The infamous nude protest following the custodial rape and extra-judicial brutal murder of Th. Manorama, in front of the historic Kangla by Manipuri women demonstrated people's resentment and fury against the oppressive Act.
It exemplifies people's intolerability to the lawless law. It has questioned the very justification of the black law by the largest democracy. Democracy must be substantial rather than by virtue of the largest number of electorates.
The fundamental question is why the peoples of the region are suffering like anything? Are they not considered as the legitimate citizens of the Indian democracy?
If they are the citizens of India why their basic and inalienable rights are denied arbitrarily for such a long period? Do the Central government does not have any responsibilities towards the citizens of the region to protect and safeguard their fundamental human rights?
Why equality before law is denied to the peoples of the NE region of India? Is the north-east a foreign land or a region colonized with the help of the AFSPA? Why the draconian law – the AFSPA has been in force for such a long period of half-a-century in the region,
contrary to the earlier contemplated short-term measure?
Why the armed forces of India are being engaged or deployed against its own peoples of the region? Why the ordinary criminal laws like the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code or the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, etc. cannot maintain law and order in the region when the same laws can do so in other states of the country?
Why the AFSPA is specifically deployed in the region? If it is for insurgency or armed violence then why the same act is not applied to the Naxalites affected states like Utter Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chatisgarh, etc?
Why is the North-eastern region being targeted discriminatorily and racially? Are the Mongoloid-Asiatic-yellowish faces of the region not included in the definition of citizens or peoples as proclaimed in “We, The Peoples of India” in the preamble of the Indian Constitution?
Then, who are these north-eastern peoples? Where is their place in the Indian society? Are they being conceived as an occupied alien community? Is that the reason behind the strong feeling of alienation in the minds of these peoples from the mainland India? Does the Central government follow a special policy of governance for the entire region? The questions are thousands and pouring in ever, never ending.
If the Central government feels that there is a genuine political cause behind the unrest and violence in the region, it should strive seriously and sincerely to address and resolve the situation at the earliest. The Annual Report of the Home Ministry, Government of India 1996-97 reports about the states most affected by insurgency.
The Union Government’s effort and subsequent political dialogues with one of the major insurgent bodies of the region – the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Issac-Muivah) indicates that the government considers insurgency a purely political problem as against the earlier misconception of law and problem.
The Attorney General of India while submitting India’s Annual Periodic Report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1991 defended and justified the AFSPA on grounds that the NE states are demanding secession from India. Even if there is insurgency in the region, the Central government cannot massacre and eliminate peoples of the region by deploying the AFSPA 1958.
The AFSPA has covert agenda for genocide (Sanajaoba, N. 2002). The Central government should strive for a viable and practicable political solution to the complicated problem of the region. History is testimony that neither genocide nor draconian law like the AFSPA is the solution for genuine political problems.
If the Central government goes on by this strategy to solve purely political problems through brute force or use of draconian laws, democracy India would be reduced to the most outrageous military regime second to the erstwhile Nazi Germany of Hitler.
Thus, there is no denying to the fact that humanity is dead wherever AFSPA reigns. The AFSPA means human rights ends. There is absolutely nothing beyond AFSPA. What waits the peoples of the NE region? Where is their destiny? Only the AFSPA knows.
Would the Supreme Court save them by pronouncing the Act unconstitutional? And what if not? Mainstream Indians celebrates freedom from colonial British, the peoples of the region endure and condemn vehemently colonization under the regime of AFSPA 1958.
Concluded
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* The writer is a final year student of LLB from Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune and can be contacted at malem(dot)mangal(at)gmail(dot)com .
This article was webcasted on August 10, 2007 .
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