By Surendra Mohan In order to crush the Quit India struggle launched by The Indian national Congress in August 1942, the imperial Government promulgated an ordinance on 15 August.
It was called the Armed Forces' Special Powers Ordinance 1942.
In 1958, a free India, with a Government of the same Party which the Ordinance was meant to crush, got Parliament to adopt that colonial ordinance as law.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act was amended in 1972, and made stricter.
The colonial background of the law itself makes it repugnant.
However, the whole of Northeast, excepting Sikkim and Mizoram, and Jammu & Kashmir in the Northwest, are governed by the Armed Forces with immunity, provided them by it.
These Forces are not accountable to any superior body.
Manipur, which has been witnessing a big agitation by the people against the Act, came under its sway in 1980.
Section 4 of the Act grants special powers to army officers, JCOs and non- commissioned officers to employ force against a person who is acting in contravention of the law in a 'disturbed area'.
The power to declare a particular area as disturbed area vests in he Union Government.
The State Governments can recommend their respective disturbed areas to the Union Government.
The Act grants to these officers unlimited power to destroy a place being used by an armed group as a training camp or a hideout and the power to arrest a person without warrant on 'reasonable suspicion' of having committed or about to commit a cognizable offence.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in 1991, found the above section to be incompatible with Articles 6, 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966, which was ratified by India in 1979.
It is also opposed to the International standards of Human Rights as defined in the International Bill of Human Rights.
In 1997, the Supreme Court, while validating it, had directed the Armed Forces to strictly observe certain guidelines relating to arrest, detention and interrogation, while using those special powers.
There are reports, however, that there have been innumerable violations of human rights, and that corruption as also collusion with the terrorists have also been in practice.
The Assam Rifles, in particular, has earned infamy in this regard.
The case of its atrocities in the early 1980's in the Naga areas which was brought before the Supreme Court was their first test, in which the Court decreed that the Army must not use schools and churches as detention and interrogation centres..
In 1987, the notorious Oinam case occurred in which two pregnant women were forced to deliver children on a playground surrounded b jawans.
The Naga People's Movement for Human Rights challenged the Act before the Guwahati High Court.
"We presented to the court ten thousand pages of evidence of atrocities committed by the Security Forces in just one year during one counter insurgency operation code- named Operation Blackbird in and around Oinam", says the indefatigable human rights activist Nandta Haksar who was the lawyer in all these cases..
The recent occurrence that has triggered the mass protests in Manipur was the result of the killing of 32 year old Ms.
Thangiam Manorama, while in the custody of the Assam Rifles.
She was picked from her house on July 10, and her body was found the next day, with easily visible torture that was inflicted on it.
The people believe that she was first raped and then murdered.
The Security Forces assert that she was a terrorist and that explosives and subversive literature were found in her possession.
The outraged people have been demonstrating against the Security forces since 13 July.
On 15 July, 15 women went naked to the Kangla headquarters of the 17 Assam Rifles to express their anger and sense of humiliation.
Roadblocks, torchlight processions, attacks on vehicles and hunger strikes have been going on.
The police has been patrolling the streets of Imphal, with readiness to use tear gas and rubber bullets against the agitators.
The Union Government's response was to depute a light- weight Shri Prakash Jaiswal, a Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs.
His presence was completely ignored and no person of substance paid heed to him.
In respect of the protests against the Act, reference must be made to the great act of fasting unto death by a poet and human rights activist Ms.
Irom Sharmila since November 5 2000.
She has been force- fed by the State Government since then.
The proponents of the Act, including, regrettably, the Left Parties, point out to the increases in the number of terrorist outfits in the Northeast.
The total is said to be seventy.
In Manipur alone, there are 15, as per the reports of the authorities.
If terrorists have increased their numbers and activities in spite of these black laws and the heavy presence of the Security Forces, what lesson can a democratic polity draw from it? That there is some very serious contradiction, somewhere.
Obviously, the laws and the forces of repression have not helped in checking insurgency.
What did, in Mizoram.
was a persistent dialogue so that for the last 16 years, the peace has prevailed.
In the Naga areas, too, a cease fire agreement, in force since 1997, as a consequence of a sustained dialogue, has been extended by a year recently.
There is comparative calm in what is now called Bodoland.
The same is the case of the Gorkha land in north Bengal, where, again, dialogue resulted in the establishment of the peace.
People like Swaraj Kaushal, Inderjit and Rajesh Pilot who quickened these processes and kept them going deserve the gratitude of the people, along with Gurung, the leader of the Gorkhas, Laldenga, the rebel who led the Mizos and Isak and Muivah, leaders of the NSCN (I-M) Moreover, the Government successfully engaged the Assam student leaders and the Shromani Akali Dal in the Punjab in 1985, these areas have enjoyed the peace.
The same strategy is needed for other groups.
Yet, the sore point in the Northeast is the ever- widening regional economic imbalance and the resulting unemployment and poverty.
An economist has observed that out of Rs.
72,000 crores released by the All India Financial institutions, Assam received Rs.
221 crore, Nagaland 4 crore and the other States nothing.
It is well- known that there is no rail link between Mizoram, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Tripura and Manipur and the rest of India.
Railways link only Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh and Dimapur in Nagaland.
The case of Assam is, however, different.
With the absence of such basic infrastructure, there is little wonder that there is not much development and that the region imports over Rs.
25,000 crore worth of goods from outside.
Regime changes induced by defections and arbitrary dismissals of elected Governments, all maneuvered by the Centre, also cause popular resentment.
The ample natural resources of the region including water, forests, mini- forest products like teakwood and other building materials like bamboo, medicinal plants, fertile arable land and the great scenic beauty have no scope of development in the absence of capital, a promising maintenance of law and order and entrepreneurship.
Yet, corruption has marred every effort to stimulate growth in the region.
So has an insensitive administrative and security set- up.
Economic development, the recognition of the ethnic aspirations of the people in respect of self- rule and continued dialogue can, possibly, help prevent the increasing alienation and insurgency.