Meet on AFSPA slams recent MHA's recommendation
Source: The Sangai Express / Newmai News Network

Imphal, March 04 2015: A one-day consultative meeting held today at Manipur Press Club has slammed the recent stand of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs against repealing the controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.

In the consultative meeting many prominent leaders of organisations working in the field of human rights discussed the recommendations made by the Justice BP Jeevan Reddy Committee, which recommended repeal of the law terming it as "a symbol of oppression" and MHA's recommendation for rejecting the same.

MHA has recently recommended to the Union Cabinet to reject the report of Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee.

While strongly criticizing the latest development at the Centre, the speakers of the consultative meeting called for further strengthening the movement of the people of the State for repealing the "draconian" law.

File pic of students demanding revocation of AFSPA at Delhi

AFPSA has a discriminatory dimension, they alleged while observing that the Act is being imposed in some North East States and Jammu & Kashmir, not anywhere else in the country even though many States in mainland India are infested and affected with Maoist and their violent armed campaign.

They reminded that India has scrapped draconian Acts, TADA and POTA after the National Human Rights Commission wrote to MPs and Union Ministers in 1995 .

However, none of the rights bodies or MPs and Ministers have so far taken up such a step to repeal the black law that has claimed lives of hundreds of people.

It is unreasonable that the Centre should remain without taking up any step to repeal the Act (AFSPA), they observed.

They added that at the international level too, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, almost all the Committees monitoring the major UN human rights treaty bodies to which India is a party, all the UN Special Rapporteurs who visited India as well as the Working Group on Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council that reviewed India's human rights record during the 1st and 2nd cycle has all called for the repeal of AFSPA.

Organizers said that the consultative meeting was organized to deliberate upon the ways and means to make a final push to realize the just demand of repealing the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act by all means.

The consultative meeting resolved that they would campaign for an intensified form of mass agitation to ensure repeal of the Act while adopting a number of resolutions.