‘Iron Lady of Manipur’ to end strike and get married

Irom Sharmila began her hunger strike — the longest in the world — in November 2000 following the killing of 10 civilians by paramilitary troops in Malom, a town just outside Imphal, in the north-eastern state of Manipur.

Indian human rights activist Irom Sharmila speaks to the media outside a prison hospital in the northeastern city of Imphal, India, August 20, 2014. After 16 years, Reuters

NEW DELHI // After nearly 16 years of protest against alleged brutality, Indian activist Irom Sharmila surprised many by announcing that she will end her hunger strike on August 9 and get married.

The 44-year-old, who is known as the “Iron Lady of Manipur”, will then prepare to run in state elections that will be held early next year. She is hoping to do as a politician what she could not achieve as a an activist: force the repeal of what she sees as an unjust law.

Ms Sharmila began her hunger strike — the longest in the world — in November 2000 following the killing of 10 civilians by paramilitary troops in Malom, a town just outside Imphal, in the north-eastern state of Manipur.

She hoped to force the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a law that permits army personnel to use excessive force, without fear of prosecution, in combating insurgencies.

First passed in 1958, the act has been in force in several north-eastern states, including in Manipur where security forces are fighting separatists, as well as in Jammu & Kashmir. Under the law’s protection, army troops have been accused of getting away with numerous crimes, including murder, rape and torture.

Ms Sharmila was forcibly put on drips by the authorities during the first six years of her hunger strike. Then, in 2006, the government charged her under a section of the Indian Penal Code that outlaws suicide attempts. It ordered that she be kept as a prisoner awaiting trial at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal where she has been held since.

She is being force-fed by medical staff there through a nasal tube every day. Once every 15 days, she is also required to report to a district court.

These restrictions will be lifted once she ends her strike.

On July 8, India’s supreme court undercut the immunity act by ordering investigations into 1,528 cases of army killings in Manipur and ruling that a formal inquiry should follow every future case suspected of being an extrajudicial killing under the law’s ambit.

“Before a person can be branded as a militant or a terrorist or an insurgent, there must be the commission or some attempt or semblance of a violent overt act,” the court said, adding that the government’s endless deployment of AFSPA, “mock[s] at our democratic process”.

But for Ms Sharmila and other activists fighting to repeal the act, the supreme court’s ruling was not enough. The law, though undermined, was not repealed and still exists on the books as a law, something that Ms Sharmila sees as a failure of her activism and of the activism of others.

“The government has not been listening to our voices and has been suppressing our movement,” Ms Sharmila said on Tuesday, after reporting to the Imphal court. “The only way to bring change is the electoral process. I will stand as an independent candidate from Malom constituency.”

Ms Sharmila also plans to get married — to Desmond Coutinho, a British citizen of Goan origin, who she met in 2011 after exchanging letters with him for nearly a year.

“I am like Yoko Ono. Or [Mahatma Gandhi’s] wife,” Mr Coutinho wrote on a blog in 2011. “I will enable her to do her thing, which is [to] give witness to the oppressed. I am marrying a mahatma [great soul] and I have a rough idea that it’s not going to be an easy-going life.”

Ms Sharmila’s decision to give up her fast and run for Manipur’s state legislature instead is a change in strategy, but it is also an implicit admission of the failure of her protest, said Elangbam Chand Singh, a Congress party legislator in Manipur who represents another constituency.

“Really, all of Manipur has been put into something of a tizzy now,” Mr Singh said. “We don’t know why she has, all of a sudden, taken this decision to go into politics.”

While Ms Sharmila had generated a lot of support for her cause, “it’s going to be next to impossible for her to win an election”, Mr Singh said. “People don’t always vote based on issues here,” he said, pointing out that party infrastructure, caste loyalties and campaign expenditure often played a significant role in an electoral campaign’s success.

“Personally, I think this is the wrong step for her,” he said. “You can help people even without getting into politics, as she was doing. She should continue being an activist, doing the thing for which people have been supporting her.”