sort of supporting the administration or something, but I think it needs to be said that the crime branch has done a fantastic job in this issue. And to be honest, I never really expected that there will be any arrests, you know? And the fact that there are arrests, the fact that a special police officer, actually four special police officers, if I'm not mistaken, they've been arrested in this case, it's a miracle. And that I attribute to the people of Kathwa, the local people of Kathwa, it's amazing that they made this issue so well that if there was no arrest in it, there wouldn't be any arrest in it. Like the disappearance of Najeeb, I still don't know where he went. But as far as highlighting Kishu, I'm highlighting all those forums. I mean, I won't say that I'm taking the most credit or I'm taking the most credit. All the people are collectively highlighting it. And I think, finally, the cause is everyone's. When the cause is everyone's, let's go to the petition we started today. We were 15 women from Jammu and Kashmir who started the petition. Today it has 20 lakh signatures. So this is the cause of all 20 lakh people. We're not alone. And of course, talking about the late response, our Prime Minister still hasn't issued a proper statement. The President has issued some statement. But these statements need to also be viewed in context of the larger situation in Kashmir and the incidents of sexual violence in Kashmir, which have been, which this is a major problem there, right? And in Kashmir, rape takes a different context as well. It takes a different color because it's a disputed area. It's a year of conflict. So when all of these cases are still pending, the largest example would be Kunan-Poshpura. When all of these cases are pending, then how do we see this government response? Can we expect anything now? You know, I will actually take this elsewhere. The fact that rape and sexual violence has been normalized by giving impunity to armed forces in Jammu and Kashmir for the longest time, that impunity is now haunting the entire country. What I mean by saying this is that you normalize rape and violence in one region. It will happen everywhere. You see today, let's talk about violence first. I'll come to rape. Let's talk about violence, state violence. You know, in Jammu and Kashmir, the first response of the government is always the gun. They're very trigger-happy. The armed forces are very trigger-happy. And the first response is to kill people. Now, it has been normalized in Kashmir for a very long time, for decades. Now, that same thing you see happening in Mansour and Sikar. When farmers are protesting, they are shot at. When SSC aspirants are protesting, they are pro-government, they are pro-Modi. They are being shot at with fire, these tear gas shells, right? So this normalization of violence, when it becomes normalized in one part of the country, it won't remain confined to that part of the country. It will be everywhere. Now, for the longest time, people in Jammu and Kashmir have been raising this issue that and during the Nirbhaya movement, this was one of the very prominent demands, if you remember, that even under AFSPA, you don't have to give impunity for rape, you know? Because rape cannot be in the line of duty. Now, AFSPA says that for acts committed in the line of duty, sexual violence cannot be in the line of duty. So this AFSPA Armed Forces Special Powers Act, it's a racist law which gives like absolute powers to kill and rape and do whatever to people in Kashmir and the Northeast. So it's basically a racist law. Now, what happens is this question of impunity, how does impunity work? So for example, this impunity has been normalized in Jammu and Kashmir using AFSPA. But that I feel, it's just my theory, that I feel is now spreading to other parts of the country. You see the Kathwa incident. In a sense, it is about impunity because these people who are rape accused, they have cabinet ministers rallying for them, right? Tomorrow I won't be surprised if they walk free because today, if you see, Asim Anand walks free. Why? Because he has government support and I was asked to go soft on them. This Maya Kudnani, she walks free. Tomorrow it will be Kathwa rapists. They will walk free. Judge Loya case, we have seen how there's like absolutely no intention to even investigate the case. So this is what I mean by political impunity. Similarly, Pehlu Khan's killers. Today they are free. That's because there's a pattern. Now coming to the pattern, what is the pattern? When the Dadri Lynching happened, Sangeet Som, a BJP leader, some people were arrested in the Dadri Lynching case and he kept asking that they should be released. Similarly, in the Kathwa case, when the arrests were made, Chaudhary Lal Singh kept saying that these people, our boys should be released or our boys should not be framed. That's what Hindu Ekta Manj kept saying. Similarly, when Dadri Lynching accused Ravi Susodia died in custody, Union Minister for Culture Mahesh Sharma went and gave him a tricolor funeral. Similarly, here, Hindu Ekta Manj carried tricolor. So it's the same pattern. It's the same language. Don't frame our boys. Don't frame Hindus. There's a lot going on in Hindus. Hindus are being framed in a wrong way. This is the same language. There's a lot of similarities. You must look into these cases. So when impunity will be normalized when you've normalized this in Jammu and Kashmir, that security forces may go out of the line of duty and go for sexual violence, there won't be any prosecution, when you've normalized this, it will be normalized throughout the country. So sometimes we feel that the question of the country is one and Kashmir is different, but actually it's really tied together. The direct implication of what happens in Kashmir is in other places, because if you normalize violence in Kashmir, it will happen all over the country. When you give the government a license to do violence, to do violence, the same government will also do violence in other places. Another issue in the Kathua case is the whole issue of fake news and the issue of propaganda. One thing is the state support, the BJP ministers coming out to rally, the other is the fake news and the propaganda being spread by the public as well. How are these two linked and what do you think about this? Is the public talking about it also somehow linked to the politics of the issue now? See, this is something that has been happening consistently in every case. What happens is that the public perception around a case is formed in the first 36 hours or so. Whether a case of rape or disappearance or murder, whatever it is, whether that case gets public sympathy or not, it is decided in the first 36 hours. And the RSS, BJP, they have a huge IT cell, they have a huge fake news machinery, which makes sure that they just propagate any fake news. Now, if you are able to introduce even an aorta of doubt, then people are wary. So, for example, in the Kathua case, there are so many things that are being said. So, for example, one of the things being said is that the girl was not raped at all. You have BJP spokesperson going on TV and saying that the girl was not raped. She was only murdered. And that is one news. And I am saying that whether or not this fake news gets proven in the end or not, that's not a quake. The real intention of having this fake news, and this is something that progressive people doing progressive politics need to understand, that the real intention of peddling such fake news is to distort public perception so that public doesn't come out in support of people. So, similarly, you will see even in lynching cases, there are some narrative that is spun by these IT cell people that are verified accounts on Twitter. And they spread this kind of hate, this kind of fake news in every case to strip in order to strip an issue of public sympathy. You just cast aspersions on something that's completely transparent. It's completely transparent. You know, it's out there, it's open. But you just say something. And public will start doubting, oh, okay, this is also an angle. And then they are very of supporting, they are very of supporting such a cause. Now this we see in every case. And I think that we need to be very quick in responding to these fake news. Often we just dismiss them, oh, it's just like some trolls saying this. But what happens is if there is a prominent account, say for example, my Twitter account or say Rana Ayub's Twitter account, for example, we are talking about an issue. And below that, there are like 100 people writing one fake news consistently. So people who see it, they might think that, okay, our narrative is not the only narrative. There are other 100 people saying that. So the thing is that if you repeat a lie 100 times, it becomes a truth. Thank you, Shaila, for talking to us today. And thank you for watching NewsClick.