Background: The Armed Forces' Special Powers Ordinance was passed in 1942 by the British government. In 1958, the Indian Parliament made the ordinance a law. It was amended in 1972, and made stricter. The entire Northeast, with the exception of Sikkim and Mizoram, and Jammu & Kashmir in the Northwest, are governed by the Armed Forces with immunity, provided them by this law. These Forces are not accountable to any superior body. Manipur, which has been witnessing a big agitation by the people against the Act, came under its sway in 1980. Section 4 of the Act grants special powers to army officers, JCOs and non- commissioned officers to employ force against a person who is acting in contravention of the law in a 'disturbed area'. The power to declare a particular area a disturbed area is vested in the Union Government. The Act grants to these officers unlimited power to destroy a place being used by an armed group as a training camp or a hideout and the power to arrest a person without warrant on 'reasonable suspicion' of having committed or being about to commit a cognizable offence.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in 1991, found certain aspects of the law incompatible with Articles 6, 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966, which was ratified by India in 1979. It is also opposed to the International standards of Human Rights as defined in the International Bill of Human Rights. The case of atrocities by the Assam Rifles in the early 1980's in the Naga areas was brought before the Supreme Court and the Court decreed that the Army must not use schools and churches as detention and interrogation centers. In 1987, the notorious Oinam case occurred in which two pregnant women were forced to deliver children on a playground surrounded by jawans.
The Naga People's Movement for Human Rights challenged the Act before the Guwahati High Court. "We presented to the court ten thousand pages of evidence of atrocities committed by the Security Forces in just one year during one counter insurgency operation code- named Operation Blackbird in and around Oinam", says the indefatigable human rights activist Nandta Haksar who was the lawyer in all these cases.
The recent occurrence that has triggered the mass protests in Manipur was the killing of 32 year old Ms. Thangiam Manorama, while in the custody of the Assam Rifles. She was picked up from her house on July 10, and her body was found the next day, with easily visible marks of the torture that was inflicted on it. The people believe that she was first raped and then murdered. The outraged people have been demonstrating against the Security forces since 13 July. On 15 July, 15 women went naked to the Kangla headquarters of the 17 Assam Rifles to express their anger and sense of humiliation.
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