New Delhi, Aug 23 : Students and civil rights groups Saturday protested in the national capital to demand the repeal of a law that grants the military special powers, including legal immunity, during operations in country's troubled areas.
A day after Home Minister P. Chidambaram said that changes proposed by his ministry in the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act could be implemented after consultations with all concerned, the activists said there should be no sucj law.
"The people from Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Mizoram and other states where AFSPA is there, don't want changes in the law, but we are clearly asking for the repeal of AFSPA," said Sucheta De, secretary of students' body All India Students Association (AISA).
The protestors also cited various instances of human rights violations in the name of the special powers given to armed forces.
G.N. Saibaba, an assistant professor at Delhi University and vice president of the Revolutionary Democratic Front of India, branded armed forces in a few states with AFSPA as "killers" and said they should not be given charge in sensitive areas of the country.
According to Nandini Sundar of Delhi School of Economics, "The government claims that areas like Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Mizoram and Jharkhand are peaceful because of the army. The truth is that years of oppression have silenced the voice of democracy."
The act is in force in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
GUWAHATI, Aug 10 – Members of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) today staged demonstration in all the district headquarters of the State in protest against the failure of the Government to implement the Assam Accord even after 25 years of inking it. The AASU members also demanded continuation of the implementation of the NRC updating pilot projects , constitutional safeguard to the indigenous people of Assam, abandoning of the proposed mega dam projects, treating Assam’s flood and erosion as national problems and steps to protect Majuli river island.
The AASU members sent memorandum to the Prime Minister through the respective Deputy Commissioners on the above issues.
However, in Tezpur and Dhemaji, the AASU members had to send their memorandum directly to the Prime Minister in the face of refusal of the respective Deputy Commissioners to accept those, said the AASU in a Press release.
Our Nalbari Correspondent adds: Two massive protest rallies against the State government decision to suspend the work of NRC update besides others were taken out here today.
In the first protest rally about five thousand people under the banner of Nalbari district unit of AASU staged a Satyagraha before the Nalbari Deputy Commissioner’s office. Similarly, the Nalbari district unit of AJYCP also took out a torch light procession this evening in support of the same demands.