According to one of the ANI’s last week report, New Delhi has outrightly denied discussing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) with Pakistan during the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan talks held on June 24-26, 2010, claiming that “AFSPA is internal act to us and Pakistan does not have any locus standi on it.” But Islamabad has reservations about the draconian act, as the gross violations of human rights under the same act in Jammu and Kashmir is bedevilling relationship between the two rivals. If India cranks up its security mechanism either by shooting or resorting to extrajudicial punitive measures against the freedom loving Kashmiris, it is bound to infuriate the Kashmiri youths. Such a political outcome is misconstrued as Pakistan’s mischief by the Indian administration, although it has absolutely no hand in any such disturbances.
In this context, the act is like a sword hanging over every head in IHK that has paralysed the entire social fabric of millions of people, forcibly strangulated into federation. Under Section 4 of the AFSPA, the Indian armed forces have been empowered to kill anybody on suspicion or out of hatred without any judicial process. So this has enormously encouraged the Indian forces to precipitate and heighten their extrajudicial torture and execution. Even the Supreme Court of India upheld the black law by its judgment given on November 27, 1997. These judges are regarded as racists and chauvinists like their political mentors.
AFSPA surprisingly is not enforced throughout India, but only in certain states declared as ‘disturbed areas’ like Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram and Kashmir. Apart from Kashmir, where causalities now stand around 100,000, Tehelka.com reports that its first target were the Naga rebels in 1958. Then during 1992 to 2006, the northeastern states recorded 16,205 fatalities with and average 1,080 deaths per year. Since 1958 there have been more than 30,000 killings by the Indian forces, with Manipur being the most hard-hit area with 45 percent of the casualties in the northeast. According to this website, there are more than 50 militant groups pitted against the Indian army in Northeast India alone, whose strength is around 700,000.
Most of the time, it continues to remain the immediate target of people’s ire since 1958; and is regarded as one of the decades old most oppressive law by all the successive Indian governments. Despite all this, over the years successive governments in New Delhi have justified the legislation on the plea that it is required to stop the northeast provinces from seceding from the Indian Union or as part of the repressive tool to suppress the freedom movement in Kashmir. All the mainstream Indian political parties, each trying to be more ‘patriotic’ than the other, agree not to repeal AFSPA, despite the fact that it is damaging India’s image in the international community.