RIGHTS-INDIA: Women Power May See Repeal of Draconian Army Act

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

IMPHAL, India, Mar 10 2005 (IPS) - Whether India repeals its draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) may well hinge on the fate of 32-year-old Irom Sharmila in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur.

She is hovering close to death from a four-year hunger strike against the law, which provides impunity to the armed forces for any use (or abuse) of power they may exercise in their pursuit of ‘militants’.

Sharmila already enjoys iconic status in Manipur, a complex state of 2.5 million people on the India-Burma border – where development has been crippled by corruption, insurgency, ethnic strife, drug addiction and HIV infection.

”If Sharmila dies, the government will certainly be blamed for allowing it to happen and an explosive situation could easily develop,” Esther Chinnu Haokip, one of north-eastern India’s best known women’s rights activists told IPS.

The state and central governments are aware of the ticking time bomb. Ironically in a bid to defuse it, they have arrested Sharmila on charges of attempted suicide. She’s now in a high- security isolation ward of the state-run Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital here, where authorities are force-feeding her liquids through a nasal tube.

According to Munindro Waikhom, representative of the London-based Amnesty International and leader of the Imphal-based People’s Rights Organisation, it would be simpler for the authorities to concede to Sharmila’s demand that the AFSPA be repealed – thereby doing people affected by the law in Manipur and several other north-eastern states a good turn instead.

But that is easier said than done because not only the government but ordinary citizens are apprehensive that chaotic conditions in Manipur – where 25 different armed insurgents groups operate – may worsen rather than improve through a repeal of the AFSPA which provides for arbitrary arrests, shoot-to-kill powers and immunity from prosecution for security personnel.

”Given the situation where insurgent groups operate on the basis of tribal or ethnic loyalties, the Act itself is not bad although arbitrary detentions and shootings can in no way be justified,” said Haokip who represents the well-known womens’ rights organization North Eastern Network. She, however, was emphatic that her views were personal.

”What needs to be asked is what the act has achieved – after 25 years of its application in Manipur the number of insurgent groups have grown from two or three to 25 and the overall situation has deteriorated tremendously,” she said.

Amnesty International echoed Haokip in a recent report on Manipur that ”human rights abuses by government forces and armed opposition groups are a feature of daily life” and that ”intra-factional fighting among the opposition groups is common and political killings a regular event.”

”While recognising the security problems which armed opposition poses in Manipur and the right and obligation of all governments to defend themselves and their citizens against violent attacks, in fulfilling these obligations, human rights cannot be compromised,” added the Amnesty report.

Government confusion over what to do with AFSPA was apparent when the international rights group attempted to organise a human chain formed by schoolchildren near the main gates of the historic Kangla fort in the heart of Imphal recently, as part of nation-wide agitations to get the unpopular legislation repealed or drastically modified.

Top politicians, including members of parliament, privately expressed support for the human chain. But when the actual moment came for action, they just backed off. Police, then, confronted the schoolchildren, led by Waikhom. When they refused to disperse from the ornate gates of the fort, police used a water cannon against them.

The authorities had warned Waikhom that the human chain would not be allowed near the fort – declared a ‘supersensitive area’ after a group of 12 women shocked the world by stripping themselves naked in front of its gates last July to protest against the alleged rape and murder in custody of suspected woman insurgent Manorama Devi by the para-military Assam Rifles.

Thanks largely to the power of television, images of that protest went around India and managed to prick the country’s collective conscience. This enabled Amnesty International and other human rights groups to launch a nationwide campaign for the repeal of the AFSPA.

The stripping protest also brought back attention to the power of the Meira Paibees or torchbearers. These are women’s organisations which, armed with little more than a moral force, have intervened at critical junctures in Manipur’s chequered history to ensure justice and fair play.

In 1904, for example, Manipuri women compelled British colonial rulers from enforcing forced labour and in 1938 they successfully agitated against the export of rice from the fertile valleys of Manipur when there were shortages in the territory.

The independence and confidence of ordinary Manipuri women is readily visible in Imphal’s main market that is entirely run by women.

”There is little doubt that compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the country, Manipuri women enjoy a high position in society, are economically independent, mobile and enjoy prestige at social and religious functions,” explained Salam Irene who teaches psychology at the Manipur University.

Irene pointed to the powerful protective cult of the ‘Maibis’ or female shamans that may have added to the supernatural aura that seems to be gradually building around hunger striker Sharmila.

Although a complete repeal of the AFSPA may yet be a long way off, the women’s initiative has snowballed into a movement which has already led to the lifting of the act in Imphal town and the appointment of a five-man review panel led by the eminent jurist, Jeevan Reddy.

More importantly, for many Manipuris, the women’s actions have resulted in the banishment of the notoriously repressive Assam Rifles from Kangla Fort, seat of the erstwhile royal family until the colonial British annexed the former princely state in 1891.

Members of the Reddy panel say they have gathered three sets of views on the AFSPA: First that the act be repealed and the army confined to barracks, second that the army stays with the act replaced by legislation that is more sensitive to human rights and finally the army stays with the act modified.

What goes against the anti-AFSPA movement is the widely held belief that it is being orchestrated by insurgent groups, locally referred to as UGs (short for underground groups), who issue diktats from what films can be shown in theatres to whether restaurants that allow teenagers to neck can continue functioning. They also collect sizeable tax revenues and extort from large businesses.

Disobedience invites a bullet in the thigh as first warning. Among those given the ‘shot’ by insurgents groups in the first week of March in Imphal town alone include two owners of restaurants that allowed necking and petting and the principal of an engineering college for failing to meet a ‘tax’ demand.

Still Reddy has promised that his panel would ”try to do the right thing” while keeping ”the interest of society and people’s democratic and human rights in mind.”

If Reddy and his panel fail, the government will find itself up against the formidable woman power that has been so amply demonstrated time and again in Manipur.