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E-Pao! Education - AFSPA, 1958 - A Law Review - 5

AFSPA, 1958 - A Law Review
— Historical Reasons & Constitutional Incompatibility —
Part 5

By: Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba *



HISTORICAL REASONS

  1. In the post colonial era, no repressive law whatsoever had ever succeeded in resolving deep- structured political crisis. It could be Palestine case, Vietnam, Bangladesh or, Soviet Union in 1991 or situation of the Rowlatt Act, 1911; and the Armed Forces Special Powers Ordinance, 1942 had rather hastened and expedited passage of Indian Independence Act, 1947, before it was actually due in June 1948.
  2. AFSPA is a crude recrudescence and revival of the British colonial statute and it should not be re-enacted in the post - colonial scenario under any circumstances. AFSPA is the best evidence of sustaining colonial law in a new post- colonial era.
  3. Parliament did not fully apply its mind to the passage of this black statute in 1958. The law which partook an emergency status had been enacted without formal declaration of emergency. Ostensibly, the statute was enacted for a brief while and not for perpetuity. The United Nations Human Rights Committee addressed itself to this issue in July 1997. Human rights NGOs all over the world denounce the Indian black law.
  4. When the parliament briefly discussed the purpose of invoking the law in Manipur and Naga Hills, among others, all the MPs of Manipur resisted the passage of the law. It has been thrust upon the helpless racial minority by another alien, brute and tyrannical majority against the vehement resistance of the minority. It is inherently racist and genocidal in character.
  5. It justifies covert agency of the state for committing genocide of the NE people. Reddy Report has recorded,"[when] certain members[ sic. of the security forces] thereof may seek to take advantage of their power and position to harass or otherwise trample upon the rights of the citizens of this country." (Report p.73)
  6. The initial objective of enacting the black law had been totally betrayed and frustrated. The statute was enacted so as to contain a small scale uprising in Naga hill district of the erstwhile state of Assam, which was just a tiny district among the large districts of Assam. After four decades of invocation of the black law, the insurgent flare-up has spread over in Manipur, Assam, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya etc. 'The mightier the state repression, the wider is popular discontent and insurgency proliferation' - is apparently the law of nature in the new epoch. The NSGT in NE region rose against the metropolitan India for half a century.
  7. The NSGT in NE region rose against the metropolitan India for half a century. Indian university professors of history and political science near unanimously teach millions of students wrongly that India has not been a federated state unlike the USA or the former USSR and hundreds of Ph.Ds had been awarded on this concocted lies. British India was a separate entity from the sovereign native states. The Indian Supreme Court in as many as 9 verdicts since 1954 to 1993 [ see –Virendrasingh vs.state of UP,AIR,1954 SC 447 and also Raghunathrao vs. Union of India, AIR 1993 SC 1267] had unambiguously laid down the verdicts that native states had been completely sovereign and independent in 1947. The 1993 Supreme Court verdict is – "On the commencement of the Indian Independencxe Act, 1947, British Paramountcy lapsed and the Indian States[ sic. states including Manipur and Tripura] became completely sovereign and independent". They conceal this truth. Native sovereign states joined or were forced to join the Indian union after signing two international treaties- the Standstill agreement, 1947 and the Instrument of Accession, 1947. Hence, Indian union had been a federated state. These fabricated white lies misled the parliament and the forces were indoctrinated to hate the region. The black law had been given a moral support on this misgiving.
  8. The over all cost benefit of the passage and invocation of the black law is counter productive. It had already cost not less than 30,000 Crores of poor tax payer's money, while the starving millions of Indians need a square meal from this drained out money. In the list of HDI in 1999, India stands as the 134th in terms of human development in the world, because of this obsession. The position is not better in 2006. The arms race is flagged off on 11th May 1998 in South Asia with 5 nuclear weapons test by Government of India.
  9. The NHRC of India - the apex statutory commission has recommended the repeal of AFSPA in 1997 by way of impleading in the 1997 apex court hearing. The Government of India fails to honor the impartial NHRC recommendation.


CONSTITUTIONAL INCOMPATIBILITY
NON COMPLIANCE WITH ARTS. 2 AND 4 OF ICCPR


The binding obligations of government of India towards the ICCPR arises out of its signature given to and ratification of the ICCPR in 1979. The binding article 2 of the ICCPR provides,
"1. Each State Party ( sic.India) to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant(sic.ICCPR),..." .

The binding obligation has not been complied with by the government of India.
  1. The declaration of disturbed area by the union government has not been guided by obvious, objective criteria. The whole exercise has been arbitrary since de facto emergency had been impaired without formal promulgation. The government of India has blatantly violated article 4, 6, 9 etc of the ICCPR, 1966 to which it is a party. The article 4 of the ICCPR which is binding to the government of India as follows :
    Article 4 [2] : " No derogation from articles 6,7,8(paragraphs 1 and 2),11,15,16 and 18 may be made under this provision."
    The right of non-derogable even during the extreme form of public emergency when the life of a nation is being threatened is provided by article 6 of the ICCPR which is binding to the government of India and by judicious construction, to Supreme Court of India as well .
    Article 6 [1} –" Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life." The parliament of India and the apex court of India has blatantly violated article 6 and article 4 of the ICCPR, in the same way as international treaties had been cast aside by the third Reich off late in the history.
    The blatant violation of human rights by the state agencies for half a century in Manipur and the NE region resulted to gross transgression of the human rights standards viz., Extrajudicial killing [p. 1-82 of COHR report], Enforced disappreance {p.83-84], Illegal detention and harassment [p. p.85], Rape and sodomy [p.86-89] and Torture [p.90-104, Report on Human Rights violations in Manipur, Committee on Human Rights9 COHR), Manipur]. The Amnesty reports also corroborate the innumerable crimes committed by the state forces in Manipur and the NE region for half a century.[see all reports of Amnesty International for decades]
  2. The maintenance of the public order and tranquility is within the ambit of the Cr. P.C Section 129 of Cr. P.C provides for the dispersal of assembly by use of civil force; Section 130 for use of armed forces to disperse assembly and provides for use of armed forces to disperse assembly and section 13O provides for power of certain armed forces officers to disperse assembly. The existing fundamental law of the land is adequate enough to mobilize armed forces in bringing peace and tranquility in the civil order. The AFSPA is an additional, but highly repressive and oppressive empowerment of the forces.
  3. It blatantly violates the internal and international standards of human rights, as enunciated above and enunciates above and universally agreed upon. It negates India's conviction and national commitment.
  4. Section 4(a), (b), (c), (d), of the black law is a direct transgression upon articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution. The power to 'fire upon' to the extent of 'causing death' given to the lowest ruling of NCO on the slightest suspicion i.e. the power to commit extra-judicial execution is not only arbitrary, unjust, unfair, but is also a legitimization of outright extrajudicial murder. No civilized jurisprudence would justify this additional empowerment, given to the forces to kill citizens.
    The apex court by its 27 November, 1997 judgment failed to give reason to refute the criticism of the powers so exercised under the black law. It has in just one or, two pages very weakly upheld section 4 of the Statute. It has run short of ammunition. While defending (a) the unproclaimed public emergency by overlooking the emergency provisions of the constitutional India, (b) a racialist and discriminatory law for the subjugation of the NE people, and (c) extrajudicial execution of the people of the NSGT in direct contravention of the ICCPR, 1966 and Jus Cogens.
  5. The apex court judgment commands respectability and bindingness according to article 141 of the Constitution. The Delhi High Court judgment – Indrajit Barua vs. State of Assam (AIR 1983, Delhi 513) had the least bearing with article 141. The Supreme Court has disposed of the writ petition nos. 5328 of 1980, 550 of 1982 and 9229 and 9230 of 1982, which challenged the constitutionality of impugned black statute, on November 27, 1997 after long seventeen years of receiving the petition in 1980. The Supreme Court had bee indifferent to the extrajudicial execution of the NE People.
    After accepting a set of guidelines to be followed at the time of enforcing the law, the apex court has upheld the validity of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, the repeal of which has also been recommended by the Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission in 1996. The constitutional bench, headed by Chief Justice, J. S Verma, in its 60 page judgment observed that the parliament could enact the impugned statute, under power conferred under article 248 read with list 1 entry 2, entry 97 and entry 2A, inserted after the 42nd Constitutional amendment.
    The verdict borders on the extreme edge of technical formalism of the crudest positivist kind, which is totally devoid of the public justice, as accepted at this stage of our civilization. Till a full bench of the apex court (13 Judge or so) decides, the positivist verdict stands in justification for a draconian law. The Supreme Court in spirit upholds a NAZI statute in India.
    The PUDR rightly observed, "The court refused to go into the actual working of the Act and deemed it irrelevant for purposes of deciding its constitutionality" and the basic fact that the Constitution does not envisage long term deployment of the armed forces in civilian areas has been concealed.
  6. The apex court did not apply to mind to the relevance of humanitarian laws to the conflict – situation in the NE region. It has deliberately overlooked India's treaty laws like the ICCPR, 1966.


Read Part 1 | Read Part 2 | Read Part 3 | Read Part 4 | Read Part 5 | Read Part 6 | Read Part 7 | Read Part 8 |


* Dr. Naorem Sanajaoba is a Professor and Dean of Law Faculty at the Gauhati University, Asom. The author is a human rights defender and a social activist in the NE region of India for more than 4 (four) decades and is a reknown author of several internationally distributed books on human rights, humanitarian laws, among others. The author can be contacted at [email protected] . This article was first webcasted on November 18th, 2006 and updated subsequently in later days.


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