a note on afspa & irom sharmila's struggle for justice

Irom Sharmila’s Struggle for Justice 3

THE ARMED FORCES(SPECIAL POWERS) ACT, 1958(AFSPA)

The lofty proclamations of liberal democracy – like: equality,liberty and right to life are the main principles of socialcontract signed by the Modern Nation-States to legitimize itself,values as liberal democracy, where citizens’ rights aresacrosanct, where individual rights are supposed to be thefoundation in the structure of governance mechanisms includingthe coercive apparatus like the army, paramilitary, and thepolice.

However, the reality is different. The existence of extremelydraconian acts like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act(AFSPA), The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA),Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, National Security Act,and various provisions in the penal code like ‘sedition’ make amockery of the claims of liberal democratic character of theIndian state. These claims are equally fraudulent and hilariousas the proclamations are made by the representations of theIndian ruling classes in forums like the United Nations, G20,World Economic Forum, etc. The propaganda machines for theneo-liberal exploitation parade India as the largest democracyand an emerging economic power-house. While the fact thatmore than 77% of the population lives a sub-human existenceof 20 rupees a day, the trampling of the human rights of thepoor Dalits, women, national ethnic and religious minoritieswith impunity is the order of the day. Operation Green Hunt isone of the prime examples. The rights provided in the IndianConstitution – like: right to life and dignity, expression, etc.,are reduced to cruel jokes on a hapless people. Numerous falseencounter killings, custodial deaths/rape, rape of women, gang-rapes, torture, disappearances, etc., are the stark realities ofthe so-called largest Democracy and Emerging Economic Power.

4 Irom Sharmila’s Struggle for Justice

Recently discovered thousands of unmarked graves in Kashmirare a horrifying testimony of the state of human right to lifeand the legality of extrajudicial killings, which of courseinvolves both rape and murder.

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 (AFSPA) is oneof the most draconian legislations used by the Indian rulers toenslave and oppress peoples under the garb of fightingseparatism. For the past sixty years the North-East, and foralmost two decades Kashmir, both have been virtually underarmy rule. This rule by the army has had a drastic effect onthe daily life of the average citizen residing in the North-Eastand Kashmir.

There is a state of de-facto abrogation of fundamental rights,including the all-important right to life, and large-scaleencroachment by the army on the life and liberty of the citizensin the above-mentioned areas. AFSPA violates the fundamentalconstitutional rights of right to life, liberty, equality, freedom ofspeech and expression, peaceful assembly, moving freely,practice of any profession, protection against arbitrary arrestand freedom of religion enshrined in Articles 21, 14, 19, 22 and25 of the Constitution.

AFSPA has been used in these regions for thousands of deaths,custodial deaths/rape, torture, encirclement of the civilianpopulation, sadistic combing operations, looting of privatecitizen’s property, etc. Thousands of youth have simplydisappeared - another euphemism for encounter deaths.

Draconian laws are antithetical to modern democracy since theyoverturn the fundamental tenets of modern jurisprudence onwhich democracy rests, viz., a person is presumed to beinnocent till proven guilty. The genre of draconian laws therebymakes it difficult for persons booked under it to redress theirgrievances and get relief, such as bail. It grants extraordinarypower to the investigating agencies (police, etc.) to elicitconfessions, etc. Thus, the act empowers the investigatingagencies to easily frame a person whom they suspect to beguilty.


Provisions of the AFSPA are far more severe. The provisions ofthe act provide special powers to the Governor, whereby he canat his own discretion (without consulting the duly elected ChiefMinister), by notification in the Official Gazette, declare thewhole or part of the state or union territory to be disturbedarea. Bypassing the duly elected and representative politicalauthority is tantamount to de-facto imposition of emergency.

Unlike other draconian laws, the AFSPA does not stop atproviding special powers to the investigating agency to elicitconfession and to conduct search and arrest operations. It infact provides the investigating agency with absolute powerswhereby, even a havaldar, if he is of the opinion that it isnecessary to fire or otherwise use force, even to the causing ofdeath, can make use of the provisions of the act, thereby,harming the democratic fabric of the country.

More disturbingly, even while it provides the Armed Forceswith such absolute powers, it also provides them with immunityfrom any legal accountability. Even though the acts are inoperation in the states and union territories of the country, theelected initiate legal proceedings, let alone administrative,against Armed Forces without prior sanction of the CentralGovernment. (License to Kill, INSAF, 2005)

Provisions of the Act

Section 1 defines the title of the Act.

Section 2(a) limits the jurisdiction of the Act to the seven statesof the North-East; of late, it has been extended to Kashmir.

(b) Defines ‘disturbed area’ as an area notified under Section 3to be a disturbed area.

Section 3 states that if the Governor of a State or CentralGovernment is of the opinion that an area is in such adisturbed or dangerous state that the use of armed forces inaid of civil power is necessary, then either of them can declareit to be ‘disturbed area’ by notification in the Gazette.


Section 4 gives the following special powers to anyCommissioned Officer, Warrant Officer or Non-CommissionedOfficer of the armed forces in a disturbed area:

(a) If in his opinion, it is necessary for maintenance for publicorder to fire even to the extent of causing death orotherwise use force against a person who is acting incontravention of an order prohibiting the assembly of five ormore persons or the carrying of weapons or of ‘thingscapable of being used as weapons’.

(b) If in his opinion, it is necessary to do so, then to destroyany arms dump or fortified position, any shelter from whicharmed attacks are made or are ‘likely to be made’, and anystructure used as training camp for armed volunteers or asa hide-out for armed gangs or absconders.

(c) Arrest without warrant any person who has committed acognizable offence or against whom a reasonable suspicionexists that he has committed or is likely to commit acognizable offence and to use whatever force is necessary toaffect the arrest.

(d) To enter and search without warrant any premises to makean arrest or to recover any person wrongfully confined or torecover any arms, ammunition, explosive substance orsuspected stolen property.

Section 5 makes it mandatory for the army to hand over aperson arrested under the Act to the nearest police station withleast possible delay.

Section 6 lays down that prosecution, suit or other legalproceedings can be instituted against a person acting under theact, only after getting previous sanction of the CentralGovernment.

Historical Background of AFSPA

The AFSPA gives the armed forces wide powers to shoot, arrestand search all in the name of aiding civil power. It was firstapplied to the north-eastern states of Assam and Manipur, andwas amended in 1972 to extend to all the seven states in the


north-eastern region of India. They are Assam, Manipur,Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram andNagaland, also known as the ‘Seven Sisters’. The enforcementof the AFSPA has resulted in innumerable incidents ofarbitrary detention, torture, rape and looting by securitypersonnel. This legislation is sought to be justified by theGovernment of India, on the plea that it is required to stop theNorth-East states from seceding from the Indian Union. Thereis a strong movement for self-determination which precedes theformation of the Indian Union.

As the great Himalayan range dividing South and Central Asiaruns down the east, it takes a southward curve and splits intolower hill ranges. The hills are punctuated by valleys and thevalleys are washed by the rivers that drain into the Bay ofBengal. Waves of people settled in these blue hills and greenvalleys at various times in history. They brought with themcultures and traditions. The new interacted with the old andevolved into the unique cultural mosaic that characterizes theregion.

Through the centuries, these hills and valleys have bridgedSouth, South-East, and Central Asia. On today’s geo-politicalmap, a large part of the original region constitutes the sevenstates of the Republic of India, but its political, economic andsocio-cultural systems have always been linked with South-EastAsia. The great Hindu and Muslim empires that reigned overthe Indian sub-continent never extended east of theBrahmaputra River.

India’s British colonizers were the first to break this barrier. Inthe early 19th century they moved in to check Burmeseexpansion into today’s Manipur and Assam. The British, withthe help of the then Manipur King, Gambhir Singh, crushedthe Burmese imperialist dream and the treaty of Yandabo wassigned in 1828. Under this treaty, Assam became a part ofBritish India, and British continued to influence the politicalaffairs of the region.

This undue interference eventually led to the bloody Anglo-Manipuri conflict of 1891. The British reaffirmed their position


but were cognizant of the ferocious spirit of independence ofthese people and did not administer directly but only throughthe King.

It was during the Second World War, when the Japanese triedto enter the Indian sub-continent through this narrow corridor,that the strategic significance of the region to the Indian armedforces was realized. With the bombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki, a disenchanted Japanese had to retreat from theImphal and Kohima fronts; however the importance of controlover the region subsequently remained a priority for theGovernment of India.

With the end of the war, the global political map was changedovernight. As the British were preparing to leave Asia, thePolitical Department of the British Government planned tocarve out a buffer state consisting of the Naga Hills, MikirHills, Sadiya Area, Balipara Tract, Manipur, Lushai Hills,Khasi Hills, and hills in Assam, as well as the Chin Hills andthe hills of northern Burma. The impending departure of theBritish created confusion and turmoil over how to fill thepolitical vacuum they would leave behind. Ultimately, thevarious territories were parceled out to Nehru’s India, Jinnah’sPakistan, and Aung Sang’s Burma, according to strategicrequirements. As expected, there were some rumblings betweenthe new Asiatic powers on who should get how much.

Compromises were made, and issues were finally settled indistant capitals, to the satisfaction of the new rulers. Thepeople who had been dwelling in these hills and valleys forthousands of years were systematically excluded from theconsultation process. The Indian greed of the disputed Britishcolonial cake in this region constitutes the present “SevenSisters” states of the North-East.

Over the years, local democratic movements evolved as thepeople aspired to a new social and political order. Oneimportant example is a strong popular democratic movementagainst feudalism and colonialism in Manipur led by HijamIrabot. After the departure of the British, the Kingdom ofManipur was reconstituted as a constitutional monarchy bypassing the Manipur Constitution Act, 1947.


Elections were held under the new constitution. A legislativeassembly was formed. In 1949 V.P. Menon, a seniorrepresentative of Government of India, invited the King to ameeting on the pretext of discussing the deteriorating law andorder situation in the state in Shillong. Upon his arrival, theKing was forced to sign under duress. The agreement wasnever ratified in the Manipur Legislative Assembly. Rather, theAssembly was dissolved and Manipur was kept under thecharge of a Chief Commissioner. There were strong protests,but by using violent brutal state repression, the Government ofIndia has been ruthlessly suppressing the democratic movementin Manipur.

The Deception in Nagaland

At the beginning of the century, the inhabitants of the NagaHills, which extend across the Indo-Burmese border, cametogether under the banner of Naga National Council (NNC),aspiring for a common homeland and self-governance. As earlyas 1929, the NNC petitioned the Simon Commission, which wasexamining the feasibility of future of self-governance of India.

The Naga leaders forcefully articulated the demand of self-governance once British pulled out of India. Gandhi publiclyannounced that Nagas had every right to be independent.Under the Hydari Agreement signed between NNC and Britishadministration, Nagaland was granted protected status for tenyears, after which the Nagas would decide whether they shouldstay in the Indian Union or not. However, shortly after theBritish withdrew, the new Indian rulers colonized Nagalandand claimed it to be Indian Territory.

Articulating the democratic aspirations of the people ofNagaland, The Naga National Council proclaimed Nagaland’sindependence. In retaliation, Indian authorities arrested theNaga leaders. The AFSPA is one of the instruments which theIndian state used to violently suppress the democraticaspirations of the people of North-East.

In 1975, some Naga leaders held talks with the Government ofIndia which resulted in the Shillong agreement - this


agreement was forced on them. Democratic forces of Nagalandsmelt a rat in this deceptive agreement and rallied the peoplebehind them for the national liberation of Nagas. One of thevoices which articulates the democratic demand of Naga peoplefor national liberation is National Socialist Council of Nagaland(NSCN).

Mizoram

In the Lushai Hills of Assam in the early sixties, a faminebroke out. A relief team requested for help from theGovernment of India. But there was little help. The relief teamorganised themselves into the Mizo National Front (MNF) toliberate themselves from the neocolonial occupation of India.Against the democratic aspirations of the people, the Indianarmy moved in. This is the only place in India where theIndian security forces actually aerially bombed its own civilianpopulation. The armed forces compelled people to leave theirhomes and dumped them on the road-side to set up newvillages, so that the armed forces would be able to controlthem. This devasted the structure of the Mizo society. In 1986,the Mizo Accord was signed between MNF and Government ofIndia. This accord was as deceptive as the Shillong Accordmade with the Nagas earlier.

Much of this bloodshed and genocides by the Indian state couldhave been avoided if the Indian ruling classes had listened tothe voices of democratic aspirations of the people of Nagalandand the rights of colonized nationalities. This brutal, forceaccession was based on a feudal, brahamanical and patriarchalnotion of the so-called Indian mainstream based on thedominant Aryan brahamanical culture, destroying the culturesand aspirations of national, linguistic, ethnic and religiousminorities, in the process eliminating indigenous populations.

Culturally the high caste dominated feudal Indian society istotally incompatible with the ethics of North-East cultures,which were by and large democratic and egalitarian. To makematters worse, the Indian ruling classes forcibly clubbed thesedifferent non-feudal ethnic groups with Adivasis cheating themin the name of scheduled tribes and in the process forcing them


to be marginalized and stigmatized by the upper caste rulingelites of India.

The languages of the North-East are of the Tibeto-Chinesefamily rather than the Indo-Aryan of Dravidian like the rest ofIndia. Until the later Eighth Schedule of the IndianConstitution, none of the Tibeto–Chinese languages wererecognized as Indian languages.

Politically dependent, the North-East is being economicallyundermined; the traditional trade routes with South-East Asiaand Bangladesh have been closed. It was kept out of theGovernment of India’s massive infrastructural development inthe five year plans. Gradually, it became the neocolonialhinterland for exploitation by the Indian state, where localindustries were made worthless and now the people are entirelydependent on goods and businesses owned predominantly bythose from the Indo-Gangetic plains. The new Indianunscrupulous businesses pull the economic strings of thisregion.

All the states of the North-East are connected to India by the‘chicken neck’ - a narrow corridor between Bangladesh andBhutan. At partition, the area was cut off from the nearest portof Chittagong, in what is now Bangladesh, reducing traffic toand from the region to a trickle. The states in the region arelargely unconnected to India’s vast rail system. Indian rulingclasses freely exploit the natural resources of the North-East.Assam produces one-fourth of all petroleum for India, yet it isprocessed outside of Assam, so the state does not receive therevenues. Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram are far far behind.In a rough calculation, in the infrastructural development,North-East region lags behind the rest of the country by morethan 40%. Even strictly neutral and independent observershave pointed out that in the North-East insurgency andunderdevelopment have been closely linked in such a situationthat strong-arm tactics will only help to further alienate thepeople.

The shifting demographic balance due to large-scaleimmigration from within and outside the country is another


source of frustration. The indigenous people fear that they willbe outnumbered by outsiders in their own land. Laborers fromBihar and Bengal, who live under rigidly feudal, casteist socio-economic conditions in their own states, are ready for all kindsof menial jobs at much lower wages. As they pour in, more andmore local laborers are being edged out of their jobs. Illegalimmigration from Bangladesh and Nepal is also perceived as athreat. In Tripura, the indigenous population has been reducedto a mere 25% of the total population of the state because oflarge-scale immigration from the North-East and Bangladesh.

The Indian states primary interest in the North-East wasstrategic, and so was its response to problems. A series ofrepressive laws were passed by the Government of India inorder to deal with the rising national liberation aspirations ofthe people of North-East. In 1953, the Assam Maintenance ofPublic Order (Autonomous District) Regulation Act was passed.It was applicable to the then Naga Hills and Tuensangdistricts. It empowered the Governor to impose collective fines,prohibit public meetings, and detain anybody without awarrant.

On 22 May 1958 (a mere 12 days after the Budget Session ofParliament was over), the Armed Forces (Assam & Manipur)Special Powers Ordinance was passed. A bill was introduced inthe Monsoon session of Parliament that year. Amongst thosewho cautioned against such blanket powers to the Armyincluded the then Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha Mr.P.N. Sapru. In a brief discussion that lasted for three hours, inthe Rajya Sabha, Parliament approved the Armed Forces(Assam & Manipur) Special Powers Act retrospectively from 22May 1958.

Enactment of AFSPA From Colonialism toNeocolonialism

After the transfer of power in 1947, the Indian ruling classesenacted draconian laws like AFSPA for the neocolonialexploitation and to suppress the aspirations of democracy andnational liberation in North-East. Since two decades, it hasbeen imposed in Kashmir, resulting in thousands ofextrajudicial murders, torture, rapes and custodial killings.


My friend Nayan writes – With the so-called de-colonization,India along with its South Asian neighbors, entered a period ofsocio-economic restructuring, declaring itself a democraticsecular republic, whence it sought to self-fashion its path ofeconomic progress and development springing from itsbackward stagnant agrarian economy. The much trumpetedNehruvian welfare state was the result - with its technomanagerial elite and a vision of socialist tinged, non-alignedpath, it was a model that was built on the back of a heavysecurity-centric approach in its periphery, where resided apopulation which was to be excluded from this vision, only tobe integrated as the ‘other’ on the ‘centers’ terms whenever itsaw fit. Thus it points to the intrinsic link betweendevelopment, modernization and exclusion which can be almostthrough a strict militization. The Armed Forces (SpecialPowers) Act, 1958 or AFSPA, which was a continuation of theArmed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance of 1942 of Britishcolonial regime, is the clearest instance of this.

North-East India is one of South Asia’s most contested spaces.Contestations have taken many forms - from armed oppositionto the Indian state, movement for separate federal states andautonomous units based on ethnic lines, to struggles againstextractive industries and for more funds from centralgovernment. The AFSPA stands almost in centrality of creatingspaces for such contestation, with the content of the Act havingchanged little over the last 50 years and impacting North-EastIndia and South Asia in profound ways. The Act itself stemsfrom the specific context of North-East’s integration into post-colonial India emerged out of a dominant mainstream Hindu(even as enshrined ‘secular’) Nationalist imagination. Longdrawn self-determination struggles, first inaugurated by Nagarebellion who asserted their own independent history, becamethe defining characteristic of the region which is materially,and ideationally a space distinct from the larger vision of adeveloping India. While India contains diverse regions andholistic national polity or even a national society howeverunassimilated, there is a strong belief in both the Indianmainland and in most of the North-East itself, that anunbridgeable binary/gap exists in the two regions. This then


makes one understand how a law like the AFSPA with itsextraordinary provisions by any measure, persists in India’sdemocratic polity for 52 years.

Disunity as a factor that led to British rule over South Asiahad been a part and parcel of the awareness of nationalistawakening since the 19th century. The trauma of partition atindependence accentuated the anxiety of ‘disunity’. Emergenceof the post-revolutionary regime in 1949 in China heightenedthe sense of persecutory anxiety once represented by ‘castratingMuslim plunderers’ and ‘bad British-colonial mother’. Thus, longbefore insurgency became the defining characteristic of North-East, referring to Assam, the land of nationalist GopinathBordoloi, and political leadership of Manipur, Sardar Patelwrote to Jawaharlal Nehru, “The people inhabiting theseportions have no established loyalty or devotion to India. Eventhe Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas are not free from pro-Mongoloid prejudices” defining the population clearly as the‘cultural other’.

While there are other instances of “Merger Agreements” beingsigned in situations of stress and duress (Jammu & Kashmir)as well as of military intervention (the police action that endedNizam’s rule in Hyderabad in 1948), what makes the Manipursituation unique is the steam-rolling of democratic institutionsthat the merger represents, the irony of a state (India) which atthat time aspired to be a democratic republic, but was not oneyet, effectively undermining the foundations of an existingdemocratic state through a basically military manoeuvre, makesthe case of Manipur quite exceptional.

That all this was justified not by reference to the ‘will of thepeople’ of the territories concerned (as was the case withHyderabad) or by a response to internal aggression (as is saidto be the case with Jammu & Kashmir), but by invoking a‘strategic necessity’ is all the more revealing. The reason citedfor the decision to ‘take over’: Manipur is a ‘border state’ and‘backward’, therefore its take over is a ‘strategic necessity’.These were the expressions used by V.P. Menon (then – HomeMinister Sardar Vallabhai Patel’s able bureaucratic lieutenant,who has been described as the ‘Arch Manoeuverer’ of


‘Integration’) when referring to the merger of Manipur with theIndian Dominion. The fact that he uses the expression ‘takeover’ to mean ‘integration’ speaks for itself. (Nayanjyoti)

A ‘border state’ that is also ‘backward’ needs to be ‘taken over’because it is a ‘strategic necessity’. A ‘backward’ people neednot be consulted about whether they would actually like to be‘taken over’. A battalion marches in, and a population is told bythe armed forces of a state that is still trying to get its ownconstitution together, that the constitutions that ‘backward’people give to themselves, or the democratic institutions thatthey evolve in the course of their ‘history’, are of noconsequence. What is of consequence is the ‘strategic necessity’of the emerging Indian state, trying to live up to theimperatives of its imperial inheritance (see Bimol Akoijam -Another 9/11, Another Act of Terror - The ‘Embedded Disorder’of the AFSPA).

Writing further about the nature of AFSPA, Nayan says:

A cursory reading of AFSPA reveals that the Act is an act oflegitimizing the involvement of the military in the domesticspace, not supplementing by replacing ‘civil power’. The militarycharacter of the Act is reflected in multiple ways. AFSPAallows ‘use of armed forces’, defined as ‘military forces and theair forces operating as land forces’ and ‘any other armed forces’of ‘the union’ (Section 3) in the domestic space.

Section 2(c) of the Act also clearly shows the close affinitybetween AFSPA and those laws governing the military, such asthe Army Act (1950). It reads, “All other words and expressionsused herein but not defined in the Air Force Act, 1950, or theArmy Act, 1950, shall have the meaning respectively assignedto them in those Acts”.

In six sections, being one of the most shortest Acts to be passedin the history of the Indian legislation, it unmasks the militaryparadigm involved. For example, what constitutes the ‘disturbedand dangerous condition’ for an area to be declared a ‘disturbedarea’ in not defined at all (Section 3). All that is required, isthat an area be declared as a ‘disturbed area’. It is as good or


bad as declaring war, once it is so declared, what it means isclear. In fact, the principle of war is unmistakable here. Justlike declaring war, once an area is declared as ‘disturbed area’,the personnel of the ‘armed forces’ simultaneously acquirepowers to us ‘force as may be necessary’ based on their ‘opinion’and ‘suspicion’ to effect ‘arrest without warrant’ or ‘fire upon orotherwise use force, even to causing death’. (Section 4).

Also, unlike assumption of innocence of a ‘suspect’ or ‘accused’in the domestic space, hostile intention of the inhabitants of thealien and hostile space is taken for granted for the militarypersonnel. Thus, the ‘opinion’ and ‘suspicion’ of the commandingofficer of a military formation serves as the basis for exercisingpower to ‘fire upon or otherwise use force’ which he thinks is‘necessary’ not only to ‘search any premises or destroy anyshelter and structure’ but also ‘arrest or even to causing death’.(Section 4).

The presumption of hostile intent as the legitimate basis forthe ‘armed forces’ to take action, characteristic of a war zone, ishighlighted when these powers can also be exercised for actsthat are ‘likely to be made’ or ‘about to be committed’. Besides,the nature of the power conferred upon the armed forces, thefact that commanding officers are given the power to judge andexecute action on his own, only proves that the Act is based onthe business of war. In a ‘war situation’, any officer -irrespective of whether he is a Commissioned, JuniorCommissioned or Non-Commissioned Officer - leading his menin the field has to be the judge as well as part of the body thatexecutes his judgments. In the context of ‘maintaining law andorder’ within the domestic space, the same person or bodycannot be the judge as well as the one who executes thejudgment.

Moreover, ‘the soldiers’ operational space, that is ‘alien andhostile’, is a relatively undifferentiated space and it does notrequire elaborate conditions and procedures as in the case ofthe differentiated domestic space. Hence, unlike other Acts(including the erstwhile POTA) which provide explicit conditionsand elaborate procedures running into pages, AFSPA is hardlya one-page Act with six sections. All that the Act requires is to


restate the assumption of taken-for-granted hostile intent(based on ‘opinion’ and ‘suspicion’) of the inhabitants of thealien and hostile space (‘disturbed’) to exercise the power toeliminate, destroy or neutralize the latter (Section 4).

AFSPA does not have any provision for interrogation and/orgathering evidence. Nor is it like any other so-called ‘speciallaws’, meant to ‘facilitate’ trial or ‘enhance’ conviction rate. It isplainly an instrument of war empowering the military andforces operating under it to eliminate, neutralize and destroythe enemy or ‘suspected enemies’, which more often than notpractically include everybody residing in the ‘disturbed area’.Enough instances are there to show that civilians in a‘disturbed area’ are also inherent targets under the Act.

Civilians are always at the receiving end of the Act, as in anyother war zone in alien territory forming part and parcel of the‘collateral damage’ thus making indiscriminate firing and killingof civilians, including women and children, by security forcesintrinsic to the use rather than deployment of the military, inconcrete terms insurgency has spread and thrived in the North-East. This begs the question: What has the military been doingall these decades and how has AFSPA furthered counter-insurgency? Such questions, along with subversion ofdemocratic institutions and principles through prolonged andcontinuous deployment of the armed forces under AFSPA, raisequestions of militarism i.e., a ‘phenomenon by which a nation’sarmed services come to put their institutional preservationahead of achieving national security or even commitment to theintegrity of the government structure of which they are a part,which goes far beyond the idea of the military or use ofmilitary per se in counter-insurgency.’

Interestingly, it was observed that American troops deployedand engaged in actual combat in the recent Iraq war primarilycame from the American soil, not from its military bases inforeign countries. In this sense, the ‘American network of(military) bases is not a sign of military preparedness but ofmilitarism’. In a similar sense, continuous enforcement ofAFSPA and deployment of troops under the Act seem to serveas a reminder of a ‘presence’ rather than ‘combating’ the


insurgency per se in the region. The columns of ‘armed forces’during ‘combing operations’ and troops patrolling the streets,towns and villages have not restricted the activities of theinsurgents who are as active as, if not more than, they weretwenty years ago. But these movements and activities of the‘armed forces’ definitely convey the presence of the might of theIndian state to the people. This reminder is also communicatedin frightening dimensions by the so-called ‘excesses’ in whichmen, women and children are killed in ‘retaliation’ to attackson the ‘armed forces’ by the ‘insurgents’. More than being casesof ‘human rights abuses’, those ‘excesses’ for which noaccountability can be fixed on anybody are reminders of themilitarism that has subverted the democratic institutions andethos in the North-East. (See Nayanjyoti: Integrate, Develop or“Shooting-to-Kill on Suspicion” in a South Asian Periphery, theArmed Forces (Special Powers) Act in North-East India. Termpaper submitted by Nayanjyoti to CSSS/SSS/JNU.)


“Indian Army Rape Us” read the banner which the women wereholding when they protested against the murder and death ofManorama Devi in front of Army Headquarters in Imphal(Manipur) in the year 2004. Thangjam Manorama, a Manipuriwoman, was raped and murdered by jawans of Rashtriya Riflesin July 2004. Testifying before the (retired) Justice UpendraInquiry Commission, instituted to probe the circumstancesleading to the death of Ms. Manorama, her bereaved mothersaid that around seven or eight personnel of the Assam Rifles(AR) violently entered their house in the intervening night ofJuly 10 and 11, and one of the personnel pointing his gun ather, asked about Ms. Manorama. “At that point of time,Manorama came out of her room and the AR men pounced onher and took her towards the verandah”. She further said thatManorama was dragged outside the house and the personnelseverely beat her up, and that she could hear the ‘muffledvoice’ of her daughter. After sometime, the personnel broughtManorama back into the house. At this time, the mother saidthat Manorama “was clutching her phanek (a sarong-liketraditional garment worn by Manipuri women) with her lefthand”, and that her “shirt was unbuttoned”. The personnelmade out an arrest memo and got Manorama’s mother to puther thumb impression on the memo. Before taking her away,the personnel allowed Ms. Manorama to change into a newphanek and shirt. The mother said that the lifeless body wasdiscovered at Yaipharok Manik village the next morning. Theautopsy on Manorama’s body was conducted at the RegionalInstitute of Medical Sciences hospital in Imphal, the statecapital, after the Irilbung police picked up her body. Testifyingbefore the Upendra Commission, the doctors who conducted the

IROM SHARMILA’S STRUGGLEAND HER BODY AS A SITE OFCONTESTATION


autopsy confirmed the presence of semen on the undergarmentsof the victim, and more than half a dozen bullet injuries,including the genitals.

The spokesman of the security forces, while claiming‘responsibility’ for the ‘killing of a hard core PLA cadre’, statedthat they had acted on the basis of ‘specific information’ aboutthe presence of PLA cadres at Bamon Kampu area. They wenton to state that, on this basis, an “AR team rushed to the areaand apprehended Manorama. During interrogation, shedisclosed that she possessed an AK-47 rifle and was willing totake the army personnel to recover the weapon. However, onthe way, she was gunned down by the AR personnel as shemade a bid to escape by jumping down from the army vehicle.One radio set, hand grenade and some incriminating documentswere recovered from her possession.”

On the face of it, these accounts seem no different from thefamiliar stories that emanate from the ‘normal’ world ofcounter-insurgency operations in the North-East.

The bereaved mother’s statement could have been any‘unofficial’ account, made only to be delegitimised by officialspokesmen as ‘baseless allegations’ made by vested partiesagainst the patriotic soldiers of the Indian security forcesfighting the ‘enemy within’. The post-hoc statements of thearmy officials would have been the final say on the ‘official’reality of the situation on how they have eliminated an ‘enemy’.

This time, however, there was a ‘Freudian slip’ that revealedthe inner reality beneath the normality of hitherto familiarcounter-insurgency narratives in the North-East. HavaldarSuresh Kumar of the Assam Rifles, who signed the arrestmemo, inscribed on the memo that Ms. Manorama was beingarrested as a ‘suspect’ and that nothing had been taken fromher house or her person.

There is no legal ‘absurdity’ in the killing of Ms. Manoramaunder the AFSPA. What does ring hollow is the incredulity of anarrative that features a group of armed men of the mightyIndia military having necessarily to fire more half-a-dozenbullets in order to subdue a women dressed in phanek while


she was allegedly trying to escape from them by jumping downfrom their vehicle, and that too late at night. Havaldar SureshKumar’s inscription on the arrest memo says that nothing wasrecovered from her - meaning she was un-armed. The post-hocstatement by the spokesman of the security forces, on the otherhand, mentions the recovery of a ‘hand grenade’, a ‘radio set’and ‘incriminating documents’ from ‘her possession’.

The death of Manorama opened out issues that became toounpalatable for the brutalized people of Manipur.

Indeed, for many, this was the last straw. Venting decades ofsuppressed rage, a group of prominent women in thecommunity protested by disrobing and staging a “NakedProtest” in front of the Assam Rifles Headquarters in the heartof Imphal City. They shouted, “Rape us, kill us, take our flesh”,while attempting to break open the gate of the ARHeadquarters. In immediate response, an indefinite curfew wasimposed in Imphal and the surrounding areas (see BimolAkoijam - Another 9/11, Another Act of Terror - The ‘EmbeddedDisorder’ of the AFSPA).

The rape and murder of Manorama is not an isolated case, butthousands of these kinds of sexual assaults and murdershappen to the women in the North-East every day since thepast sixty years.

The Indian state and its killing machines use the body of thewomen in these areas to exercise the control on behalf of theIndian state.

Irom Sharmila has been on a fast for the revocation of AFSPAsince 11 years; her body also has become a site of contest forlegality and illegality of the Indian state. Indian state, whoseconstitution guarantees right to life and liberty, also kills, rapesand murders thousands of women every passing year. IromSharmila has been arrested, rearrested and force-fed manytimes ostensibly to make her live, this was done by theauthorities to stop her from dying - invoking the attempt tosuicide of the Indian penal code.

On the other hand, Indian security forces go on killing, rapingand torturing women every day.


This exposes the farce of legality of the Indian system whichhas been imposed on the body of Irom Sharmila.

The 39-year-old Manipuri is about to complete 11 years of ahunger strike in protest against AFSPA that gives securityforces powers to kill with impunity. The UPA promised as farback as 2004, to replace the act with a ‘more humane’ law buthas shown little interest in taking up the task in the face ofopposition from the internal security establishment. UnionHome Minister P. Chidambaram recently admitted there wasno consensus within the Government on the issue. Ms.Sharmila’s fast began on 3rd November 2000, a day aftersecurity personnel shot down 10 people at a bus stand justoutside Imphal. Within days, she was detained by the police.Since then, she has been nasally force-fed a liquid concoction ofnutrients in a hospital, which serves as her prison. After everyyear in detention, she is released for a day and rearrested forattempting to commit suicide - because she refuses to call offher fast until the government repeals the legislation, which isin force in Manipur, Assam, Nagaland and parts of ArunachalPradesh, besides Jammu & Kashmir. Hers may be the longesthunger strike in recorded history but it has generated little orno interest outside Manipur. In recent days, the attention Ms.Sharmila has received in the wake of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption hunger strike has served to highlight her personallife. She comes out as a resolute but lonely woman, caughtbetween her iconic importance to the struggle against AFSPAand her human desire to lead a normal life, therefore makingher struggle an epic struggle in modern Indian history.

CONCLUSION

In fact, by legitimizing the use of military force in the internalaffairs of the state beyond what is already provided in theCriminal Procedure Code and the provisions of emergency inthe constitution, AFSPA seeks to supplant rather thansupplement civil authority with military authority in theadministration of everyday life. There is no question that ifexigency demands, the State, under the Indian constitution, canalways promulgate an ordinance to use its military might todeal with that exigency. But to convert such an ordinance into


a regular law that stays in place for almost half a century is toentrench a military structure and ethos in the polity andstructure of the state. It sets into motion the process ofreproduction and appropriation of the military structure andethos by other instruments of the State (the paramilitary andpolice) as well as civil society itself. Ultimately, it leads to acomplete subversion of the basic foundation of society andpolity. It blurs the necessary distinctions between the policeand the military, between the civilian and the combatant, andbetween ‘domestic’ and ‘alien’ space. This is what has happenedin Manipur.” (Bimol Akoijam)

As Bimol Akoijam says, the single Act AFSPA has given rise toa plethora of ‘acts of horror’, like the thousands of murders,rapes, custodial deaths/rapes, disappearances, torture,encirclements, combing operations and genocides. Recentlydiscovered unmarked graves in Kashmir are a chillingtestimony to these hard realities of everyday living in Kashmirand North-East.

The list of such acts in the North-East is long, but to name afew well-known cases, from 1980 onwards, they include themassacres of civilians at Heirangoithong (Manipur) in 1984; atRegional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS Manipur) in 1995;at Malom (Manipur) in 2000; the horror of army torture andviolence on civilians during Operation Blue Bird (Manipur) in1987 and Operation Rhino (Assam) in 1991; indiscriminatefiring on civilians by armed forces personnel when a tyre oftheir own vehicle burst in the town of Kohima (Nagaland) inMarch 1995; the shelling and destruction of the town ofMakokchung (Nagaland) in 1994; the enforced disappearances ofLoken and Lokendro (Manipur) in 1980; and the rape of MissN. Sanjita [who subsequently committed suicide (Manipur)] in2003.

I would conclude by stating a fact-finding report-cum-demandby SAHELI-PUDR fact sheets.

SAHELI and PUDR Fact Sheets and Demands

Outside the North-East too, human rights violations in Jammu& Kashmir under the AFSPA are commonplace, including


disappearances, torture, arbitrary killings and numerousinstances of mass rape of Kashmiri women by security forces.

AFSPA: Constitutional Contradictions

The large-scale violations of fundamental rights in the north-eastern states is a direct consequence of the provisions of theAFSPA, of areas declared as Disturbed Areas under Section No.3 and the simultaneous acquiring of wide powers by armypersonnel under Section 4 of the Act.

The AFSPA which grants armed forces personnel the power toshoot to arrest, search, seize and even shoot-to-kill, violate theRight to Life enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution ofIndia which guarantees the right to life to all people.

The AFSPA also violates the International Covenant on Civiland Political Rights (ICCPR). India signed the ICCPR in 1978,taking on the responsibility of securing the rights guaranteedby the Covenant to all its citizens. In particular, the Act is incontravention of Article 6 of the ICCPR guaranteeing the rightto life.

Crucially, the AFSPA effectively undermines civil authority. Forinstance:

After the Oinam incident (1987) the Chief Minister wrote to theUnion Home Minister, “The civil law has, unfortunately, ceasedto operate in Senapati District Manipur due to excessescommitted by the Assam Rifles with complete disregard shownto the civil administration….the Deputy Commissioner and theSuperintendent of Police were wrongfully confined, humiliatedand prevented from discharging their official duties by theSecurity Forces”. And consequent to the Kohima incident in1995, even the Superintendent of Police, Kohima, was stoppedat gun point by army personnel.

At the same time, the AFSPA is an emergency legislation thatconstitutionally requires to be reviewed every 6 months. Yet ithas been imposed in Manipur and other states of the North-East for years on end, which contributes the misuse ofunbridled and arbitrary powers by the armed forces.


END THE LAW THAT GIVES THE ARMED FORCESIMMUNITY FOR RAPE, MURDER, TORTURE AND OTHERHEINOUS CRIMES.

END THE ARMED FORCES (SPECIAL POWERS) ACT, 1958

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958: A Fact Sheet

[A fact sheet adapted by the SAHELI and PUDR team fromearlier reports and submissions to the Jeevan ReddyCommittee]

Over the last five decades, heavy militarization in the North-East has taken its toll on normal civilian life and led toinnumerable instances of violations committed against thecivilian populations there. Encounter deaths, extrajudicialkillings, disappearances, arbitrary arrests, rape and torturehave been a regular feature among the relentless series ofatrocities meted out to the people by the army with impunity,especially in areas where they are protected by legislations likeAFSPA.

Some of the most widely known incidents of suchexcesses in the North-East are:

� Army torture and violence against the villagers of Oinam(Manipur) in 1987 who were detained in army camps,beaten mercilessly, given electric shocks. At least 3 womenwere raped, 15 villagers killed, and many left permanentlydisabled.

� The gang-rape of the women of Ujanmaidan (Tripura) bysecurity forces.

� The terror wreaked by the army in Assam during OperationRhino in 1991.

� The shelling of the town of Ukhrul (Manipur) with mortarsin May 1994 by the Assam Rifles when they violentlyransacked the town, leaving many homes damaged, over ahundred men and women bleeding with serious injuries and3 dead.


� Four women raped at gunpoint, and homes and shops set onfire by the Maratha Light Infantry, killing other people inDecember 1994 in Mokokchung (Nagaland).

� Indiscriminate firing on civilians and combing operations bythe combined forces of the 16th Rashtriya Rifles, CRPF andAssam Rifles when a tyre of an army jeep burst in theKohima town (Nagaland) in March 1995.

� Torture, forced detaining, starvation, sexual assault ofwomen and looting in the 5 villages of Namtiram (Manipur)in 1995 by the 21st Rajputana Rifles.

� The army’s reign of terror in Jesami (Manipur) in January1996.

� The rampage of the village of Huishu (Manipur) by theAssam rifles in March 1996.

� The massacre of 10 innocent civilians by the Assam Rifles inMalom (Manipur) on 2nd November 2000 by security forces.

� The torture, rape and killing of Thangjam Manorama inImphal (Manipur) in 2004.


REFERENCES

1. A. Bimol Akoijam – Another 9/11, Another Act of Terror -The ‘Embedded Disorder’ of the AFSPA.

2. Nayanjyoti – Integrate, Develop or “Shooting-to-Kill onSuspicion” in South Asian Periphery – Term paper submittedto CSSS/SSS/JNU.

3. End Army Rule - Committee for the Repeal of the ArmedForces (Special Powers) Act, Delhi.

4. An Illusion of Justice - PUDR Delhi 1998.

5. Licence to Kill – INSAF, Delhi 2005.

6. Fantasies of Development and The Democracy Deficit inNorth East India by Sanjib Baruah.

7. An Analysis of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 -PUCL and Asian Centre for Human Rights.

8. Manipur in the Shadow of AFSPA.

9. Love in the time of AFSPA. Hindu editorial.

10. Poem on Sharmila by Kamayani Bali Mahabal - Movementof India.

11. SAHELI–PUDR Fact Sheet on Human Rights abused inNorth-East.


IROM SHARMILA -IRON LADY OF MANIPUR

Irom Sharmila Chanu (born March 14, 1972), also known asthe “Iron Lady of Manipur” or “Mengoubi” (“the fair one”)[1]is a civil rights activist, political activist, and poet from theIndian state of Manipur. Since 2 November 2000, she has beenon hunger strike to demand that the Indian government repealthe Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA), whichshe blames for violence in Manipur and other parts of India’snortheast.[2] Having refused food and water for more than 500weeks, she has been called “the world’s longest hungerstriker”.[3]

The following linked statement was released by her hand at thefortnightly habeas corpus hearing Lamphel Court Complex onNovember 30, 2011 and is the clearest statement of hersatyagraha showing both her sanamahi/vaishnavaite andgandhian roots and her poetic style.[4]

Contents

1 Decision to fast

2 Continued activism

3 International attention

4 Works on her life

5 References

1. Decision to fast

On November 2, 2000, in Malom, a town in the Imphal Valleyof Manipur, ten civilians were allegedly shot and killed by theAssam Rifles, one of the Indian Paramilitary forces operating inthe state, while waiting at a bus stop.[5,6] The incident later

(from Wikipedia)


came to be known to activists as the “Malom Massacre”.[7] Thenext day’s local newspapers published graphic pictures of thedead bodies, including one of a 62-year old woman, LeisangbamIbetomi, and 18-year old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 NationalChild Bravery Award winner.[6]

Sharmila, the 28-year-old daughter of a Grade IV veterinaryworker, began to fast in protest of the killings, taking neitherfood nor water.[8] As her brother Irom Singhajit Singh recalled,“The killings took place on 2 November 2000. It was aThursday. Sharmila used to fast on Thursdays since she was achild. That day she was fasting too. She has just continuedwith her fast”. 4 November is also given as the start day of herfast. On the Friday third of November she had her last supperof pastries and sweets then touched her mother’s feet andasked permission to fulfill her bounden duty.[9] Her primarydemand to the Indian government was the repeal of theAFSPA, which allowed soldiers to indefinitely detain any citizenon suspicion of being a rebel.[5]The act has been blamed byopposition and human rights groups for permitting torture,forced disappearances, and extrajudicial executions.[5,8]

Three days after she began her strike, she was arrested by thepolice and charged with an “attempt to commit suicide”, whichis unlawful under section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, andwas later transferred to judicial custody.[9] Her healthdeteriorated rapidly, and the police then forcibly had to usenasogastric intubation in order to keep her alive while underarrest.[3] Since then, Irom Sharmila has been regularlyreleased and re-arrested every year since under IPC section309, a person who “attempts to commit suicide” is punishable“with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to oneyear [or with fine, or with both]”.[9,10]

However from 2005 additional constraints were imposed by theManipur State the only official document authorizing this is onesent by the Home Secretariat purportedly in response to arequest from the DG Police (Prisons) asking for the HomeSecretariat to ban all further visitors to her who did not firstgain their clearance. This letter was deemed supra vires theauthority of the Home Secretariat by HH Roland Keishing the


Chief Judicial Magistrate Imphal East in a meeting withSharmila in chambers February 2011. He had summoned theSec Gen of the All Manipur Bar Association to chambers toassist Sharmila in High Court action to overturn the ban andassert her constitutional rights. However the lawyer laterreneged on his promise a pattern that has been repeated nowseveral times each time without explanation. But on thegeneral principle of the illegality of AF(SP)A as can be notedbelow many human rights lawyers have made statements andresolutions in opposition to it.

2. Continued activism

By 2004, Sharmila had become an “icon of public.[5] Followingher procedural release On 2 October 2006, for around fourmonths, Irom Sharmila Chanu went to Raj Ghat, New Delhi,which she said was “to pay floral tribute to my idol, MahatmaGandhi.” Later that evening, Sharmila headed for JantarMantar for a protest demonstration where she was joined bystudents, human rights activists and other concernedcitizens.[8] On 6 October, she was re-arrested by the Delhipolice for attempting suicide and was taken to the All IndiaInstitute of Medical Sciences, where she wrote letters to thePrime Minister, President, and Home Minister.[8] At this time,she met and won the support of Nobel-laureate Shirin Ebadi,the Nobel Laureate and human rights activist, who promised totake up Sharmila’s cause at the United Nations Human RightsCouncil.[8]

On 23 August 2011, Sharmila was involved in the wave ofAnti-corruption movement on invitation by Anna Hazare vialetter.[11,12] Following Mr Hazare’s promise to visit Imphaland support Sharmila there he announced in an interview withNDTV on September 13 that he would be sending tworepresentatives to meet with Sharmila soon to prepare for themeeting[13] Trinamool Congress have reiterated their supportfor her.[14] The Communist Party of India (CPI ML) has alsoreiterated their support for her and for repeal of AF(SP)A[16]Neither group has responded to a request to make the moralsupport effective by pledging to denotify Disturbed Area Statusfrom all of Manipur. Sharmila has been allowed to have her


own words reported first urging Dr Singh to reaffirm his pledgeto do something about the inhumanity of the AF(SP)A[16] Alsoin that report conveyed via a University Chancellor and formerIAS officer she urges the CM to allow visitors especially whenthey come from distant lands. In Assam many NGOs have comeout supporting her and urging for repeal of AF(SP)A[17] TheToI appears to have replaced the Calcutta Telegraph as themainland paper to break Manipuri news to the world.

This year 2011 the Christian Church has also become active insupporting Sharmila and agitating against AF(SP)A. The NCCIwhich represents Protestant and Orthodox Christians (30million of the 1.3 billion Indians but also the hill tribals ofManipur Nagas and Kuki Chin Federation about 40% of thepopulation of Manipur) made their first unequivocal statementon this issue in November.[18] The Roman Catholic Archbishopof Guwahati HG Thomas Menamparampil also spoke out indefence of Sharmila.[19] Although he has few in his flock hehas for some time been active in political agitation for peace inthe area. Sharmila’s spokesman has appealed to both sourcesdirectly for more effective support. Student Christians lesseffectively also offer moral support and prayer.[20] On 18November 2011 H Premkrishna Esq presented a paper onSharmila to the Indian Association of Lawyers who passed aresolution seeking the abolition of AF(SP)A[21]

Regrettably there is still no Indian Lawyer willing to take HighCourt action to overturn the blanket ban on visitors imposedillegally upon Sharmila we are still actively searching for one.In similar vein in December the National Human RightsCouncil in its second universal periodic review of human rightsin India again requested the Government to repeal AF(SP)A sothat it can conform with its treaty rights under internationallaw.[22] Although formed by the Government following theParis protocols with the Prime Minister and Chief Justice as exofficio members it has no authority to compel the Governmentto conform with its treaty obligations under international law itmay only advise the government when they are in breach ofinternational law. The advice was echoed by the working groupon human rights in India and the UN[23] The working group


also has no authority to compel the Indian Government toobserve its treaty obligations under international law, theymerely present the report to the UN which the IndianGovernment has been petitioning for a permanent place on itsSecurity Council the body set up to supervise treaty obligations.

Following these statements the banned UG (insurgency) outfitthe Maoists Communist Party Manipur also issued a statementof support for Sharmila though one suspects this is anotherexample of Manipuris infamous sense of humour.[24] Andfinally a film on the lighter side of Sharmila the poetess wonthe award for best documentary at the 2nd SiliguriInternational Short and Documentary film festival 23 November2011[25] Pune University has announced a scholarship programfor 39 Manipuri women students to take degree coursescommencing academic year 2012/2013 in honour of IromSharmila Chanu’s 39 years.[26] These two reports are aboutIndian modern artists in a typically Indian bureaucratic attackon Indian bureaucracy[27,28]

Unfortunately neither media report carries any images of theartwork. This latter sums up the recent interest in Sharmilafrom mainland India. It started as a Facebook social withdozens of Facebook pages taking up the name of Irom SharmilaChanu and then fading away. Six months ago visitors to thispage were lucky to make double figures, in September, it hadrisen to thousands. Now it has settled back to hundreds. It tookan adrenaline rush from Anna Hazare’s mercurial success inthe late summer also. These campaigns in the long run mayweaken the Indian Army’s resolve to maintain its low impactcivil war on the buffer states. But often campaigns like thesemarches art attacks are blowing off steam so that the middleclasses can feel they have done their duty and may return totheir real lives. What remains is for the Manipuri people toassert their democratic rights and remove AF(SP)A fromManipur by denotifying Disturbed Area Status come the nextelections or not.

3. International attention

Sharmila was nominated to the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize by a


Guwahati-based woman’s organization, the North EastNetwork.[29]

She was awarded the 2007 Gwangju Prize for Human Rights,which is given for “an outstanding person or group, active inthe promotion and advocacy of Peace, Democracy and HumanRights”.[30] She shared the award with Lenin Raghuvanshi ofPeople’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights, a northeasternIndian human rights organization. In Addition the largestmonetary prize the first Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize wasgiven to her in 2010 by the New Delhi IIPM.[31] She wasawarded the Sarva Gunah Sampannah ‘“ Award for Peace andHarmony”[32] aka the 12th Signature Women of Substanceaward (Assam) also in 2010.[33] 2009 she was awarded thefirst Mayillama Award (Kerala).[34]

And in 2010 in the presence of the Law Minister Sri V Moillyin Bangalore she was awarded in absentia a lifetimeachievement award.[35] She was most recently awarded anAdivasi Ratna award accepted by her brother.[36]

She has some support in Europe and a request for letters to besent to her within Manipur. The letters were presented to herin the form of a printed personalized slam book titled “Echelfor Eche” a Pan Manipur initiative on 11 October 2011. Aneffective end to the satyagraha can come next year if Manipurisconvert their symbolic and moral support to votes for MLAswho pledge to lift the disturbed area status from the whole ofManipur.

In Turkey 8–11 December 2010 The Which Human RightsFestival organized by the Turkish Human Rights Group theDocumentarist was dedicated to Irom Sharmila.[37]

The controversial BJP politician Varun Gandhi recently used aninternet tweet to announce his support of her[38] She haswritten a lot of poetry most recently a 12 poem bilingualanthology (Meiteilol and English), “Fragrance of Peace”(Nungsigi Leinam), was released by Zubaan books to coincidewith the tenth year of her detention,[39] with profits used tosupport her cause. This appears to have been a project first


suggested by Norwegian designer Mr Lars Muller, who wasappointed in December 2007 by the World Organization againstTorture OMCT as her ‘Defending the Defenders’ sponsor.[40,41]The JPF have appealed to the current SAARC conference[42] inthe Maldives on behalf of Sharmila while its founder presentedat the People’s SAARC in Kerala.[43]

4. Works on her life

Deepti Priya Mehrotra’s Burning Bright: Irom Sharmila andthe Struggle for Peace in Manipur details Sharmila’s life andthe political background of her fast.[44]

Kavita Joshi’s short documentary My Body My Weapon(released by Why Democracy? in 2007) alleges violations bysecurity forces that fuel Sharmila’s resolve to keep fasting untilAFSPA is repealed.[45] Tales from the Margins, a twin projectof the above film, also focuses on Sharmila, locating herresistance in the larger context of women’s protests against theAFSPA in Manipur.

Ojas S V, a theatre artist from Pune has been performing amono-play titled Le Mashale (Take the torch), based on IromSharmila’s life and struggle at several places in India. It is anadaptation of Meira Paibi (Women bearing torches), a dramawritten by Malayalam playwright Civic Chandran.[46,47]

Recently Save Sharmila Campaign, SaveSharmila.org, has beenlaunched by a joint network of civil societies. They all areraising voice for Irom Sharmila. Save Sharmila Campaign hasorganised a candle light solidarity prayer[48] on 25th JUNE2011 at Rajghat New Delhi. Approximately 200 peopleparticipated in it from all walks of life. On August 21, 2011,Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy, in her The Hindueditorial on Anna Hazare, contrasted Anna’s media-publicizedfast with the decade-long fast of Irom, including themotivations for both.[49]

Save Sharmila Campaign organised documentary screening andpanel discussion in various colleges of Delhi with support of itsstudent coordinators and volunteers. Screening and discussionalready organised in September month in South Asian


University, Delhi College of Arts & Commerce. The SaveSharmila Campaign has already got support from variouseminent social activists.

5. References

1 ^ Rituparna Chatterjee (20 April 2011). “Spot the Difference:Hazare vs. Irom Sharmila”. Sinlung. Retrieved 30 April2011.

2 ^ “Manipur Fasting Woman Re-arrested”. BBC News. 9March 2009. Retrieved 8 May 2011.

3 ^ a b Andrew Buncombe (4 November 2010). “A decade ofstarvation for Irom Sharmila”. London: The Independent.Retrieved 8 May 2011.

4 ^ . http://kanglaonline.com/2011/12/a-message-from-irom-sharmila-chanu/.

5 ^ a b c d Nilanjana S. Roy (8 February 2011).“Torchbearers for Victims in a Violent Land”. New YorkTimes. Retrieved 8 May 2011.

6 ^ a b Rahul Pathak (6 August 2004). “Why Malom is a bigreason for Manipur anger against Army Act”.IndianExpress.com. Retrieved 8 May 2011.

7 ^ Malom Massacre

8 ^ a b c d e Shoma Chaudhury (5 December 2009). “IromAnd The Iron In India’s Soul”. Tehelka. Retrieved 8 May2011.

9 ^ a b c “Manipur fasting woman re-arrested”. BBC News. 9March 2009. Retrieved 8 May 2011.

10 ^ Section 309 in The Indian Penal Code, 1860

11 ^ [1]

12 ^ Subramaniam, Vidya (28 August 2011). “Irom Sharmilaurges Anna to visit Manipur”. The Hindu (Chennai, India).

13 ^ http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/highlights-of-anna-hazare-s-interview-to-ndtv-133365


14 ^ “Mamata’s help sought for raising voice against AFSPA”.The Times Of India.

15 ^ http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/cpi-ml-to-show-solidarity-to-sharmila-with-nationwide-agitation/

16 ^ “PM should realize I am struggling for people: Irom”. TheTimes Of India.

17 ^ “Civil society groups in state back Irom’s cause”. TheTimes Of India.

18 ^ http://www.cathnewsindia.com/2011/11/09/ncci-demands-repeal-of-draconian-law/

19 ^ http://www.cathnewsindia.com/2011/09/07/christians-back-hunger-striker-campaign/

20 ^ http://e-pao.net epSubPage Extractor.asp?src=news_section.Press_Release. Press_Release_2011.11_years_of_Fasting_the_plea_unheard_the_struggle_uncovered_Justice_at_Cross-roads_20111102

21 ^ http://e-pao.net/GP.asp?src=5..191111.nov11

22 ^ http://e-pao.net/GP.asp?src=3..061211.dec11



25 ^ http://e-pao.net/GP.asp?src=24..241111.nov11

26 ^ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/Scholarship-for-Manipuri-girl-students-in-Sharmilas-honour/articleshow/11053460.cms

27 ^ http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/the-force-of-art/886614/

28 ^ http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/3/2011121120111211130008924a506ecfb/%E2%80%98World-looks-up-to-her-not-our-govt%E2%80%99.html

29 ^ “Irom Sharmila: A potent revolutionary fights theunacceptable”. headlinesindia.com. 6 March 2011. Retrieved8 May 2011.


30 ^ a b “Gwangju Prize for Human Rights”. May 18 MemorialFoundation. Retrieved 24 April 2011.

31 ^ Irom Sharmila awarded Rabindranath Tagore peaceaward - India - DNA

32 ^ [2]

33 ^ The Sentinel

34 ^ The Assam Tribune Online

35 ^ INDIA: Human rights defender awarded for lifetimeachievement — Asian Human Rights Commission

36 ^ Irom Chanu Sharmila Gets Adivasi Ratna Award —manipurhub.com

37 ^ [3]

38 ^ [4]

39 ^ Zubaan Books: Books

40 ^ [5]

41 ^ “Actions realised within the framework of the sponsorshipproject”. In the OMCT website third paragraph for actionsrealized within 2009 it states that the project of publicationof 12 poems through the collaboration of her Norwegiansponsor Mr Lars Muller could not be realized due toproblems with the Indian Partner. World Organizationagainst Torture OMCT. Retrieved 27 August 2011.

42 ^ http://ifp.co.in/imphal-free-press-full-story.php?newsid=2839&catid=1

43 ^ http://expressbuzz.com/cities/thiruvananthapuram/social-groups-come-together-for-people%E2%80%99s-saarc/331470.html.

44 ^ Penguin Review, Burning Bright

45 ^ Iron Lady Of Manipur- The Worlds Longest HungerStriker

46 ^ The Hindu, For a Noble cause


47 ^ Times of India, Single act that captures a dozen woundsof Manipur

48 ^ Civil society questions govt, why ignoring Sharmila’s fast| National Alliance of People’s Movements

49 ^ Arundhati Roy (21 August 2011). “I’d rather not be Anna”.In regards to Anna’s anti-corruption activism, now knownacross the sub-continent as “The Fast”, Roy remindedreaders: “‘The Fast’, of course, doesn’t mean Irom Sharmila’sfast that has lasted for more than ten years (she’s being forcefed now) against the AFSPA, which allows soldiers inManipur to kill merely on suspicion”. (Chennai, India: TheHindu). Retrieved 27 August 2011.

SOURCE: based on wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharmila_Chanu

a note on afspa & irom sharmila's struggle for justice

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