Armed Forces and North East India - An Insult to Democracy?

[Aberforth]

Not beating much around the bush, I decided to check the clauses of the Armed forces special act due to repeated requests from my North Eastern friends to enlighten myself in this subject. I came across Section 4 of AFSPA and it quite disturbed me -

Any commissioned officer, warrant officer, non commissioned officer or any other person of equivalent rank in the armed forces may, in a disturbed area-

can shoot to kill, under the powers of section 4(a), for the commission or suspicion of the commission of the following offenses: acting in contravention of any law or order for the time being in force in the disturbed area prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons.[

Basically this section points to one fact, armed force officer(s) can kill at their whim or minor paranoia and due to the other clauses protecting them, the north eastern populace wouldn't be able to do much about it except mourn their dead.

arrest, without warrant, any person who has committed a cognisable offence or against whom a reasonable suspicion exists that he has committed or is about to commit a cognisable offence and may use such force as may be necessary to effect the arrest as pointed by section 4(c)

You can well imagine the circumstances. Assuming an Army officer gets greedy/lusty and demand money or their sister. If they refuse he can as well arrest, use force, kill and claim reasonable suspicion. He can then rape their sister and dispose her using section 4(a). Of course the section 6 is there to protect him from all legal actions.

enter and search without warrant any premises to make any such arrest as aforesaid or to recover any person believed to be wrongfully restrained or confined by Section 4(d)

If the Armed force guy rapes their sister, kills their relatives and is caught, you can't even hold him in place or call the police. They can use this clause, break down your house and take him away and of course kill you for restraining him. And believed is a vague and relative term, isn't it? There isn't much the locals can do about this either.

Now we come to the icing on the cake -

Section 6. Protection to Persons acting under Act – No persecution, suit or other legal proceeding shall be instituted, except with the previous sanction of the Central Government, against any person in respect of anything done or purported to be done in exercise of the powers conferred by this Act.

So well if your relatives get killed, raped, house plundered there isn't much you can do. This legendary act protects the Indian armed forces for whatever their whim fancies on the North Eastern people as it keeps them immune to Judiciary. This section leaves the victims of the armed forces abuses without a remedy. Touche eh...?

The states which this draconian uncivilized act applies to are - "Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh". The act was passed on 11th September, 1958 in the Indian Parliament, massive victimization of the locals has happened ever since.

The actual militants make deals with the government, declare cease fires, bribe the armed forces and have total control over these states. The innocent civilians end up suffering, paying 'taxes' to the militants and getting raped, killed and plundered by the military. Ironically none of us mainstream Indians or Anglo-Indians have ever been victimized (I don't want to give them ideas though, I simple find it odd)

All subsequent governments of India have considered these grievances as trival, there is no serious initiative to scrape this inhuman act. With a small represetation of 22 MPs in Lok Sabha of 545 MPs they don't have a lot of say in this regard.

The AFSPA violates Fundamental Rights on North Eastern people giving them no judicial remedy using Section 6 as I said above. If you have knowledge of Fundamental Rights and International Human Rights you can compare them with the clauses of AFSPA and see if you are not ashamed we were negligent to these earlier.

International human rights groups and foreigners are banned from Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. If an Indian wants to visit these states they have to procure an informal visa called "Inner Line Permit" from the states houses and get themselves checked by the Army on entry and exit to prevent sneaking out anything conclusive. And we are talking of India.

If it is tiring to read all these of are simply uninterested, in short we have different laws for other races in India, one for all of us and one for them, theirs is designed for cruelty - with precision

 

[nix]

very disturbing news indeed. i didnt even know about this...very sad...

 

[Aberforth]

Well...this isn't exactly news. It has been happening since 1972 and several riots/act of violence has occurred in NE because of the atrocities by Indian armed forces. But due to their distance from mainland India and lack of media interest these issues of concern don't get much coverage.

Hate to admit, we Indians are hypocrites, we talk something and do something else and when someone speaks about it - we tend to feel uneasy about it and brush it under the carpet. The reason why the world does not really give credibility to most Indians.

 

[int86]

International human rights groups and foreigners are banned from Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. If an Indian wants to visit these states they have to procure an informal visa called "Inner Line Permit" from the states houses and get themselves checked by the Army on entry and exit to prevent sneaking out anything conclusive. And we are talking of India.

[/b]

This most disguesting to know. Actually I am feeling a bit shame. People in some pockets of india pay heavy price for "Unity in diversity" tag.
Cant we do something. Actually during early independence years many people visited those place but nowdays seldom people know those places.

 

[the_devil]

thats really digusting.i cant believe we indians are doing this against our own people.Even the Britishers werent this cruel.

i also saw a report on afspa in cnn ibn where in assam rifles opened fire in a crowded market area killing civilians(one of them was a presidents medal winner for bravery.)

 

[thunderbird.117]

That is what i been telling to my mum that india should have been in hands of british. Indian government and politican are corrupted. I been watching northern indian progress for very long time. Iam glad that Aberforth wrote that here so that indian will come to know. So far i can say india is a failed country. India will never be a superpower. The world is lieing that india is a superpower it is not at all a SP.

 

[ssdivisiongermany1933]

agree with u thunderbird

 

[mediator]

Corruption is what ailing India basically. Things wud have been a lot better if politicians had finished eating Samosas and acting like hooligans in Parliament!

 

[plsoft]

Indian politics is all about "Divide and Rule" whether it's in the Macro Level (Country as a whole) or the Micro Level (States). We, as the people, whether knowing or unknowingly, always fall for it because of our diversity, which is the politicians' strongest weapon.

 

[techtronic]

The most bizarre truth is these damn b@$t@rd$ get their allowance even without attending their sessions in parliament. Just sign the register available in the parliament and then take off in the govt provisioned Ambassadors

And even if they attend most of them sleep like our former PM (hate to say this)
Deve Gowda who mostly slept in the proceedings of the parliament

If we totally deduct these extra allowances for these **** heads, there is no need of any taxes (direct or indirect), our country can be as prosperous as before the British invaded it and plundered it to the core

 

[Aberforth]

Cant we do something.

We can do something. We can make every good hearted Indian aware of this, sadly most people including myself as of few days back were ignorant of this blatant cruelty to these unfortunate people. What we can do is spread this all over, make it a point everyone knows of it and speaks against it. Make the public opinion so strong that the politicians have to act.. We don't want to go down in history as cruel as US, Indonesia, Isreal or Saudi Arabia.

North easterns don't have a voice as the Indian government had enough PR clout to label them militants and mainland Indian people believe this. If we ignore these you know Karma, one day this will befall us. We got freedom from the British and snatched the freedom of the North easterns in the same way. How sadistic.

Look at Nandigram and how TATA and CPM governments fooled the nation into believing it was a political propaganda to demand your lands. Today it is them, tomorrow it may be us, if today we don't speak, tomorrow no one will speak for us.

 

[int86]

@Aberforth
Rather to start something from us, why not to join any current ongoing protest. Its our duty to mankind, we must assit them. Morever I follow non-violence, because mankind is not to fight but to make a better world.

 

[Aberforth]

Rather to start something from us, why not to join any current ongoing protest. Its our duty to mankind, we must assit them. Morever I follow non-violence, because mankind is not to fight but to make a better world.

Protesting, blocking vehicles, holding strikes is not the way to go in my opinion. Rather a public opinion is better, we can show our opinion of this through media, it will bring the issue to the core of attention of politicians.

I have experiences with protests during my student council times, all they do is generate negativity among public because of the disruptions. It turns like, "Oh this group must be another grievance group protesting for something or an election campaign", like the opinion you get when you see Greenpeace or Human Rights activists.

I think it is best we make more and more people aware of this rather than joining a movement or protest. A strong public opinion is at least as if not more effective than protest.

 

[thunderbird.117]

Protesting, blocking vehicles, holding strikes is not the way to go in my opinion. Rather a public opinion is better, we can show our opinion of this through media, it will bring the issue to the core of attention of politicians.

I have experiences with protests during my student council times, all they do is generate negativity among public because of the disruptions. It turns like, "Oh this group must be another grievance group protesting for something or an election campaign", like the opinion you get when you see Greenpeace or Human Rights activists.

I think it is best we make more and more people aware of this rather than joining a movement or protest. A strong public opinion is at least as if not more effective than protest.

I agree. .