Irom Sharmila charged with attempting suicide

[Parul]

One of my Manipuri Friend Posted on Facebook:

WHOEVER DOESN'T NOW IROM SHARMILA...PLEASE DON'T DISCREDIT HER...OR PASS CHEAP COMMENT AGAINST HER....FOR YOUR REFERENCE PLEASE GOOGLE HER... SHE'S BEING FORCED FED BY THE MANIPUR STATE GOVT SINCE 2000, DOCTORS HAVE LONG TIME BACK TOLD THAT ALL HER INTERNAL ORGANS ARE DAMAGED AND SHE CAN NEVER EAT SOLID FOOD FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE...AND HER MENSTRUAL PERIODS HAVE STOPPED VERY LONG TIME BACK DUE TO FASTING...THE DAY SHE DIES, GOD FORBIDS, WILL BE A DAY MANIPUR AND INDIA WILL REMEMBER FOR AS LONG AS THIS COUNTRY EXIST....BECAUSE THE PEOPLE OF MANIPUR WILL COME OUT ON THE STREETS AND MAY EVEN DEMAND SECESSION FROM INDIA...FOR THAT MATTER...BECAUSE SHARMILA AND AFSPA ARE VERY SENSITIVE AND EMOTIONAL ISSUES TO MANIPURIS...WE'VE LIVED WITH IT,WENT THROUGH HELL WITH IT AND ITS BEEN HAUNTING EVERYONE IN MANIPUR EVERYDAY....YOU CAN NEVER DESCRIBE IT...UNLESS YOU LIVE UNDER IT.... AS FOR OMAR ABDULLAH, HATS OFF TO THE JK CM FOR SUPPORTING HIS PEOPLE WHENEVER NEEDS ARISES... MANIPURIS CANNOT EXPECT THE SAME...FROM 3-TIMES CONGRESS CM IBOBI SINGH(THE MOST CORRUPTED CM OF INDIA, NAMED MR 10% BY WIKILEAKS) AS WE ALL KNOW, THAT IN MANIPUR, THERE ARE RUMOURS DOING THE ROUND ...THAT THE MOST DREADED MILITANT GROUP KYKL IS FINACIALLY FUNDED AND NURTURED BY HIM AND NO ARREST HAS BEEN MADE ON ITS MEMBERS...HOW FAR THIS RUMORS ARE TRUE ONLY TIME WILL TELL...BUT WE CAN NEVER DENY THE LINK BETWEEN MILITANT GROUPS AND POLITICIANS IN MANIPUR...SO THE POLITICAL CLASS WILL NEVER WANT A FINAL SOLUTION TO THE MILITANCY PROBLEMS IN MANIPUR TO BE RESOLVED...HENCE, THEY WILL NEVER HAVE THE WILLPOWER TO ASK THE CENTRE TO REPEAL THE AFSPA...AS THEY ARE GETTING A HUGH AMOUNT OF CENTRAL FUND TO FIGHT MILITANCY AS WELL AS TO REHABILITATE SURRENDERED MILLITANTS...THE RECENT ARREST OF THE SON OF SITTING CONGRESS MLA, A FORMER SPEAKER AND CABINET MINISTERS IN A DRUG BUSINESS CASE FROM HIS HOUSE...IS JUST A TIP OF THE ICEBERG...OF THE SIDE BLACK BUSINESS..THOSE POLITICIANS ARE INVOLVED IN...TOMORROW IF HALF OF MR IBOBI'S CABINET OR CONGRESS MLA'S ARE INVOLVED IN DRUG TRAFFICKING, TEAK WOOD SMUGGLING OR OTHER ILLEGAL TRADE...THE PEOPLE OF MANIPUR WON'T BE SURPRISED....NOR SHOCKED....

 

[Dillinger]

@Dillinger Thing is we don't have people who research the real root cause of these problems. War crimes, soldier suicides, extra judicial killings etc. happens in a region where there is conflict for decades. But make examples of Soldiers who commit war crimes.

I facepalm when people say there are no war crimes in Kashmir and NE. Check the history of any such conflict zone you will find common attritbutes.

No one care of psychological well being of soldiers. There is a poster who has seen worst bloody scenes and says that they stench of blood is always present for him, everyday he comes back and kiss his children to have his faith in humanity because impact on him of violence he gets exposed to, He says this violence makes people indifferent.

Ever thought that with such a large defense budget, the soldier support program is not taken care of. Hell, somewhere there is no concept of it.

You need responsible Army officials along with Effective Judiciary, and Central Govt. support on more pressing issues of soldiers,better rotation policies, psyche evaluation test and support centers etc. PTSD is already present in many soldiers, They are killing each other and themselves.

And for love of God, kick these Human rights NGO that Mushrooms everywhere. People like Teesta has made so much problem for Real NGOs which deliver the result. I have seen the frustration of of good NGOs because of problems created by these bad NGOs.

And will someone start fighting for Human Rights of Soldiers instead of Rapists, Murderers and Terrorists ?

I like the term of Collective Responsibility in our Constitution. Its the only way to enforce our system to improve rather than giving free space to everyone to shift the blame.

The idea of psychological research into the pressures put on combatants in LIC zones is completely absent within our forces, more importantly no urgent steps are taken to apply the accumulated wisdom that is available openly from organisations and individuals who've dealt with similar conditions in history.

Yaara the judiciary at the state level has never been effective in most states. I told you in a previous post of mine that we need immediate de-politicization of the judiciary at the state level. Immediate implementation of the well known modifications in the state level police forces compiled by the Indian Supreme Court itself.

We need to make sure that these points are put in the manifesto of every darned party fighting the upcoming elections. We need urgent social integration of the north easterners in the greater narrative of the nation- you know the way we north Indians dominate social spheres like Bollywood and its movies. We need to use all the tools at our disposal to start an all aspect and multi-spectral program to create a ten fold increase in national integration within the coming decade.

 

[zootinali]

The older generations of bureaucrats in Delhi were very insensitive to N.E resulting in all these mess today,had they been a litle sensitive and had understanding of the region, all these problems would not have happen in the first place
If members want to know some more about Manipuri problems ,I would urge them to watch these two videos

 

[Mritunjaya]

Rather than blame the bureaucrats right blame should be placed on the politicians who actually failed us. I see this problem as relevant to whole of North East.

Introduction of Article 370 for north eastern state should have been pulled back after a few years. That would have helped a natural intermingling of locals and rest of India making way for more understanding and tolerance.

This unnatural divide that was placed on the people of India by this and restrictions on travel of Indians into the North east has now created another religious/social divide that cannot be eliminated without violence or some sort (call it civil war).

The British first created “Excluded Area with an Inner Line Regulation.” and Independent India instead of eliminating this artificial divide continued to maintain it.

Large-scale conversions triggered a systematic ethnic cleansing campaign sponsored by the Church which lead to migration of Reangs and Brus tribes from Mizoram to Tripura and Assam, who have since been languishing in different make-shift camps and demanding safe return and rehabilitation to their ancestral homeland.

In Tripura, for instance, there were no Christians at independence, the maharaja of the state was a Hindu and there were innumerable temples all over the State. But from 1950, Christian missionaries (with Nehru’s blessings) went into the deep forests of Tripura and started converting the Kukis. Today, according to official figures, there are 120,000 Christians in Tripura, a 90% increase since 1991.

Terrorist outfits of Tripura is the NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura). It employs terror tactics to effect mass conversion to Christianity and is a predominantly Baptist (Protestant) organization with covert UK support. Their token non-Christian representation was lost when Nayanbashi Jamatiya, a Hindu leader, who led a revolt against the policy of forcible conversion of the NLFT was attacked by NLFT, killing seven activists and seriously injuring him.

They killed a Catholic priest called Father Victor Crasta on July 25, 2000 because he was catholic.

On August 6, 1999, four RSS (Rashtriya Swayam-sevak Sangh) workers of Tripura, named Shyamal Kanti Sen Gupta, Sudhamoy Dutta, Dinendranath Dey, Shubhankar Chakraborti, were kidnapped by the NLFT, taken to a camp in the jungles of Bangladesh and a ransom of Rs 2 crores was demanded from their parent organization. The RSS refused to pay and they were done to death sometime in the month of December 2000 or January 2001.

Their "guilt" was that they were preaching among the tribals to preserve Hinduism.

The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there were only 1710 Christians in 1961, but 115000 today, as well as 700 churches.

Today in Mizoram and Nagaland the entire local population is Christian! The amount of money being poured by Christians into the North-East is staggering: In 2000, The Saint Paul’s school of Tripura, for instance, gets an 80 lakhs endowment per semester. No Hindu school in entire India could match this. No country in the world allows this. France, for instance, has a full-blown Minister who is in charge of hunting down "sects". And by sects, it is meant anything which does not belong to the great Christian family, particularly if it has Hindu "pagan" overtones!

The Don Bosco schools, for example, which are everywhere in the North-East, are known by the Tripura Intelligence Bureau to sometimes harbor extremists at night. But the Tripura Marxist Government chooses to close its eyes, because in India, Communists are often walking for their own selfish purpose - hand in hand with Christians. Does the common man in India know that the nexus between the separatists and the Church is so strong in Tripura and Assam that temples are being demolished, that people are scared to practise pujas, except in strongholds such as Agartala, that Hindu social workers do not dare go in the interior?

On the other hand, every other day a new church springs-up in the North-East, every week a new Christian school is opened without facing the threat of any extremist attack.

The biggest drug problems in India are found in the North East. You can see how conversion that destroyed whole way of life, erasing centuries of tradition, customs, wisdom, taught people to despise their own religion and look westwards to a culture which is alien to them, with disastrous results.

 

[Dubious]

AFSPA = Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

It was an Act made in 1950s by Indian Govt.

It is applied to those areas which are disturbed area or where acts of terrorism occurs.

There usually Central Govt. has to put Army to look after law & order of the area.

But Army is a leathel force unlike local police & often there are many civilian casualty occurs in those areas, so to keep army personnel safe from LOADS of human right abuse cases going to the court, this act is applied.

Under this act, no army personnel can be charged of a crime committed in those areas unless a permission is granted directly from the central govt.

This is the law which she opposes.

Is there a limit or are all CRIMES ignored? Say rape or stealing or bribery to spare a terrorist or change the evidence?

 

[Dillinger]

Rather than blame the bureaucrats right blame should be placed on the politicians who actually failed us. I see this problem as relevant to whole of North East.

Introduction of Article 370 for north eastern state should have been pulled back after a few years. That would have helped a natural intermingling of locals and rest of India making way for more understanding and tolerance.

This unnatural divide that was placed on the people of India by this and restrictions on travel of Indians into the North east has now created another religious/social divide that cannot be eliminated without violence or some sort (call it civil war).

The British first created “Excluded Area with an Inner Line Regulation.” and Independent India instead of eliminating this artificial divide continued to maintain it.

Large-scale conversions triggered a systematic ethnic cleansing campaign sponsored by the Church which lead to migration of Reangs and Brus tribes from Mizoram to Tripura and Assam, who have since been languishing in different make-shift camps and demanding safe return and rehabilitation to their ancestral homeland.

In Tripura, for instance, there were no Christians at independence, the maharaja of the state was a Hindu and there were innumerable temples all over the State. But from 1950, Christian missionaries (with Nehru’s blessings) went into the deep forests of Tripura and started converting the Kukis. Today, according to official figures, there are 120,000 Christians in Tripura, a 90% increase since 1991.

Terrorist outfits of Tripura is the NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura). It employs terror tactics to effect mass conversion to Christianity and is a predominantly Baptist (Protestant) organization with covert UK support. Their token non-Christian representation was lost when Nayanbashi Jamatiya, a Hindu leader, who led a revolt against the policy of forcible conversion of the NLFT was attacked by NLFT, killing seven activists and seriously injuring him.

They killed a Catholic priest called Father Victor Crasta on July 25, 2000 because he was catholic.

On August 6, 1999, four RSS (Rashtriya Swayam-sevak Sangh) workers of Tripura, named Shyamal Kanti Sen Gupta, Sudhamoy Dutta, Dinendranath Dey, Shubhankar Chakraborti, were kidnapped by the NLFT, taken to a camp in the jungles of Bangladesh and a ransom of Rs 2 crores was demanded from their parent organization. The RSS refused to pay and they were done to death sometime in the month of December 2000 or January 2001.

Their "guilt" was that they were preaching among the tribals to preserve Hinduism.

The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there were only 1710 Christians in 1961, but 115000 today, as well as 700 churches.

Today in Mizoram and Nagaland the entire local population is Christian! The amount of money being poured by Christians into the North-East is staggering: In 2000, The Saint Paul’s school of Tripura, for instance, gets an 80 lakhs endowment per semester. No Hindu school in entire India could match this. No country in the world allows this. France, for instance, has a full-blown Minister who is in charge of hunting down "sects". And by sects, it is meant anything which does not belong to the great Christian family, particularly if it has Hindu "pagan" overtones!

The Don Bosco schools, for example, which are everywhere in the North-East, are known by the Tripura Intelligence Bureau to sometimes harbor extremists at night. But the Tripura Marxist Government chooses to close its eyes, because in India, Communists are often walking for their own selfish purpose - hand in hand with Christians. Does the common man in India know that the nexus between the separatists and the Church is so strong in Tripura and Assam that temples are being demolished, that people are scared to practise pujas, except in strongholds such as Agartala, that Hindu social workers do not dare go in the interior?

On the other hand, every other day a new church springs-up in the North-East, every week a new Christian school is opened without facing the threat of any extremist attack.

The biggest drug problems in India are found in the North East. You can see how conversion that destroyed whole way of life, erasing centuries of tradition, customs, wisdom, taught people to despise their own religion and look westwards to a culture which is alien to them, with disastrous results.

FIRST AND FOREMOST- REEDUCATE YOURSELF, ARTICLE 370 IS NOT APPLICABLE IN THE NORTH EAST. Article 370 expressly deals ONLY AND ONLY with Kashmir. Secondly whether the denizens of the North East chose to be Christians or worship Raa- its inconsequential. The OP of the thread is Irom Sharmila, A discussion on her and the AFSPA and ACT 7 of 1972 is more apt. @arp2041 @KRAIT

 

[Mritunjaya]

FIRST AND FOREMOST- REEDUCATE YOURSELF, ARTICLE 370 IS NOT APPLICABLE IN THE NORTH EAST. Article 370 expressly deals ONLY AND ONLY with Kashmir. Secondly whether the denizens of the North East chose to be Christians or worship Raa- its inconsequential. The OP of the thread is Irom Sharmila, A discussion on her and the AFSPA and ACT 7 of 1972 is more apt. @arp2041 @KRAIT

Good point ....let me correct that to Article 371.

History and its relevance in present day problems is the content ....no need to become insure and shout. Its better if you learn to handle uncomfortable realities.

AFSPA is in northeast because of failure of society to assimilate to India due to religious difference and resultant terrorism.

 

[arp2041]

Is there a limit or are all CRIMES ignored? Say rape or stealing or bribery to spare a terrorist or change the evidence?

I don't think petty crimes like bribery or stealing even come to the public knowledge.

While to charge an Army Personnel of a rape or a murder, the administration in the state needs to take a permission from MOD/GOI.

@Mritunjaya, topic is Irom Sharmila + AFSPA + Manipur (or NE), if you can talk on it, I will be really great full to you, no one is here to listen about what do the people of NE practice or not.

 

[Mritunjaya]

@Mritunjaya, topic is Irom Sharmila + AFSPA + Manipur (or NE), if you can talk on it, I will be really great full to you, no one is here to listen about what do the people of NE practice or not.

You cannot deal with reality in parts ...........you have to accept reality as a whole and have to look at the big picture to see the real problem and then possible solution.

Sharmila has a problem with AFSPA, AFSPA was put in place due to terrorism, Terrorism was born out of religious and regional alienation that was precipitated by conversion and Article 371. If you want to pu$$y foot around do so .....I don't have a problem with the truth.

 

[Dillinger]

Good point ....let me correct that to Article 371.

History and its relevance in present day problems is the content ....no need to become insure and shout. AFSPA is in northeast because of failure of society to assimilate to India due to religious difference and resultant terrorism.

Bhai sahab that society hasn't failed to integrate, its the government which has failed to establish credible operation of LEAs in the region and development. The population of the whole region has a higher voter turnout than Delhi or Gujarat.

You are referring to Article 371c? 371C. Special provision with respect to the State of Manipur.- (1) Notwithstanding anything in this Constitution, the President may, by order made with respect to the State of Manipur, provide for the constitution and functions of a committee of the Legislative Assembly of the State consisting of members of that Assembly elected from the Hill Areas of that State, for the modifications to be made in the rules of business of the Government and in the rules of procedure of the Legislative Assembly of the State and for any special responsibility of the Governor in order to secure the proper functioning of such committee.

(2) The Governor shall annually, or whenever so required by the President, make a report to the President regarding the administration of the Hill Areas in the State of Manipur and the executive power of the Union shall extend to the giving of directions to the State as to the administration of the said areas.

Explanation.—In this article, the expression “Hill Areas” means such areas as the President may, by order, declare to be Hill areas.

The article doesn't provide provisions like article 370 and has not hindered integration by its existence.
If you're referring to some other article of the constitution then amplify upon it with details.

The insurgents we are dealing with number in the hundreds- that's it. Our inability to counter them occurs and persists due to the poor infrastructure in the states and the porous borders which leads to intensive small arms proliferation. As regards arms smuggling across-the-border, the mega-mall or hypermarket for such cash-in-delivery transactions is Dimapur. Almost all the arms & ammo are brought in from northern & northeastern Myanmar by arms traders located at Dimapur in Nagaland & Ruili in Myanmar. If you were to take just one look at the India-Myanmar border, you will realise how porous it is & what complicates matters most there is the near-total absence of transportation infrastructure on the Indian side, & it is because of this that no CAPF can even dream about extended deployments for border domination in such areas. And what is far worse is that none of the ‘desi’ TV broadcast news channels have to date even bothered to visit such areas to document such a pathetic state of affairs over the past several decades after independence.

 

[Mritunjaya]

@Dillinger : 371 categories ethnic Mizos from the same ancestor and same origin into two different classes as General and Tribal or hill and valley people which is the root cause of their communal politics inciting one ethnic group against another.

Although Meiteis/Meeteis have the all the criteria for becoming a scheduled tribe i.e First Settlers of the Country –Supreme Court Judgment, Mongoloid stock, Animism, Partially Hinduised, they are categorized as General category and not Tribal or Hill people.

It was the british who started dividing the Manipuri's as General and Hill people under the guise of protecting hill people and to woo them to accept Christianity . This policy of divide and rule initiated by the British is being continued by the Government of India. Hence the political failure.

Second, The Manipur Land Revenue Act-1960 is discriminatory. The hill region, comprising about 90 percent of the total area of the State, contains only 35.45 % of the State's population, and valley region with 10 % of the total area has to support 64.55 % of the total population. The valley people can not purchase land and settle in the hills whereas hill people can purchasing land and settled in the valley. The valley people can not even buy back the land from the hill people which they had initially sold. This is another cause of their agitation.

This Law also makes the Hill land very cheap as the land can not be registered in any one elses name. (exactly like 370)
This ensures Hill people will remain in poverty and hence the added frustration and violence. Bringing everybody in Manipur under one uniform Land Law will start the emotional integration among the people.

Third, Manipur land was gifted away to Nagaland by GOI without consulting with the Manipuris. This is another cause for violence.

Resolve these issues first before addressing AFSPA

 

[Dillinger]

@Dillinger : 371 categories ethnic Mizos from the same ancestor and same origin into two different classes as General and Tribal or hill and valley people which is the root cause of their communal politics inciting one ethnic group against another.

Although Meiteis/Meeteis have the all the criteria for becoming a scheduled tribe i.e First Settlers of the Country –Supreme Court Judgment, Mongoloid stock, Animism, Partially Hinduised, they are categorized as General category and not Tribal or Hill people.

It was the british who started dividing the Manipuri's as General and Hill people under the guise of protecting hill people and to woo them to accept Christianity . This policy of divide and rule initiated by the British is being continued by the Government of India. Hence the political failure.

Second, The Manipur Land Revenue Act-1960 is discriminatory. The hill region, comprising about 90 percent of the total area of the State, contains only 35.45 % of the State's population, and valley region with 10 % of the total area has to support 64.55 % of the total population. The valley people can not purchase land and settle in the hills whereas hill people can purchasing land and settled in the valley. The valley people can not even buy back the land from the hill people which they had initially sold. This is another cause of their agitation.

This Law also makes the Hill land very cheap as the land can not be registered in any one elses name. (exactly like 370)
This ensures Hill people will remain in poverty and hence the added frustration and violence. Bringing everybody in Manipur under one uniform Land Law will start the emotional integration among the people.

Third, Manipur land was gifted away to Nagaland by GOI without consulting with the Manipuris. This is another cause for violence.

Resolve these issues first before addressing AFSPA

Now that's fact oriented and informative. But you have to remember that the Manipur Land Revenue Act was brought in for applying a certain amount of land reforms. The ceiling on holdings and the Excess land not to be surrendered in certain cases clauses have shown some benefits. Although man there aren't many people who even know about this act, kudos for having such knowledge man.

So what are the detailed steps that can be taken to fix the issues that you have highlighted, any opinions?

 

[Mritunjaya]

Now that's fact oriented and informative. But you have to remember that the Manipur Land Revenue Act was brought in for applying a certain amount of land reforms. The ceiling on holdings and the Excess land not to be surrendered in certain cases clauses have shown some benefits. Although man there aren't many people who even know about this act, kudos for having such knowledge man.

So what are the detailed steps that can be taken to fix the issues that you have highlighted, any opinions?

All my posts are factual. Its another thing that most cannot handle the facts.

Look at America and its Reservation land for Native American Indians. Can anyone truly say it has helped preserve their Identity or culture ? Or has it excluded them from living the American dream. Native Americans are one of the poorest people in USA today.

Most prosperity globally is build on property rights. Keeping the land prices artificially low by not allowing sale to other Indians is the root cause of poverty in Manipur. It also prevents efficient and effective use of that land.

This low cost land and restrictions on buying them also means people not having access to Loans that can be taken on these lands. In short, they become worthless. There is no incentive to build roads or other infrastructure so the entire community stays poor.

Second, Indians need 'an Innner Line Permit' to visit Manipur. This prevents National integration.

The solution is staring us in the face.

 

[Dushmann]

Irom Sharmila is now larger than life and state must go on backfoot. Removal of AFSPA can give way for false allegations by shady NGOs and fake cases and interfere with work of army. so just remove the army along with AFSPA and post paramilitary personnel. She has moral highground and breaking her fast and its symbolic importance is more important than anything else, even if it means temporary rise in insurgency.

 

[arp2041]

@Mritunjaya hats off to you dude, nice informative post, sorry for taking you wrong.

But i don't understand, why are there such divisive laws present in the NE on the first place??

who is gaining from it??