| Summary/Abstract |
The experiences of insurgency and counter-insurgency in Northeast region of India have left behind some of the brutal memories of violence. This paper intends to explain how fear and suspicion in societies under counter-insurgency build up the narrative of silence and secrecy when the state and the security forces allegedly commit excesses against civilians. For this, the paper revisits the ‘secret killings’ of the family members, close aides, and sympathizers of the insurgent organization United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) between 1998 and 2001 in Assam. Personal narratives question the official statistics of deaths and explore the conditions under which silence is manufactured in cases of violence which do not qualify for legal evidence. The motivation then is to disrupt the silence in absence of closure to those affected. From interviews conducted with sixty individuals representing multiple backgrounds, violence and power emerge to be integral in understanding secret killings in Assam.
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