UN Special Rapporteur Margaret Sekaggya’s report to the UN Human Rights Council regarding India’s human rights situation is indeed a landmark step towards the movement for repeal of draconian laws specially the dreaded Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 was enacted specifically for Manipur and the other six States in the region. It negates every constitutional and legal provision concerning human rights when a State or a part of it has been declared a ‘disturbed area’ under the Act. With its prolonged imposition, the cycle of violence had only increased both in geographical spread and intensity. Enforced disappearances, arbitrary executions, torture, rape & molestation, house breaking, looting, arbitrary detention, etc., have became a part of everyday life in Manipur. And yet, few perpetrators of these gross violations of human rights ever got indicted or prosecuted. For all practical purposes, the armed forces enjoy complete immunity under the Act. Under the AFSPA, the armed forces are protected with immunity from their overt acts. However, this sense of not having to answer for their actions have percolated down to the state forces to such an extent that the Manipur Police Commandos are running amok killing people on their own without any thought to the impending consequences. This infectious air of impunity has filtered down to the state security forces thereby creating a new state sponsored terrorist group in the form of the commandos. Instituted for the purpose of containing insurgency in the state, the Manipur Police Commandos have tangentially digressed from their objectives and embarked upon the path of self-gain policy and fulfillment of personal agendas. The futile protests by the civilian population of the state to repeal the draconian laws, the ignored concerns and recommendations by the international bodies including the UN Human Rights Committee to review and repeal AFSPA as well as the failure of the Indian government to take any action on the recommendations of the committee led by Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy, constituted in the wake of the killing of Thangjam Manorama in the year 2004, for the repeal of AFSPA prompted Human Rights Watch to comment that “The Indian government has not only ignored the pleas of ordinary Manipuris and UN human rights bodies to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, but has even ignored the findings of its own committee. This reflects the sort of callousness that breeds anger, hate and further violence.” The recent report in The Hindu daily regarding denial of prosecution sanctions sought against Army officers against whom serious charges of heinous crimes committed under cover of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, by the Union home ministry is worth mentioning here. The Hindu report had said that in the past four years alone, the Union home ministry rejected at least 42 requests to sanction the prosecution of military personnel found by the police to have engaged in crimes such as murder, homicide and rape in Kashmir. This report quite ironically comes in the wake of a Supreme Court judgement by a two-judge bench a week earlier that the AFSPA, ought not to cover cases in which crimes such as murder or rape were committed.
In such a background, the recent recommendation of the UN Special Rapporteur calling for repeal of special laws like the AFSPA, National Security Act, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and others cannot be easily ignored. This once again confirms that, the AFSPA has outlived its days. It is an Act to handle an emergency situation. As we said earlier, if this emergency has lasted over half a century, the prognosis cannot be still called an emergency much less tackled as an emergency. It is a much more sustained ailment and the therapy would have to be something radically different from how it is being treated currently.
Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/03/afspa-has-to-go/
