AsiaCalling

Download The Armed Forces Special Powers Act is one of India’s most controversial laws.

It gives Indian security forces sweeping powers to operate in an area where there is an insurgency against the government. It has been widely criticized by human rights groups both in and outside the country.

As Bismillah Geelani reports the law is again in the spotlight with fresh demands for it to be changed.

39-year-old Irom Sharmila lies in a hospital bed in Manipur’s capital city, Imphal.

With a rubber tube stuck to her nose she reads out one of her poems. She has named it “the fragrance of peace”.

“I will spread the fragrance of peace from my birth place in the age to come, to every nook and cranny of the world.”

Sharmila is on an indefinite hunger strike against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.  

She hasn’t eaten or drunk anything for the last 11 years.  

The government has kept her alive with a liquid mixture of nutrients and drugs force-fed through the nose.

Sharmila began her fast after the Indian security forces killed 10 civilians in her home town. She says she will end it only after the law is revoked.

“It is very intolerable to me to see odd laws like this. The armed forces are supposed to be our protector, why should then they abuse their powers. It is very shocking that our government is totally dumb, deaf and blind to all this. I just don’t understand what is the purpose of their governance?”

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) gives security forces wide powers to search and arrest without warrant and to even shoot a person on mere suspicion.

It also gives them legal immunity for their actions.

The law was first introduced in 1958 to curb separatist movements in India’s North Eastern states.

It was later applied to Kashmir after an armed insurgency against Indian rule broke out in the region.

Human rights groups say it has led to an alarming increase in human rights abuses.

Meenakshi  Ganguly is South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch.

“This Act and the abuses that this Act has produced, has put more boys with stones and guns out there and therefore we need continued deployment of the army. Now this is an emergency law, it was designed as an emergency law. It has been in place for fifty years. People of this country have been in a war like situation where the army is deployed for 50 years. A war like situation creates its own conflict.”

In 2005 after a series of violent protests in Manipur, the government appointed a committee to look into the public concerns and review the law.

Sanjoy Hazrika was one of the members of the Committee.

“Our recommendation was unambiguous and clear -the Act must go. The Act must go because it has become a symbol of hatred in the Northeast, perhaps in Kashmir also. It has become a focus of anger against an institution that people should be proud of.”

But the recommendations were not accepted.

International organizations like Amnesty International and the United Nations Human Rights Committee have urged the Indian government to scrap the draconian law. The government has promised to amend it but has not done so.

Now after the recent discovery of thousands of unmarked mass graves in Kashmir the voices demanding the law be repealed are growing louder.

Even the provincial government is backing the demand this time.

Umar Abdullah is Kashmir’s Chief Minister

“There are aspects in this Act that give unquestionable immunity which I think is dangerous because immunity if abused gives you the ability to function with impunity. And when you turn around and tell people that there will be a dividend that will flow to you from a peace that you help create, don’t you think that you owe it those people. Compare last year to this year and see how people have cooperated in building peace and allowing normalcy to return. Don’t you think they are owed something in return?”

But the security force, as usual, is strongly resisting the idea of revoking the law

Lieutenant General KT Patnaik is the head of the Indian Army’s northern Command.

“Pakistan continues to have its terrorist infrastructure intact; Pakistan also has the notion of calibrating terrorism within Kashmir. Therefore we feel that unless we are able to neutralize that infrastructure and unless we are able to remove interference from Pakistan it may not be correct for us to think of revoking the law even partially.”

The decision to revoke the law would have to be made jointly by the central government, the state government and the Army.

While some ministers in the central government are in favor of either revoking it altogether or at least amending it, the army’s resistance has prevented a final decision so far.

Human rights lawyer, Vrinda Grover, says the army is overstepping its mandate.

“It is unfortunate and worrying not for the people of Kashmir and Northeast itself but all of us in India because what we are seeing now is that the army is increasingly going to take a role in political decision making  and this is worrying for Indian democracy.”