Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights

INDIA: Draconian Law Under the Lens

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 21 2010 (IPS) - A draconian law that allows army officers to shoot civilians in areas declared ‘disturbed’ has come under intense scrutiny, mainly as a result of months of separatist street protests in India’s Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which has origins in India’s colonial past, is operable not only in J&K but also in the insurgency-hit northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.

Repeal or even dilution of the AFSPA has been staunchly opposed by India’s military, which though assigned to protect the borders against external threats, is often called in to assist police and paramilitary troops in difficult situations.

On Sep. 17 India’s army chief Gen. V.K. Singh defended the AFSPA as an ”enabling provision, not an arbitrary one,” while attending a passing-out parade for newly recruited army officers in southern Chennai city. He hastened to add that it was for the government to take a ”correct decision” on changes to the Act.

An all-party group of India’s top political leaders scheduled to visit J&K Sep. 20-22 was expected to call for a review of the AFSPA, and for inquiries into the many killings and human rights abuses that are alleged to have taken place under its shield.

”There is no way that a country that calls itself a democracy can impose such a draconian law as the AFSPA for extended periods of time in J&K and the north-east,” Kavita Srivastava, rights activist and a leader of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) told IPS.

”Because of the wide powers that the AFSPA gives the military to arrest without warrant, shoot to kill and destroy property, while protecting its personnel from prosecution, a culture of impunity has, over the many years, been fostered in the affected areas,” Srivastava said.

The AFSPA, first introduced in the north-east in 1958, was extended to J&K in 1990. In 1997 the Supreme Court ordered a six-monthly review of areas declared ‘disturbed’, but this ruling is often breached.

Srivastava said numerous campaigns against the AFSPA have invariably called for the complete repeal of the Act, but the government could start by urgently removing its worst features in view of the many reported abuses attributed to it, some of them documented by the PUCL.

The present round of violent street protests in J&K, which has claimed at least 100 lives, was triggered off by the killing of three youths on Apr. 30 at Kupwara, close to the Line of Control (LoC) that separates J&K from the Pakistan administered part of the former princely state.

According to a PUCL bulletin the three men were victims of a fake encounter with army officers claiming that they were Pakistani militants who had infiltrated over the LoC. The PUCL said that the arms and ammunition said to have been recovered from them were in fact planted by the army.

On Aug. 21 students joined rights groups in the national capital to call for repeal of the AFSPA. ”The people in areas affected by the law don’t want cosmetic changes but are asking for a complete repeal,” said Sucheta De, an organiser of the protest and secretary of the All-India Students Association that is affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

Srivastava said the campaigners see hope in the fact that repeal of the AFSPA has been recommended by various committees appointed by the government such as the B.P. Jeevan Reddy Committee in 2005 and the Administrative Reforms Commission in 2007, headed by Veerappa Moily, currently India’s law minister.

Where J&K state is concerned the ‘Working Group on Confidence-Building Measures in J&K’, headed by Mohammad Hamid Ansari, now India’s Vice- President, specifically recommended the repeal of AFSPA in 2007.

In March 2009 the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, called for repeal of the AFSPA, describing it as a “dated and colonial-era law” that breached ”contemporary international human rights standards.”

Some estimates are that over 100,000 Kashmiris may have been killed by the armed forces since 1989, when separatism took a violent turn. According to the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice more than 8,000 people have also gone missing during this period.

PUCL general-secretary Mahi Pal Singh attributes the killings and disappearances to the impunity enjoyed by the army under the AFSPA. ”Allegations of fake encounters in Kashmir for reward or promotions are too frequent for comfort,” he said.

PUCL does not question the role of the army in protecting the international border in sensitive states like Kashmir and Manipur or shooting infiltrators but contends that there is no justification in placing civilian areas under the AFSPA.

”What we find truly objectionable is the impunity given to errant army officers,” Singh told IPS. ”The Kupwara case could be nailed only because Abbas Hussain Shah, a soldier who was involved in the conspiracy to kill the three hapless youths, confessed. Such cases rarely come to light.”

Singh however added that to be quite fair to the army it can only be deployed under civilian authority and very often elected provincial governments find the AFSPA a convenient tool to serve political ends.

”The 100-odd people who died in the recent street violence in Srinagar and other places were killed by police bullets, not army ones. There is no denying that local politics has a role in keeping the AFSPA going,” he said.

Singh said he believed that the prolonged imposition of AFSPA in Kashmir has perpetuated the cycle of violence between citizens and the armed forces and that the space for political negotiations in that state can be opened up only after it is repealed.

 
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