The Hindu – Revoke Armed Forces Special Powers Act, says Omar, after youth is shot dead in Baramulla

Army denies its troops killed him, says they fired in air in self defence

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

Jammu, 5 March 2013.  While a tense situation prevailed in the Baramulla district after a youth was shot dead allegedly by the Army, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah made a strong case for the revocation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 with his emotional speech in the Legislative Assembly and directed the police to book officers of the Rashtriya Rifles for murder.

The Deputy Commissioner of Baramulla, Ghulam Ahmad Khwaja, told The Hindu that the police have registered a murder case against the officers of Rashtriya Rifles 46th battalion, who had earlier on Tuesday evening opened fire on a group of youth, killing a 25-year-old Tahir Ahmad Sofi of Kakkar Hamam. Another civilian escaped with gunshot wounds.

The Army has however denied the allegation and said the troops fired in air in self defence “to extricate themselves” and claimed someone else shot dead Mr. Sofi “with a view to trigger large scale violence.”

Quoting official reports, Mr. Khwaja said two Army vehicles drove across the Jhelum river in downtown Baramulla at a time when a shutdown sponsored by the separatists was in place, but there was no reports of violence.

Quoting eyewitnesses, Mr. Khwaja said some youngsters pelted the Army vehicles with stones as a result of which the soldiers came down and chased them away. “I have reasons to believe that the firing was unprovoked and unwarranted. Unfortunately, one 25-year-old Tahir Ahmad Sofi died and another got injured. As there was no law and order problem and the Army’s action does not appear to be justified in any manner. The police have registered a murder case on my direction against the officers responsible foe the shoot-out,” Mr. Khwaja, who is also the District Magistrate, added.

Mr. Sofi is the second youth to have fallen to the Army’s bullets in the aftermath of Afzal Guru’s execution. Last month, two protesters drowned to death while fleeing from a clash with the security forces near Sumbal in north Kashmir. Mr. Sofi’s family said he had completed post-graduation in Social Welfare and the other day had got admission forms for the Master of Education course in Kashmir University.

Sources said that a crowd of over 4,000 residents carried Mr. Sofi’s body to the DC’s office-cum-residence while shouting pro-Azadi and anti-India slogans and demanded action against the Army. The DC pacified the angry crowds with the news of FIR against the Army and assured them law would take its course. Officials said that some restrictions were put in place, but a formal curfew would be imposed only in the morning on Wednesday. The plan to impose curfew was not due to Tuesday’s firing alone, they said, and added there were law and order concerns due to
the separatists call asking residents of Bandipore and Baramulla districts to march to Afzal’s Guru’s residence on Wednesday.

In the evening, sources said, people in about a dozen neighbourhoods in Baramulla down staged demonstrations and used the public address systems of the community mosques to express their anger and protest against the death of Mr. Sofi, whose funeral was performed late on Tuesday. .

Here in the Legislative Assembly, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party staged a massive protest and walkout, holding the Omar Abdullah government responsible for Mr. Sofi’s death and failure to prevent Guru’s execution.

An emotional Omar Abdullah admitted his responsibility as the head of the government, but pleaded that the civil government was faced with handicaps due to the AFSPA that gave extraordinary powers to the armed forces. He said the anguish and pain that he felt due to such deaths of young men were much more than any other politician or human being in the State.

For about a minute, he stood mute and speechless, but recovered soon. “This is why I am vehemently raising the issue of partial revocation of AFSPA so that the erring forces personnel do not go scot-free”, Mr Abdullah said. He argued it was unfair to hold him and his government responsible for everything from Guru’s hanging to Mr. Sofi’s death.

In self-defence: Army

An Army spokesperson said: “The Army patrol was soon outnumbered, some of them were injured. A person out of the mob assaulted the Army personnel with an iron rod creating a life-threatening situation.” He said the troops fired in air in self defence and welcomed an investigation by police.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/revoke-afspa-says-omar-after-youth-is-shot-dead-in-baramulla/article4478925.ece

The Tribune – Pakistan fomenting trouble in India again: Shinde; Rules out withdrawal of security forces from Valley for time being

Tribune New Service

New Delhi, October 21. For the second time in two months, Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde today accused Pakistan of fomenting trouble in India.

“We have credible information that Pakistan is helping terrorists enter our territory,” Shinde said on the sidelines of an event to mark Police Commemoration Day here today. “We have intelligence inputs and we are alert,” Shinde said, advising people to be “extra vigilant” during the ongoing festival season.

This is the second time in two months that Shinde has accused Pakistan of stirring trouble in India. Earlier on August 19, in the middle of the exodus of the North-Easterners from South India, Shinde had telephoned his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik. The official statement of the Home Ministry then quoted Shinde as having expressed concern to Malik “over the issue of social media-networking sites being misused by the elements based in Pakistan to circulate false pictures and stories to whip up communal sentiments in India and has sought Pakistan’s full cooperation in checking and neutralising such elements”.

Shinde, who took over as Union Home Minister on August 1 replacing P Chidambaram, today reiterated that security forces cannot be withdrawn from the Kashmir valley till normalcy was completely restored there.

“When I was in Jammu and Kashmir, people asked me to pull out the Army from the Valley, but I told them that we can’t do it till the situation is peaceful. We will remove the Army when the situation is peaceful,” he said. The minister has already indicated that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) — to which Chidambaram wanted some amendments — cannot be removed from J&K.

Earlier, at the Police Commemoration Day ceremony, Shinde paid tribute to 575 securitymen who laid down their lives on duty in the past year. While 383 personnel from the state police forces were killed between September 1, 2011 and August 31, 2012, 192 troopers of the central armed police forces died during the period this year.

Meanwhile, India has sought to toughen its posture on allowing a Pakistani judicial commission to visit India again to cross examine the Mumbai terror attack witnesses.

There has to be a quid pro quo, India has said, sources revealed adding that Pakistan has to allow a team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on a reciprocal basis to examine the material evidence collected against the arrested 26/11 terror attack prime accused, including LeT commander Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi and six others, against whom trial is going on in a Rawalpindi court, sources added. Islamabad had asked New Delhi to allow its panel to visit Mumbai again.

An eight-member Pakistan judicial commission had visited India in March following a bilateral agreement which said the commission would not quiz the magistrate, who had recorded the statement of Kasab, the investigating officer of the case and two doctors, who conducted the post-mortem examination of slain terrorists.

The Rawalpindi court dealing with the 26/11 case rejected the evidence collected by the commission saying it had no “evidential value” to punish those involved in the Mumbai terror attack.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20121022/main1.htm

The Tribune – Shinde: Can’t take risk of withdrawing AFSPA

M Aamir Khan, Tribune News Service

Srinagar, October 14. Even as Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde complimented the people of Kashmir for “fighting terrorism”, he said the Centre could not take the “risk” of withdrawing the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from the state right now.

“It (AFSPA) will gradually go… but we cannot take the risk now… we cannot withdraw it abruptly,” Shinde told reporters before concluding his three-day visit to the state.

He made the statement after addressing a gathering at the Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) headquarters here.

Shinde appreciated the people of Kashmir for “fighting terrorism”.

“I salute and praise the courage of people in fighting terrorism….the people are responsible for restoring peace,” he added.

Shinde urged the local Congress workers and leaders to remain united for the betterment of the party.

He said he was ‘proud’ of the way UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi was running the country.

“We wanted her (Sonia) to be the Prime Minister, but she wanted that the Prime Minister should be from a minority group,” Shinde added.

The Union Home Minister termed as “baseless” the corruption charges levelled by activist-turned-political Arvind Kejriwal against Congress leaders.

Expressing satisfaction over his visit to border areas of the state, he said he would soon visit the border near Myanmar and Bhutan to review the security situation.

Asserting that the Congress had emerged as a “great secular force” in Jammu and Kashmir despite facing “considerable difficulties” in the past, he promised the gathering that he would “lend a helping hand” to resolve the problems being faced by them.

Shinde said he would always make it a point to visit the Pradesh Congress Committee offices of the states he visited.

JKPCC president Prof Saifuddin Soz thanked the Union Home Minister for accepting his invitation to visit the local Congress headquarters.

Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand and Congress Cabinet ministers Peerzada Mohammad.Sayeed, Sham Lal Sharma, Raman Bhalla and RS Chib were also present on the occasion.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20121015/main2.htm

The Tribune – UN Review; India grilled over AFSPA, custodial torture at Geneva

Aditi Tandon, Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 25. Custodial torture, enforced disappearances and use of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act were the major concerns raised by UN member nations that grilled India yesterday when its national report for the second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights came up for discussions at Geneva.

Most country representatives asked Attorney General Ghoolam Vahanvati representing India why the government had not ratified the UN Conventions against torture and enforced disappearances despite positive indications earlier. Ratification of the Convention against Torture was recommended to India four years ago after its first UPR. “That hasn’t happened. Though the Prevention of Torture Bill 2010 was introduced in Parliament,” India’s National Human Rights Commission has in its observations on the country’s second UPR said.

“The Bill was weak. If the Act eventually adopted dilutes the revisions made by a committee of Parliament’s Upper House, it will call into question the government’s commitment to the convention,” it said. Between 2001 and 2010, NHRC reported 14,231 cases of deaths in police and prison custody (1,504 and 12,727, respectively) – an average of 43 deaths a day.

The Working Group on Human Rights (WGHR) in India and the UN which submitted a parallel report for India’s UPR says that torture is the most widespread in India’s conflict areas and leads to physical, mental disability and impotency. “Common methods of torture in Kashmir and the North-East are placement of iron rod on the legs on which many people sit; placement of burning stove between the legs and administration of electric shocks to genitals. A Commission of the ICRC confirmed the use of torture in Kashmir,” WGHR report says.

Yesterday, India was reminded of its 2011 promise to ratify the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances. This recommendation was made after India’s first UPR. The NHRC report to the UN Human Rights Commission, however, says: “There is no evidence that the Government intends to ratify the CED.

Enforced disappearance is not codified as a criminal offence in domestic law nor are extant provisions of law used to deter the practice.” The NHRC received 341 complaints of disappearance in 2010, over 400 in 2011. The WGHR report laments enforced disappearances in Kashmir.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120526/main7.htm

The Tribune – AFSPA not on the backburner: Omar

Tribune News Service

Jammu, January 5. The last three years were both “the best of times” and “the worst of times”, said Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today, quoting from ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ by Charles Dickens, after completing three years in office. The youngest Chief Minister had taken over as CM of the troubled and sensitive border state on January 5, 2009 at the age of 39.

‘A Tale of Two Cities’ was written by Dickens in 1859 and was set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution.

The Chief Minister and his Deputy, Tara Chand, released a report card of the National Conference-Congress coalition government and called on the Governor to present him with a copy.

Asked to spell out his position on Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA), which he had declared in October would be lifted ‘soon’, the CM said, “ the issue is not on the backburner — just because it is not being talked about — does not mean that it is not being pursued.”

The Chief Minister indicated that the cabinet sub-committee set up to examine the feasibility of taking over control of some of the hydel power plants operated by the public sector National Hydel Power Corporation ( NHPC) would be submitting its report this week. Recalling that the proposal had been endorsed by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisor, Dr Rangarajan, the Chief Minister hinted that the cabinet would be taking steps to take control of the plants.

The state government, the Chief Minister said, was seeking more funds from the Centre to buy more power and also chalking out a plan to deal with pilferage of electricity and transmission and distribution losses.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120106/main1.htm

The Hindu – Lone warrior

Sathya Saran

5 November 2011.

For 11 long years, Irom Sharmila has been on a hunger fast, protesting against the Armed Forces Special Act in Manipur. An interview with an almost forgotten heroine.

May be the fact she was a slow learner made her a reclusive child. Or perhaps it was the fact that she was the youngest of eight and born at a difficult time in her family’s fortunes. Her father had died; her mother was trying to run a provision store to keep the home fires burning. Even as a baby Sharmila had to depend on the kindness of other women to nurse her and her elder siblings to tend to her daily needs and upbringing.

Sensitive and introspective, Sharmila, through her teens, kept much to herself; her favourite companions her books, the Bhagwad Gita among them.

The quiet thinker grew up to be a writer and her column in the local paper found her readers and some attention. She spoke up for freedom, for human rights, in a voice all her own. Perhaps the Armed Forces Special Powers Act – that was part of life in Manipur and much of the North East and other ‘ disturbed’ areas – was a subconscious reason for the tone of her writings.

Turning point

The subconscious came to the fore in 1999. A group of young lawyers who had formed a Human Rights Forum in Manipur initiated a move to ask for a proper inquiry on the impact of the AFSPA on life in the State. A call was sent out for volunteers. Many joined, Sharmila among them. As part of her training, Sharmila visited homes of civilians to acquaint them with inquiry and how they could help make it happen. Many of these were affected civilians, whose family members had been arrested, disappeared, or been killed, sometimes on mere suspicion.

Very soon, Sharmila was participating closely in every aspect of the Forum’s struggle for justice and respect for the rights of the civilians of Manipur. On November 2, 2000, Sharmila was part of a small contingent of Human Rights activists who went to Malong for a peaceful demonstration. Nothing that morning prepared her for what she would see.

Retaliating to an ambush by militants, a group of armed forces men opened fire at a bus stop shooting down innocent civilians, including women and youngsters. Among them an 18-year-old who had won a national award for bravery as a child. It would be two days before the curfew clamped almost immediately after the massacre would be lifted and the bodies could be claimed by next of kin.

The incident spurred Sharmila to action. Babloo Loitongbam, one of the founders of the HRF, Manipur remembers: “Sharmila came riding on her bike to where we were staying. Her hair was loose, she always kept it that way, seldom combing it and she looked very frail. But her voice was determined. ‘Brother I’m going for a hunger strike,’ she said.

We could not believe it but she was adamant… ‘until the AFSPA is removed,’ she repeated calmly, ‘I will go on hunger strike’. Nothing we could say would change her mind. She told us she had her mother’s blessing and that was that.”

Quiet struggle

Eleven years later, nothing has changed. Except that Sharmila can ride her bike no more. Even as she embarked on her fast and attention to her cause gathered, she was arrested for attempted suicide and remanded into custody. The force feeding began, and today the tube that snakes down her throat from her nose is as much a part of her as the hospital room she is interred in.

Sharmila is a forgotten heroine. For years her cause and her quiet struggle remained hidden in a private room in a State that many Indians need to look up on the map to locate. Then the Anna Hazare fast and protests somehow brought Sharmila’s struggle into the media.

“I hope it will help my cause and make my struggle successful,” she says, when I visited her. It has been an almost impossible mission, getting to meet her, but I have succeeded thanks to a miracle engineered by the kindness of an efficient government servant.

The room is well lit and large. Sharmila sits on an iron cot. Her hair is still open and she, but naturally, looks frail. She speaks little. And after much thought. I watch her mouth working over her sentences. Isolation does that to people; they forget the niceties of conversation. When she does speak, her words are well chosen and pointed.

She has no agenda beyond the one she has stated. She wishes Manipur be free of the AFSPA. The massacres, the terrorism that is sanctioned by law must cease. Once it happens, she will resume her life. Go back to being a normal human being, to meeting her mother and her family. (Not long after she started her fast, Sharmila decided not to meet her mother as seeing her anguish could weaken her resolve.) She might find time for marriage… she does admit to a romantic involvement with a sympathiser whom she has met once and corresponds with.

Rare outings

Only once in the 11 years has Sharmila been out of Manipur. “We smuggled her to Delhi, and tried to get some support from the national press”, Babloo says, “but nothing much came of it.” Somehow the press and public could not empathise with the struggle of a quiet warrior who had little drama or rhetoric. Babloo adds, “Of course, the poet in Sharmila awakened at the sight of the clouds our plane flew over and she wrote a poem, wondering how Kalidasa who could never have seen such a sight could describe the clouds so beautifully.”

Sharmila’s only outings now are the mandatory visits to Court to sign her declaration of intention of continuing her fast, so she can be sent back to custody. The convoy of armed vehicles that take her to and fro from her hospital mock her frailty and lack of aggression.

Her days pass in solitude; it is increasingly difficult for anyone to meet her. Journalists get permission according to the whims of the authorities, and the wait can be as long as three months. Family and Forum members are not allowed though how their meeting her will upset peace and order is debatable.

So Sharmila lives in her seclusion, waiting for a day when her penance will bear fruit. Her self-taught yoga, her walks up and down the corridor of her ward and her books and poetry is how she bides her time. And she has her ‘sparkling’ companions: two large stuffed toys gifted to her that sit by her bedside.

But she is strangely sanguine. “The days rush past, time rushes for me,” she says. And time, she hopes will help realise her dream of a state free from the terror of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2594416.ece