Northeast people are not against Indian Army but Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)

I met the Members of the five-Member Committee headed by Justice
Jeevan Reddy (a former judge of the Supreme Court) to review the
provisions of the AFSPA in March 2005 at Kohima. The other four Members
are Lt. Gen (Retd.) V.R. Raghavan, P.P. Shrivastava, a former special
secretary in the Union Home Ministry, Dr. S.B. Nakade, a former
Vice-Chancellor of the Marathwada University, and senior journalist
Sanjoy Hazarika.

This Committee was constituted by the Dr. Manmohan Singh Government
in the wake of rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama allegedly by the
Assam Rifles and followed by an unprecedented naked protest by 12
Manipuri women in front of the Western Gate of Kangla Fort, which was
occupied by the Assam Rifles, in broad daylight in 2004. In fact, after
these incidents, Manipur virtually plunged into chaos and unprecedented
crisis. It was at this time that Chief Minister Ibobi Singh had taken
unprecedented decision to lift the draconian and controversial Armed
Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 1958 from the 7 Assembly
constituencies in Imphal.

As a quick confidence building measure after sensing that the pride
of the people of Manipur was deeply hurt in the wake of the incidents,
Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had also taken an unprecedented
decision to return the Kangla Fort, which had been occupied by the Assam
Rifles since India’s Independence in 1947, in 2004 to the people of
Manipur.

The Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee had submitted its 147-page report
on June 6, 2005. The Committee had unambiguously recommended the repeal
of the controversial law against which people in Manipur and elsewhere
in the North-East have been agitating for several years. “The Armed
Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, should be repealed,” it notes in its
recommendations. “The Act is too sketchy, too bald and quite inadequate
in several particulars”. The report adds that the impression gathered by
the Committee during the course of its work is that “the Act, for
whatever reason, has become a symbol of oppression, an object of hate
and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness.”

Although Dr. Manmohan Singh constituted the five-Member Committee to
review the provisions of the AFSPA, the recommendations of them had
never been accepted by his Government. Strangely, the present NDA
Government headed by Narendra Modi has too declined to accept the
recommendations.

I have been telling from the very beginning that the people of
Manipur or other Northeast people are not against the Indian Army but
the Act. Because the Act simply gives carte blanche to the Indian armed
forces in the areas declared as “Disturbed” in the name of assisting the
Civil Administration. In all these, they are immune as no prosecution,
suit or other legal proceedings shall be instituted, except with the
previous sanction of the Central Government, against any person in
respect of anything done or purported to be done in exercise of the
powers conferred by this Act.

This Act is draconian and simply an anti-democracy. This Act is
nothing but a license to kill indiscriminately. This Act also
fundamentally conflicts the Fundamental Rights enshrined in the
Constitution of India. This Act must go and it should no more be used in
this modern and civilized world.

We should also be ashamed of what the UN and Amnesty International
questioning the AFSPA some years back and they even already asked India
to revoke it from the Northeastern States of India saying it had no
place in Indian democracy, besides it clearly violates International
Law.

The leadership of the country has not realized till now that the AFSPA is anti-democracy and against the very Fundamental.

– Asian Tribune –