TODAY -
India's Other Hunger Strike: 11 Years and Counting
Time Magazine | By Nilanjana Bhowmick / New Delhi Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011
In a remote region across the country, another activist has been quietly waging her own hunger strike — without fanfare or media attention — for the last 11 years. Irom Sharmila has been fasting in Manipur, a small state of 2.5 million people in the far northeastern arm of India, to try to force the government to repeal a controversial law called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which gives the Indian army and paramilitary forces sweeping powers to arrest people without warrants and use deadly force against suspects without fear of prosecution. So why has Sharmila's fast — undoubtedly the longest-running in the world — gone virtually unnoticed, while Hazare's much-shorter protest captivated the nation?
Because the media hasn't devoted much attention to Sharmila, who is being force-fed through a plastic tube in her nose in a Manipur hospital, images of her thin frame and gaunt face don't regularly reach the public. This has allowed the central government to continue to look the other way, too, Loitongbam says. "Manipur is disconnected from mainland India. No one really bothers about what happens there," says Sreeradha Datta, director of the Kolkata-based Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies and an expert in northeastern Indian affairs. "Sharmila's fast has never been a priority for them [the government]."
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* This Post is uploaded on September 16, 2011
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