AFSPA : Ugly side of power :: License to kill and maim
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 04 2015 -

More like a license to kill and maim. The prerequisites to get this license seem rather easy.

Let the Government declare an area as disturbed and then invoke the infamous Armed Forces Special Powers Act to deal with anyone seen to be waging a war against the Nation.

Call in the Army and the Central Paramilitary Forces and let them operate under this Act.

The operative word here is the Armed Forces Special Powers Act or AFSPA, in short.

The whole of Manipur has experienced this since 1980 and a large number of people have been at the receiving end of this Act, which many have dubbed as draconian and giving a free rein to the army.

No wonder human rights organisations have been at the forefront protesting against the continued imposition of this Act for decades and Irom Chanu Sharmila is there today for the world to see and observe.

There has to be something for a young woman to continue fasting for 15 years demanding a roll back of the infamous Army Act.

An Act to deal with anyone or groups which have been declared unlawful but the record says that far from dealing with the armed movement in Manipur and other States of the North East as well as Jammu and Kashmir, there is nothing to suggest that AFSPA has been able to neutralise the activities of the armed outfits.

It is in realisation of this fact that the Government of Tripura has decided to scrap the Act there.

It may have been due to the sustained agitation but it stands that the Government of Manipur too thought it better to scrap the disturbed status from the Municipal areas of Imphal after Th Manorama was brutalised and shot dead by Assam Rifles personnel sometime in 2004.

It was not for nothing why former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had to fly down to Imphal in 2004 and announce the constitution of the Jeevan Reddy Commission to look into the popular demand to scrap the infamous Army Act from Manipur.

Why the recommendations of the Reddy Commission have been kept in the cold storage has never been made public, but surely it did ring out the message that the popularly elected Government had to bow to the wishes of the military.

The excesses committed by the security personnel under the immunity and impunity granted by AFSPA need not be detailed here.

The people are more than aware of it. That the said Act is still very much in force here says something about how the Government of India has got it all wrong.

Given the list of atrocities and excesses committed by the men in uniform under this Act, human lives here are dirt cheap.

It should be obvious that the sanctity of human lives no longer counts and the tragedy is there is no indication that the Government of India has learnt anything substantial down the years.

AFSPA is also discriminatory in more than one way.

Why is it applicable only in the North East and Jammu and Kashmir ?

This question is relevant in the face of the fact that the feeling of alienation is rampant amongst the people of the North East and Jammu and Kashmir.