AFSPA is legal and Constitutional
Licensed to kill and maim

- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 20, 2012 -

Viewed through its Constitutionality and the legality, the question of accountability and violating the law will not arise.

The legality and Constitutionality of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act has made it sure that the notion of responsibility will not arise in the ‘record’ of one thousand, five hundred and twenty eight people killed in a span of 33 years between 1979 and May 2012 in alleged fake encounters.

The figure includes 33 women and 98 children and this takes the death toll under questionable circumstances to a little over 46 per year in the last 33 years.

Take note, AFSPA is much more than a Military Act that allows the security personnel to open fire and kill anyone on suspect.

It does not violate the Constitution of India, as evidenced in the ruling passed by the apex Court in a case filed by the Naga Peoples' Movement for Human Rights, many years back.

This was the core message that can be read in the decision to set aside August 18 as a date to mark the passing of the said Act by Parliament in 1958 by human rights defenders.

A written instruction given to security personnel that they have the mandate of the highest law making body in the country to open fire, even to the extent of causing death, on suspicion, AFSPA is this and more.

It means one is a suspect and can be killed wantonly.

A gradual erosion in the value that is associated with human life.

A degradation of man's dignity and a case of a State becoming all too powerful, under the blanket immunity provided by an Act.

Given that this Act is imposed only in the North East region and Kashmir, the question of discrimination cannot be swept under the carpet. It is could be another manifestation of the fragile foundation on which India as a Nation rests, which has again manifested itself in different forms.

A people subjected to an Act, which is not deemed applicable to other citizens of the land, an Olympic medallist, read Mary Kom, feeling the compulsion to announce her Indianness on arrival at home, correction, Delhi, a place from where people are singled out on the basis of their physical appearance, a place from where people are constrained to prove their Nationalities by producing their ID documents, such as their passports and this has been the story of the North East region in general.

No wonder thousands of students and professionals from the North East and settled in other parts of the country have been forced to take the journey back home as a fall out of the clash between indigenous Bodos and Bangladeshi migrants in Assam.

Not surprising then that AFSPA is seen as another cog in the disconnect between all that the North East and her people stand for and the political and social consciousness that one generally associates with what is India and who Indians are.

More than 15 hundred people killed in alleged fake encounters over a period spanning 33 years, and one is left wondering whether 33 years is not too long a time to escape the definition of an abnormal situation, under which the said Act is sought to be imposed in the first place.

Political doublespeak cannot get clearer than this.