Irom Chanu Sharmila Rearrested
Human rights defender Ms Irom Chanu Sharmila, campaigner against Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) was arrested in Imphal on 22 August, 2014, on charges of attempted suicide.
Irom Chanu Sharmila has been on hunger strike since 2 November 2000 in protest against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 (AFSPA) which gives power to officers of the Indian Armed Forces to shoot anyone suspected of being an insurgent in so-called “disturbed areas”. Irom Chanu Sharmila began her hunger strike on the same day that the Indian Armed Force, known as the Assam Rifles, killed ten innocent people in Malom, Manipur.
Irom Sharmila, who has been on hunger strike for 16 years, enduring force feeding and detention, declared an end to the hunger strike on 26 July 2016.
In a public statement, she stated that she no longer feels she can win the battle against the AFSPA through fasting alone.
Sharmila began her protest in November 2000 after 10 people including two children were killed by troops of the Assam Rifles (a paramilitary force) by a bus stop near Imphal.
Sharmila was detained after being charged under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code for an attempt to commit suicide by launching an indefinite hunger strike.
She has been released and re-arrested every year since her hunger strike began and was hailed as an “icon of public resistance” in the region where the central government remains unpopular.
Human rights defender Ms Irom Chanu Sharmila, campaigner against Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) was arrested in Imphal on 22 August, 2014, on charges of attempted suicide.
Two days before her new arrest, on 20 August, Irom Chanu Sharmila had been released from judicial custody on after her most recent one year's imprisonment following a court ruling that police had brought no evidence to substantiate the charge that she had attempted to commit suicide.
Irom Chanu Sharmila was arrested in relation to the continuation of her hunger strike. She has been charged with “attempting to commit suicide” under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, which carries a sentence of “simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year” and/or a fine. The human rights defender has previously been arrested on the same charge every year since the beginning her hunger strike on 2 November 2000. Every year authorities release her from custody, usually for several hours, and then detain her again making sure that she is not going to finish her starvation. For already fourteen years the authorities forcibly feed the human rights defender holding her at the prison hospital.
Irom Chanu Sharmila has been on hunger strike since 2 November 2000 in protest against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 (AFSPA) which gives power to officers of the Indian Armed Forces to shoot anyone suspected of being an insurgent in so-called “disturbed areas”. Further, AFSPA grants special powers to the armed forces, including those to detain, use lethal force and enter and search premises without warrant. The Act also stipulates that the central government must give its permission to prosecute any officer of the armed forces, which in effect has granted them almost complete impunity. Irom Chanu Sharmila began her hunger strike on the same day that the Indian Armed Force, known as the Assam Rifles, killed ten innocent people in Malom, Manipur. At the time, the army refused to initiate an inquiry into the massacre claiming that the officers had acted with the authority given to them under AFSPA.
On 22 August 2014, she was arrested outside a government-run hospital in Imphal where she was continuing her fast. Police officers surrounded the human rights defender and, when she resisted, the forcibly picked her up and put her in a police jeep. Irom Chanu Sharmila has vowed to continue her hunger strike until AFSPA is repealed.
