MSAD holds demonstration against AFSPA
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, November 06 2015 :
Manipur Students' Association Delhi (MSAD) on November 5 staged a public demonstration against Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Arts Faculty, University of Delhi.
The demonstration also extended support to all people struggling against Indian military law besides extending solidarity to Sharmila's 15 years hunger strike against the draconian law.
In a press note, MSAD said that no Indian Governments in the last 57 years in India, including the present Narendra Modi government, have heeded to the people's demand to repeal the oppressive military instrument of the Indian state called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.
MSAD said Indian state indulges in crimes against humanity and Irom Chanu Sharmila uses her body as the weapon in the fight against the inhuman and draconian Act and becomes a political prisoner.
The association said that AFSPA is a notorious instrument of "State terrorism, humiliations, prolonged detentions, tortures, killings, destructions, traumas, deprivations and disturbances; the logical culmination is unrestraint widespread culture of impunity by the state forces." This Act serves the agenda of creating a category of suspects and 'disturbed areas' to be oppressed at will; to suppress democratic voices against oppressive political regimes, exploitative market forces and destructive projects, pointed out MSAD.
"The Act is symptomatic of an undeclared war trajectory superimposed on a category of subjected people, whose political aspirations and democratic rights are marginalized in the name of India's security.
The brutality of the colonial rule that British India had faced in the 1940s is what we are experiencing under a different political jargon -- called 'disturbed areas', said the press note.
Indian state still does not consider repealing this military Act despite fifteen years of Sharmila's fasting and 57 years of people's struggle against this draconian act.
State holds on AFSPA dearly, as it acts as a "surrogate in militarily engagement with neo-colonial and neo-liberal structure" at the same time, the agencies such as the military establishment and the corrupt personnel operating on the ground uphold AFSPA, in the name of counter insurgency, as it serves certain extra-institutional personal interests, stated MSAD.