The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 by Muskan Mumtaz
Muskan Mumtaz is a junior at the University of Virginia. Some say Srinagar is two thousand years old, and if you walk through the streets today, you’d agree that it looks like it’s from another time period. Medieval architecture, royal gardens and lakes all nestled between the Himalayan Mountains paint a picture of a grand, old city with heavy Buddhist and Perso-Islamic influences. Earlier this September, however, the city went underwater. The last stages of the monsoon rains raised flood levels to 25 feet [1] in some parts of the city and forced 200,000 people to evacuate their homes. [2] In total, 2.2 million people have been affected. [3] In my short, romanticized description of Srinagar, I left out an important part of the story. After the British partitioned India and Pakistan in 1947, Indian-occupied Kashmir became a disputed territory. Srinagar, the flooded city, is the capital of Indian-occupied Kashmir. Since 1947, India and Pakistan have fought two wars and respectively spent millions on developing their nuclear programs in efforts to out-arm one another. More recently, in the 1990s, Pakistan funded Pakistani and native Kashmiri militants to fight for independence from Indian occupation. The Indian army retaliated by killing, raping, and torturing hundreds of thousands of innocent Kashmiris in the process. [4] Even today, Kashmir remains the most densely occupied region in the world, with one Indian soldier for every ten Kashmiris. [5]
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By Muskan Mumtaz
Muskan Mumtaz is a sophomore at University of Virginia. As Muslim societies began demanding social and political changes in the wake of the Arab Spring, the issue of “rape-marriage” laws in the Middle East reopened for debate. In Jordan, this law allows rapists to avoid legal prosecution if they agree to marry their victim and thus “save” the lost honor of the girl and her family. Essentially products of the Ottoman and French penal codes, these laws have been criticized for undermining Islamic shari’ah, which does not recognize retroactive reduction of criminal punishments. More importantly, these rape-marriage laws are perceived as attempts to resolve social problems—in this case, removing the stigma around the dishonored family—instead of effectively punishing a criminal. Since Egypt repealed its version of the rape-marriage law in 2002, activists in Jordan have been pressuring the government to create a new rape law that better aligns with Islamic beliefs, as well as modern notions of human rights and justice. 
By Muskan Mumtaz
Muskan Mumtaz is a sophomore at University of Virginia. Sameer Rah was eight years old when he was beaten to death by Indian soldiers in the disputed region of Kashmir. His killing came in the height of what is dubbed the “summer bloodbath,” during which the Indian army killed around 100 minors and injured another 500. The military targets teenage protestors as a way of discouraging the next generation of Kashmiris from engaging in civil unrest, and more importantly, from restarting the independence movement within Kashmir.[1] Of course, the Indian military cannot discharge or imprison every soldier that has a hand in killing a civilian. The entire purpose of these extrajudicial killings is to make known their military presence and suppress whatever strains of resistance emerge among the youth. To provide their soldiers impunity, the Indian government uses an old law known as the “Armed Forces Special Powers Act.” (Ironically, the British government used this same law on Gandhi’s independence movement). |
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