AFSPA a hurdle to ‘Act East’ policy, according to experts

Agencies
Kolkata, March 29

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiating the ‘Act East Policy’, the government should review the imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in the northeast as it could be a barrier in connecting the region to the South-East neighbours, experts feel. “If by our own definition the Northeast is a ‘disturbed area’ under AFSPA, then how can you ask everyone to look at east under the ‘Act East’ policy? How will you improve connectivity?” questions Sanjoy Hazarika, Director of the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.
Earlier in the year, the central government had extended AFSPA for another year in the entire state of Assam and along a 20-km-long belt in Assam’s border with Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, he said in Kolkata recently at a conference on improving connectivity in Asia.
Northeast expert Hazarika, who was also a member of the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee to Review AFSPA, said the conflicts in the region had decreased drastically over the last few years. “The Indian government should see this as its success and restrict AFSPA. If you restrict the Disturbed Areas Act, you end up restricting AFSPA,” he said.
In Manipur, civil rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila has been on a fast-unto-death for the last 14 years demanding repeal of AFSPA in the region.

Irom Sharmila issue highligted in United Nations meet

Our Correspondent
IMPHAL, March 28

Irom Singhajit, elder brother of Manipur human rights defender Irom Chanu Sharmila, has drawn the attention of the United Nation’s council meeting over “the precarious human rights situation in North East India.” Irom Singhajit returned to Imphal this weekend after presenting four different issues on child rights, human rights, minority and racial discrimination during the UN council’s meeting in Geneva from March 12-23.
In his 8-minute presentation representing London based organization Liberation to the UN council meeting, Singhajit said, “My sister resolved to fight against this draconian law (AFSPA) following the massacre of ten civilians including women and children by the Indian para-military personnel at Malom village in Manipur on November 2, 2000.Within few days she has been falsely charged for attempting to commit suicide and kept under judicial custody.”
Sharmila, 42, has been force-fed with liquid diet through a nasal tube since she began her fast-unto-death on November 4, 2000 seeking the repeal of AFSPA, 1958 that gives security personnel the ‘license to kill’.
She is released periodically only to be rearrested for continuing to fast. Singhajit said, working group of Universal periodic review of UN council, in consonance with the recommendation of almost all the major treaty bodies and relevant special procedure as well as the former high commissioner for human rights have consistently recommended the repeal of AFSPA. But the government of India has recently rejected the recommendation of its own committee to review the AFSPA set up in 2004. The National Human Rights Commission of India has declared her detention as violation of both domestic as well as international human rights laws in 2013. The local courts in Manipur have repeatedly ordered her release by dismissing the ‘false charges’ against her in 2014 and 2015, he added. “Amnesty International has declared her a prisoner of conscience. Yet my sister continues to be criminalized and detained in isolation”, he rued and urged the UN council to take concrete steps to repeal AFSPA and to protect the most basic human rights of the population reeling under this ‘colonial and racist Act’ as well as to ‘my sister who is under taking a non-violent democratic struggle against the same’.