Suppressed Silences: Women as Witnesses and the Wounds of Witnessing Secret Killings in Assam

During the secret killings in Assam, family members, close aides and suspected sympathizers of insurgents from ULFA and human rights activists from MASS were abducted, tortured, or gunned down. Witnesses to these killings continue to remember the surrendered cadres and police to be behind the death and the disappearance of their loved ones, where the army was ubiquitous. This paper challenges the erstwhile ‘secret’ nature of the killings. It attempts to unravel the silences, particularly of women who bore witness to those killings, and expose how the state assaulted people’s social lives in Assam in the name of counter-insurgency operations. Their stories mark both resilience and resistance.