The media needs to ask tough questions about this act if a solution has to be found to the future of Irom Sharmila.
By Kishalay Bhattacharjee
It may have taken a decade, but Irom Sharmila is now a household name. The human rights crusader from Manipur, who was on hunger strike for 14 years protesting against alleged army atrocities, was released from hospital detention by a sessions court in Manipur on August 19. However, she was re-arrested two days later as the government charged her with attempted suicide.
Sharmila, who has been protesting against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958, (AFSPA) went on hunger strike in 2000 and was force-fed by doctors through a tube going into her nose. While the media paid token attention to how she was locked up once again and every discussion on her as well as AFSPA leads to army bashing, one must know what the act is all about, how it has been misused.
An emergency ordinance, AFSPA was enacted in 1958 and has been extended over 55 years to help the army operate in “disturbed areas”. The act is draconian in nature and allows the army and paramilitary forces to kill anybody just on suspicion. There is an overwhelming majority of people who want this to go. The civilian government and its functionaries want it to be amended and made more “humane”. But the army says no.
Government-appointed commissions have rejected its validity, with the National Human Rights Commission saying it has been misused by the army. But does AFSPA serve the purpose it was meant to? It is no longer just about an enabling act for the army to operate in insurgency theaters. It has morphed into a tool for indulging in narcotics and gun-running by the army and police forces.
These facts have not been played up. Retired generals defend AFSPA vehemently and irrationally. Others attack the army. Family members of victims are paraded. Human rights activists raise the pitch, while politicians manage to escape the heat. The militants don’t even figure in the discussion. And Sharmila is just a silent picture in the background with a plastic tube attached to her nose and a dogged look in her eyes.
The media needs to ask some pressing questions on the issue. One, why is the government so scared of following court orders to let Sharmila continue with the non-violent protest?
There have been cases when people on fast were force-fed but they were never arrested and thrown into police vehicles. Second, why don’t respective state governments withdraw the “Disturbed Areas Act” say, for example, from Tripura, Mizoram, Megha-laya or most of Assam where insurgency has been “countered”? What are the benefits of having the “Disturbed Areas” tag, which allows AFSPA to provide protection to rogues?
AFSPA is about impunity and Sharmila’s protest is against it. The security forces kill with impunity and get away with murder.
It took one day for the army to take action against a Brigadier charged with sodomy in his unit in Jammu and Kashmir on August 23, 2014. But 14 years have passed since soldiers shot dead 10 people waiting at a bus shed in Malom, Manipur. Why hasn’t anybody been punished or held accountable?
It is not so much the act but the pattern of getting away with murder under the act that triggers protests. Soldiers have got away with allegations of rape, citing AFSPA, and the police, not covered under AFSPA, has used it as a protective gear to carry out staged encounters.
If various arms of the government are in favor of amending the act, how has the army prevailed over them?
Till all these questions are answered and Sharmila called for talks instead of being treated like a criminal, the stalemate over AFSPA will continue.