From summer of 2004 to winter of 2012 : Completing the circle
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: January 26, 2013 -

Aftermath of a Rally against killing of Manorama by Assam Rifles & AFSPA on 29 July 2004 :: Pix - David M Mayum

The circle is complete.

Cut back to the summer of 2004 and apart from the nude protest at Kangla, one is reminded of the days of street protests, torch rallies in the night defying curfew-stuffs that revolutions are made of-culminating in the Prime Minister of the country announcing the constitution of the Jeevan Reddy Commission to study the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and recommend its findings.

Fast forward to the winter of 2012 and the pictures of young men and women taking to the streets of Delhi and braving the water canons and police crackdowns culminating in the formation of the Justice Verma Commission is still vivid. Not only separated by years and geography, but the two cases of 2004 and 2012 would also appear poles apart, except for one profound point.

The rape and murder of women.

The two Commissions were also set up on different planks, with the Jeevan Reddy Commission set up primarily to study the ramifications of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act while the Justice Verma Commission was set up to recommend changes in laws to check crimes against women. However one significant meeting point is the notorious Army Act.

While the Jeevan Reddy Commission is reported to have recommended the repeal of the said Act, the Justice Verma Commission has recommended that security forces and police personnel should not be given protection under AFSPA if they commit sexual offences against women.

Not surprisingly Delhi has been cold to the recommendations of the two Commissions and herein lies the question of where the North East and Jammu and Kashmir, the only places where AFSPA has been enforced, stand in Delhi's scheme of things.

A rapist is a rapist.

Obviously this has not registered in the mind of the honourable Union Law Minister, Mr Ashwani Kumar. Rape in the line of duty ?

This pretty much sums up the response of the Union Law Minister to the recommendation that security forces and police personnel should not be protected under the provisions of AFSPA if they commit sexual offences against women.

In one swift statement or recommendation, the Justice Verma Commission has laid bare the point that security forces can get away with rape, if they happen to operate in areas where AFSPA is in force.

Unmasking yet another ugly facet of the Army Act. Delhi will not act on the recommendations of the Commission, this is a foregone conclusion, and this would amount to saying that women living in places where AFSPA has been enforced can be raped.

No one knows what has happened to the Assam Rifles personnel who picked up Th Manorama in the summer of 2004 and after brutally assaulting her throughout the night shot her to death the following morning.

A lop sided understanding of the dictum 'protecting the morale of the troops.' By its very definition, AFSPA is an Act to deal with extraordinary situation. And an extraordinary situation should be understood within a time frame.

Delhi obviously does not go along with this line as AFSPA has been in force in the North East and Manipur for decades.

Waging war by not declaring war is the strategy that the Centre has adopted all these years or else how does one explain the stoic refusal to review the Army Act, which is a dinosaur, a remnant of the British Raj ?