[In 2004, soldiers arrested 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama Devi in
the early morning, then left her bruised and bullet-ridden body by the roadside
a few hours later. Police forensics experts concluded that she had been tortured and
shot at close range while lying down. They also found evidence that she might
have been raped.]
By Simon Denyer
 |
Simon
Denyer/The Washington Post - Irom
Sharmila arrives for a fortnightly
court appearance, flanked by two police
officers, in the northeastern Indian
city of Imphal on Feb. 7, 2013. Sharmila
began a hunger strike in 2000 to protest
against a controversial law that
grants the Indian army virtual impunity
from prosecution.
|
IMPHAL, India — Tens of thousands of Indian troops are deployed
to these remote borderlands, their mission to fight a decades-long armed
separatist rebellion.
But for years, residents here have alleged that security forces
have also waged a separate war of rape and murder of civilians, one they
continue with impunity because federal law virtually prohibits the
prosecution of soldiers in conflict zones.
Now, 1,500 miles away in the capital of New Delhi, there is a new
demand to change that. A committee established last month in the wake of mass
protests over a gruesome gang rape recommended that the law be reexamined. At
the very least, the Justice Verma Committee said, soldiers
accused of rape should be tried under civilian law.
But the government has dragged its feet. Although it implemented
many of the committee’s suggestions for new protections for women in an emergency ordinance passed this month, the
recommendation to curb the armed forces’ immunity was set aside. The government
said it was reluctant to tell the army what to do.
While the New Delhi protests prompted India to reexamine its
treatment of women, the debate over soldiers’ immunity — and the dark history
in the border region — have underscored the limits of the power of India’s
democracy to effect change when it comes up against entrenched vested interests
such as the army, a supposedly apolitical institution that wields significant
influence.
“We can’t move forward because there is no consensus,” Finance
Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a recent speech on national security,
according to local media reports.
Referring to the immunity law by its full name, the Armed Forces
(Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA, Chidambaram continued: “The present and former
army chiefs have taken a strong position that the act should not be amended. . . . How
does the government move forward . . . to make the AFSPA a more
humanitarian law?”
The Defense Ministry declined to comment.
Here in the state of Manipur, where a local human rights group has
documented 1,528 alleged extrajudicial executions and many cases of rape and
sexual assault carried out by the police and army in the past three decades,
the stalling of momentum has caused little surprise.
In 2004, soldiers arrested 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama Devi in
the early morning, then left her bruised and bullet-ridden body by the roadside
a few hours later. Police forensics experts concluded that she had been tortured and
shot at close range while lying down. They also found evidence that she might
have been raped.
For months afterward, the tiny hill state on the border with Burma
erupted in protest. A group of women made national headlines when they stripped
naked in front of an army barracks and held up a large banner that read “Indian
army rape us.”
But the Manipur incident changed nothing.
For eight years, the Indian government has blocked the release of
a judicial investigation into Manorama’s death, fighting a long legal battle
that has now reached the Supreme Court, nor has it made any move to prosecute
those responsible.
A committee that was formed to review the AFSPA concluded in 2005
that it should be repealed. But its findings were never officially released —
although they were eventually leaked — nor were they implemented.
Meenakshi Ganguly of Human Rights Watch, a watchdog group, said
the pressure the army is bringing to bear on the government over the issue is
“extremely worrying in a democracy.” Others, including Sanjoy Hazarika, a
member of the 2005 commission that demanded the law be repealed, say the
government is equally to blame.
Manipur, with a population of little more than 2 million, is tiny
by Indian standards, and the country’s economic development of the past two
decades has largely passed it by. Most of its residents are Hindus but are of
Tibet-Burman origin and are thought to look more Burmese than Indian; they feel
their countrymen look down on them. An armed separatist rebellion began here in
the 1960s and has led to about 20,000 deaths.
For 12 years, a Manipuri woman, Irom Sharmila, has been on a
hunger strike against the armed forces act. Having been convicted in court of
intent to take her own life, she is under police guard in a hospital and
force-fed through her nose.
Last week, Sharmila, 40, emerged from the hospital for a biweekly
appearance in court, and, in an interview outside the courtroom, while being
flanked by two female police officers, Sharmila said she was not optimistic
that the government would relent any time soon.
The formation of committees is a tactic to deflect public anger,
she said in halting English, and the people of Manipur are not given the
respect accorded to other Indians.
“They treat us like stepchildren,” she said before police whisked
her away.
Across town, 37-year-old Neena Ningombam has cared for her two
children alone since her husband was taken away by police in November 2008. A
few hours later his body, with a hand grenade planted next to it, was shown on
television, supposedly that of a rebel killed after attacking the police.
In one sense, Ningombam is lucky. Witnesses saw her husband being
arrested, and they have not been intimidated into silence. A local magistrate
who investigated the case found that her husband had never been involved in a
militant group and that he was killed in what is known here as a “fake
encounter.”
Babloo Loitongbam of Human Rights Alert, a local rights group that
has documented the alleged rapes and extrajudicial executions, said members of
the security forces who kill militants are rewarded with cash, medals and
promotions.
“An incentive structure has created vested interests in the army
and police just to kill people on the flimsiest charges,” he said, “while the
judicial process has completely failed.”
With Loitongbam’s help, the widows of Manipur are fighting back.
Responding to a petition they have filed, the Supreme Court appointed a respected three-
person team last month to look into the alleged extrajudicial executions. Yet another committee of inquiry, it could nevertheless put more pressure on the government to roll back what residents describe as a cloak of impunity shrouding events in Manipur.
Like the other widows of Manipur, Ningombam continues her legal
battle to clear her husband’s name.
In an opinion piece last week, Hazarika, the
member of the 2005 commission and an expert on northeastern India, called the
law an “abomination.”
“How many more deaths, how many more naked protests, how many more
hunger strikes, how many more committees, how many more editorials and articles
and broadcasts before AFSPA goes?” he asked.