Our country has always upheld a special reverence to the hunger strike and peaceful struggle. Such struggles have attracted an enormous response in this land. Be it be Mahatma Gandhi, Jatin Das or very recently by Team Anna Hazare. There is another 11 year old cry in the form of Hunger strike that is going unheard that our country has to pay attention, listen, and respond by joining our voices with hers.
Irom Sharmila is a civil rights activist, political activist moreover a Humanist who has been on hunger strike since November 2000 with the demand to the Indian Government to repeal The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) of 1958 which she blames latter the primary cause for violence in Manipur.
November 2, 2000, in Malom, a town in the Imphal Valley of Manipur, ten civilians were allegedly shot and killed by the Assam Rifles, one of the Indian Paramilitary forces operating in the state, while waiting at a bus stop that included death of a 62-year old woman by name Leisangbam Ibetomi, and 18-year old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 National Child Bravery Award winner. The incident later came to be known to activists as the "Malom Massacre".
Incidentally it was a Thursday and young Sharmila used to fast on every Thursdays. She was so disturbed by the whole incident she decided to continue her fast until the act responsible for the Malom Massacre AFSPA-the armed forces special Powers act was withdrawn.
Three days after she began her strike, she was arrested by the police and charged with an "attempt to commit suicide", which is unlawful under section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, and was later transferred to judicial custody. Her health deteriorated rapidly, and the police then forcibly had to use nasogastric intubation in order to keep her alive while under arrest. Since then, Irom Sharmila has been regularly released and re-arrested every year.
International recognition
In recognition of the nobility of her cause and the purity of her methods international recognitions galore have sought this diminutive siblings of ours.
Sharmila was nominated to the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize by a Guwahati-based woman's organization, the North East Network.
She was awarded the 2007 “Gwangju Prize” for Human Rights, which is given for "an outstanding person or group, active in the promotion and advocacy of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights".
The largest monetary prize, the first Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize was given to her in 2010 by the New Delhi IIPM. She was awarded the Sarva Gunah Sampannah Award for Peace and Harmony aka the 12th Signature Women of Substance award (Assam) also in 2010. 2009 she was awarded the first Mayillama Award (Kerala). And in 2010 in the presence of the Law Minister Sri V Moilly in Bangalore she was awarded in absentia a lifetime achievement award. She was most recently awarded an Adivasi Ratna award accepted by her brother.
UK Green Party leader and European Parliament member Keith Taylor wrote to the Indian government seeking the release of Sharmila and the repeal of the AFSPA. Her main supporter in the European Union is Sir Graham Watson KB MEP chair of the India/EU delegation of MEPs. He has consistently made interventions on her behalf most recently to Dr J Bhagwati Indian Ambassador to the EU who responded on 1 July 2011 to his request to respond to the death threats made against Irom Sharmila.
This determined fast of 39 year old Iron Lady has continued even to this day after 11 long years. When an young lady who has sacrificed all her joys and dreams and dedicated her life to this hunger strike until the repeal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, then the provisions of the act that has empowered the armed forces with extraordinary powers and its possible illegalities has to be seriously looked into by our Government and act upon it immediately. Our next article would be to introspect the relevance of this AFSPA in all the angles.
Prashanth and Sudhanva
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