NEW DELHI, November 6: No Indian Governments in the last 57 years in India, including the present Narendra Modi government, have heeded to the people’s demand to repeal the oppressive military instrument of the Indian state called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Narendra Modi, his predecessors and Indian government officials do not bother even to meet Irom Sharmila, who has been fasting for the last 15 years to repeal this Act, showing the undemocratic and colonial characters of the Indian state, said a press release by Manipur Students’ Association Delhi (MSAD).
MSAD has stated in the press release that this year’s November 5 has added another year to Irom Sharmila’s resistance against the martial law and culture of impunity enjoyed by the Indian armed forces under the power of AFSPA. In the ‘Indian sub-continent’, Indian state indulges in crimes against humanity and Sharmila uses her body as the weapon in the fight against the inhuman and draconian Act and becomes a political prisoner. To recall, the immediate spark of her steadfast hunger strike was the Malom massacre by the Indian soldiers in Manipur that killed ten civilians, including women and children on November 2, 2000.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act is a notorious instrument of State terrorism, humiliations, prolonged detentions, tortures, killings, destructions, traumas, deprivations and disturbances; the logical culmination is unrestraint widespread culture of impunity by the state forces. This Act serves the agenda of creating a category of suspects and ‘disturbed areas’ to be oppressed at will; to suppress democratic voices against oppressive political regimes, exploitative market forces and destructive projects. The Act is symptomatic of an undeclared war trajectory superimposed on a category of subjected people, whose political aspirations and democratic rights are marginalized in the name of India’s security. The brutality of the colonial rule that British India had faced in the 1940s is what we are experiencing under a different political jargon called ‘disturbed areas, added MSAD in the press release.
