Friday, September 2, 2011

Irom Sharmila



Last week we saw nationwide agitation in support to Anna Hazare, we even had both parliament houses debating for this movement, which ended the 11-day fast by Anna. Meantime there is a small piece of news keep emerging about a lady, in fact she is called as an Iron Lady, Irom Sharmila from Manipur fasting for past 11 year, and yes you read it correctly its YEARS. The government has put her in to tube feeding, using Nasogastric intubation.
Many are trying to draw parallel between Irom and Anna. Both are social activist, but fighting for a different cause, even though both are in India, the environment they live is different. Irom from the North East State of Manipur, is fighting for cause which is threating the daily existence of the people. Anna is much broader sense, covering a wide area of corruption. Irom is for the basic need of a human, survival, which is much more important than corruption. End of the day if one doesn’t live, it’s “The END”.
On November 2000, ten civilians were shot dead by the Armed forces, those people were innocent civilians standing in the bus stop. Since then Irom Sharmila started the fasting, her primary demand is to repeal Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), in short this act gives absolute power to Armed Forces. Then she was jailed as “attempt to suicide” and started to force feed.

She can’t travel freely across India. So she can’t garner any national momentum. In fact she tried to go to Jantar Mantar in 2006 and was arrested.

The entire North East (AP, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura) with J&K comes under AFSPA. Red Cross has mentioned there are severe human rights violations in these areas. Check the wikeleaks cables.


The people in these areas were so much humiliated that a group of women went naked before the Armed Rifles base in protesting the atrocities.
As usual a committee was formed under the chairmanship of Jeevan Reedy, a retd. Supreme Court judge, and as usual the recommendations by the committee is still kept dark. I can’t understand why government is trying to use excess of force, when they need to lend olive branches to win the people heart. They are trying to seed fear, which in turn will grow as anger. It’s also an irony that our PM hailing from the same region hasn’t done enough. Remember these states are sharing its borders to China. Why let these people down, when the dragon is next door.
Do you know, petrol a litre costs Rs 180, cooking gas Rs. 1500 and a KG of Rice Rs. 60, where? Read this.. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Chennai/article2339087.ece
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