Army Rollback: A Promise of Freedom from the Gunpoint
By siliconindia   |   Saturday, 29 October 2011, 00:11 IST   |    18 Comments
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Bangalore: For Kashmiris, freedom is only in words and not in deeds. There is not even a semblance of freedom in the world's most heavily militarized zone, where they are stopped any time for security checks and their homes are often raided.
AFSPA
As the debate over the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) gets heated, it's that indomitable quest for freedom that shook the established political arrogance to rethink about a possible revocation of this draconian law. Under this rule, the troops can forgo warrants and use force. It even allows the army to shoot or arrest anyone on mere suspicion, a rule often criticized to be powering the army with complete impunity against human rights violation. The AFSPA was initially passed 1958 giving special powers to the army to be exercised in specially categorized "disturbed areas" in the North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. The Special Powers Act was later extended to Jammu and Kashmir in 1990. The act clearly says, "Fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law" against "assembly of five or more persons" or possession of deadly weapons." It also permits the forces to arrest without a warrant and with the use of "necessary" force anyone who has committed certain offenses or is suspected of having done so. The army also can enter and search any premise in order to make such arrests. While the government figures tell us that insurgency and fatalities due to terrorist attacks are weakening, it's startling to know that the soldiers-to-civilians ratio still remains to be very high that there is a soldier for every ten civilians in Kashmir.

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