Witoubou Newmai
When any campaign finds it hard to bring about a conclusive answer to vexed issues, the people behind such a movement are overwhelmed by lethargy, especially if they are driven other than by moral urge. To many human rights activists in the Naga community, as it appears, yesterday's campaign is a shibboleth today.
However, the sustained campaign by a handful of "moral thinking agents" in their own ways against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), though feeble, is "enough of a moral and political victory". Kind words from Nandita Haksar and Sebastian M Hongray are to be treasured at a time such as this--"We do not feel we have failed. We feel Indian democracy has failed. The failure is of the judges, the courts, and the Indian legal justice system and of Indian democracy. If we had not fought we would have failed not just in our duty as human rights activists but also human beings..."
As we all know, the tragedy is never that part where the general public and the armed forces are made parts of a common social system. The tragedy is that fact where our conscience fails to respond in the right perspective when security force personnel take the law into their own hands under the draconian act. See this--if one is given the license to destroy the other on mere suspicion then the whole situation depends on the mood of even a non-commissioned officer of the Army. Even such level of farce has failed to stimulate our senses. Or, we have become easy "pawns in a big game by which the human rights movement was hijacked..", again borrowing the words of Nandita Haksar and Sebastian M Hongray.
It is said bad laws only manufacture bad people. AFSPA has brought disenchantment in people. If an establishment suffers from certain phobia it should utilize its best resources to tackle the issue immediately. Caging certain section of the people under military apparatus for decades only demeans the establishment. The Act contravenes both Indian and International law standards. However, India's morality is done away by certain phobia it suffers.
According to material from the South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre, "When India presented its second periodic report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1991, members of the UNHRC asked numerous questions about the validity of the AFSPA, questioning how the AFSPA could be deemed constitutional under Indian law and how it could be justified in light of Article 4 of the ICCPR, the Attorney General of India relied on the sole argument that the AFSPA is a necessary measure to prevent the secession of the North Eastern states". Taking advantage of such rhetoric, our activists have resigned to cozy nests by banking on acute secession phobia suffered by India, saying that no herculean campaigns can produce any needed effect.
Here, it is worth reminding the concerted campaigns by international agencies against the draconian law. As recent as on November 5, 2015, the Amnesty International had made this statement—“Despite repeated calls to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from UN experts as well as national and international groups, the Act continues to be enforced and continues to cause flagrant human rights violations”.
According to the Amnesty International, during the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay’s visit to India in March 2009, it was clearly stated that the Act breached contemporary international human rights standards. “Furthermore, Margaret Sekaggya, then UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders in 2011 and also Christof Heyns, then UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary executions in early 2012, had recommended repeal of AFSPA. During the second cycle of the Universal Periodic Review in 2012, India also received specific recommendations to review and repeal AFSPA,” said the statement.
However, these recommendations were ignored as India was reluctant to accept them, it added. International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has also been asking the Government of India to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) without further delay. “The AFSPA has facilitated gross human rights violations by the armed forces in the areas in which it is operational,” Sam Zarifi, Asia-Pacific Director of the ICJ said. “It is a repressive and draconian law that should have no place in today’s India”.
Several UN human rights bodies have recommended that the AFSPA be repealed or significantly amended. These include the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (2014), the Special Rapporteur on violence against women (2014), the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (in 2013 and again in 2015), the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders (2012), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2007), and the UN Human Rights Committee (1997).
The sad part is that when international agencies are going steamy against the AFSPA, activists in our region feel they have had enough and wish away frivolously.
