Manipuri woman shifts protest to Delhi By Simon Denyer NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A woman who has been on hunger strike for six years against human rights abuses in Manipur shifted her fight to the capital New Delhi on Wednesday.
Thirty-four-year-old Irom Sharmila has become an iconic figure for the people of Manipur since launching her hunger strike in late 2000 after soldiers shot 10 young men at a bus stop in a small town in Manipur. She says she will fast until the government repeals the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which gives soldiers sweeping powers to kill suspected rebels, with virtual immunity from prosecution. Shortly after beginning her fast, Sharmila was arrested and charged with attempted suicide. Since then authorities have been force-feeding her through a nasal tube in the government-run hospital in Manipur's capital Imphal. The maximum term for her offence is one year and police have been in the habit of releasing her every year, only to rearrest her the following day. This year a small group of supporters and human rights activists took advantage of her day of freedom to smuggle her through Imphal's high security airport and onto a plane to New Delhi. Soon after arriving, Sharmila made for Rajghat, the memorial to India's independence hero Mahatma Gandhi who made fasting a potent political weapon against British colonial rule. "If I have to die without my demand being fulfilled, before I am lying on my death bed, I would like to get his blessings," the frail woman told Reuters after throwing marigolds on his memorial and joining her palms in respect. "BOUNDEN DUTY" Sitting cross-legged on the lawn beside the memorial with a white shawl over her curly black hair, she said the government had betrayed Gandhi's memory in its reaction to her peaceful protest and its treatment of the people of Manipur. "I would like to follow his tradition, his ideology," she said. "Maybe you call it a sacrifice but to me it is simply a bounden duty." Manipur, with a population of little more than two million, lies 2,400 km from New Delhi on India's northeastern border with Myanmar, and the country's economic development over the past six decades has largely passed it by. Most of its people follow the Hindu religion but are thought to be of Tibeto-Burman origin and feel they are looked down upon by their fellow Indians. An armed separatist rebellion took off in the 1960s and has left around 20,000 people dead. In Imphal, Sharmila had been kept in a dimly lit and damp hospital room, guarded around the clock by security women in civilian clothes and barred from meeting her family members, supporters or friends. She was force-fed five times a day through the tube. Obviously weak, she walked falteringly to Gandhi's memorial on Wednesday supported by her brother Singhjit, but said yoga had helped preserve her health. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act only applies in Kashmir and insurgency-affected northeastern India. Human rights groups say it has given the army licence to kill, torture and rape with impunity. Meanwhile, police in New Delhi said they had arrested three "high-ranking" rebels from Manipur's separatist United National Liberation Front (UNLF), who were allegedly trying to set up a base in the Indian capital. The men were removed from a plane bound for Kathmandu on Monday, police said, adding that they had recovered a compact disc and pen-drive from the men containing information about the Indian army in Manipur. (Additional reporting by Biswajyoti Das in GUWAHATI and Nigam Prusty in NEW DELHI) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ greenyouth mailinglist is the activist support mailinglist for kerala run by Global Alternate Information Applications (GAIA) To post to this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
