Friday, November 4, 2011

4 NOV, 2011, 07.27AM IST, ET BUREAU Repeal Armed Forces Special Powers Act


Repeal Armed Forces Special Powers Act


Home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has said that the Cabinet last year decided to review the implementation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Jammu and Kashmir. This brings his views in line with those of J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah, who has recently demanded the scrapping of the Act from parts of the state. We welcome these views and strongly suggest the repeal of the Act. 

Since 1958, when this law was first implemented to curb militancy in India's north-east , it has left a trail of corpses and disappeared people, but with no positive impact. The AFSPA allows the military to enter anyone's home without warrants , arrest and hold people on suspicion, and shoot to kill. In areas covered by the AFSPA, the armed forces have immunity from prosecution by courts. 

The violence , sexual humiliation, disappearances and beatings that have occurred under the AFSPA in the north-east and J&K have been documented by agencies like the UN Human Rights Commission, the Red Cross and Amnesty International. There is a reason why people in states where the AFSPA is in force describe the military apparatus as a colonising force: it's because the AFSPA is the mutant of an Ordinance passed by the British to crack down on the 1942 Quit India movement. 

Where the AFSPA is in force, unalloyed power has let security forces develop powerful vested interests and access huge fund flows. This is reinforced by the immunity from scrutiny by any legal or constitutional authority that the Act guarantees. Things like the AFSPA might be normal in authoritarian states like the former Soviet Union, but are unacceptable in a proud democracy where people vote governments to power. Everywhere else in the country, the military answers to civilian authority. 

It cannot be otherwise in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, J&K , Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. Any sensible - and sensitive - government should repeal this colonial Act, and trust that the people of these eight states have the sense to run their own affairs sensibly without being bullied constantly by the military.

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