Paper on AFSPA presented at National meet
Source: Hueiyen News Service

Imphal, May 27 2012: A 2-day National Conference on "National and People's Right to Information" jointly organized by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) commenced at the conference hall of IIPA, New Delhi today.

During the course of the National Conference which is being supported by Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), Wahengbam Joykumar, Executive Director, HRI, Manipur & Co-covener, M-PRIM presented a paper entitled 'SHADOW of AFSPA: Denial of Information in Manipur' .

W Joykumar highlighted the history of Manipur in connection with imposition of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, saying that Manipur was merged into Dominion of India in 1948 and thereafter the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 which gave impunity to Indian Army, was passed in the Parliament in 1958 to counter the movement of Armed Opposition Groups in the North Eastern Region States including Manipur.

W Joykumar (extreme right) at the conference on National and People�s Right to Information

He further stated that the Act was imposed in the whole area of Manipur since 11th September 1980.Gross human rights violation including rape, torture and extra judicial killings became a common phenomenon in the lives of the people of Manipur due to the armed conflict situation and consequently de-facto emergency state under AFSPA has been enforced in the State of Manipur till date.

During his presentation, Joykumar mentioned that the Right to Information Act, 2005 was implemented in Manipur in 2005.However, the Government of Manipur issued a notification dated 15th October 2005 under Section 24 of the Act exempting the Manipur Police Department comprising of Civil Police; Manipur Police Wireless;) Manipur Rifles; India Reserve Battalions; Intelligence Wings (Special Branch and Crime Branch of CID); Forensic Science Laboratory; Jail Department and State Vigilance Commission and its subordinate Offices from the purview of Right to Information Act, 2005 .

He also informed the gathering that a number of applications submitted to the State Public Information Officer, Department of Home, Government of Manipur for seeking information regarding issues related to imposition of AFSPA in the state and its serious effects to the people have not been entertained.

The objective of the conference was to discuss and understand the manner in which public authorities in India have dealt with request for information relating to National Security; to take stock of the decisions of information Commission and courts regarding information access disputes in relation to national security; to discuss and refine the global draft principles on national security and the right to information and to identify advocacy opportunities for strengthening the legal regime relating to national security and access to information.

Morton Halperin of Open Society Foundations; Sandra Coliver of OSJI; Venkatesh Nayak of CHRI; Nandita Sinha of CHRI; Amikar Parwar, CHRI; Satyananda Mishra, Chief Information Commissioner, Central Information Commission; VK Mittal, formerly with the NTRO; Retired Major General VK Singh formerly with the R&AW and Emi MacLean of OSJI also presented papers on various topics on the first day of the conference.

Around 45 activists, lawyers, media persons, RTI applicants and academicians from different parts of the country are participating in the conference.

Chief Information Commission of Central Information Commission Satyananda Mishra, Central Information Commissioner Sailesh Gandhi, RTI Activists Maj.

Gen.

V.K.Singh (Retd.), Brigadier Ujal Dasgupta (Retd), Nikhil Dey of National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information(NCPRI) and other noted activists like Usha Ramanathan, Seema Mishra, Divyajyoti Jaipuria and Brinda Grover as well as VK Mittal, who was one of the former chief functionaries of National Technical Research Organisation, Government of India are among other noted personalities who are taking part in the two-day long conference.