Dimapur, January 3 (MExN): The Nagaland Peace Centre (NPC), while expressing unhappiness over the extension of AFSPA in Nagaland for another six months, urged the Naga people to ensure that peace and security is maintained in the land.
“The enactment of this military act is a direct threat to peace; a violation to the Right to Life and depriving its citizens of their Constitutional Rights,” NPC Chairperson Pedi Miacheo said in a press release on Monday, expressing displeasure over the Government of India labeling Nagaland as ‘disturbed and dangerous.’
He said that the Nagaland Peace Centre had earlier written a letter to the President of India, who is also the constitutional head of the country, to lift AFSPA and Disturbed Area Act from Nagaland.
“In the letter, it stated that enforcing AFSPA is a threat to peace and security of the people and deprives them of their citizenship rights.
It also mentioned that the Government of India has breached all three ceasefire agreements (1964, 1975 and 1997) made between the Government of India and the Naga people by introducing Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Nagaland,” it said.
While the people were awaiting peaceful and amicable settlement of the long political issues between the Government of India and the Nagas, it said the AFSPA was extended despite the inhabitants of Nagaland being “terrorized by the act for many years now.”
The extension of AFSPA shows the ill motive of the Government of India, whose only reason is to suppress the Naga people, it claimed.
Reiterating its displeasure over the extension of AFSPA in Nagaland, the NPC affirmed its principle of non-violence and urged the Naga people in general and the Konyaks in particular, not to resort to violence but act wisely so that peace and security is maintained in the land.
