Arunachal AFSPA Decision Will Be Reviewed, Says Rijiju

Itanagar, Apr 14 : The Union minister of state for home affairs, Kiren Rijiju, on Sunday said he has instructed officials of his ministry to review the Centre's decision to impose the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) in 12 districts of Arunachal Pradesh. He said the officials will also seek the state government's views on the matter.

"I have directed the home ministry to review the decision and seek suggestions from the state government," he said in a statement. "The Union home ministry took the decision because the ongoing operation against NDFB-S and other outfits may not succeed if militants find a safe heaven in Arunachal," he added. "We are a democratic government. If the state government is uncomfortable with this step, we will honour their concern. Law and order is a state subject and the Union home ministry can only deal with national security by working closely with the state government," he explained.

Stating that the Centre would adhere to the spirit of cooperative federalism, Rijiju said he is in touch with Arunachal home minister Tanga Byaling. "Some modalities need to be worked out and the views of the state government have been sought. The fact remains, however, that rebels are working in the border areas of Arunachal," he said.

"I would like to appeal to both the state government and the residents to be alert about the movement of militants from outside the state entering Arunachal," he added.

Mizoram Mulls AFSPA To Hmar Dominated Areas

Aizawl, Apr 13 : The Mizoram government is likely to issue an ordinance to declare the northeastern part of the state, bordering Manipur, as a 'disturbed area'. The region is dominated by people belonging to the Hmar community.

The move comes after the ambush of members and guards of a state assembly committee at Zokhawthiang, near the Mizoram-Manipur border, on March 28 in which two policemen and a driver of the police department were killed by suspected rebels of Hmar People's Convention (Democrats).

A senior state home department official said the bill to declare the area as 'disturbed' is being drafted.

"As the state assembly is not in session, the governor will issue an ordinance after the bill gets the approval of the council of ministers," the official said. He added that terming an area 'disturbed' does not necessarily imply the enforcement of the dreaded Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.

"The Mizoram government will declare the area as disturbed without involving the Centre," he said, adding that the concerned bill is being prepared by the state home department and the law and judicial department. He said the state government could reimburse 75% of the expenses involved in implementing the disturbed area ordinance.

Meanwhile, the Aizawl-based corruption watchdog, People's Right to Information and Development Implementing Society of Mizoram (PRISM), issued a statement condemning the government's move. It said Mizoram underwent unspeakable suffering, including rape, violation of human rights, torture, atrocities and displacement, for 20 years when it was a 'disturbed area'.

"The atrocities and excesses of the Army during the 20-year-long insurgency left an indelible scar in the minds of the Mizo people," the statement said, adding that such suffering should not be repeated in the state.

The 'disturbed area' tag will provide sweeping powers to the Armed Forces, which, in turn, would result in human rights violations, the statement said.

Tatas Sign Welfare Pact with Mizoram

By Santanu Ghosh

Silchar, Apr 12 : A welfare trust of the industrial house of Tatas has signed an MoU with the Mizoram government in its rural development initiatives.

Official sources in Aizawl today said the memorandum of understanding (MoU) was initiated with Burziz Taraporevala, secretary of the Ratan Tata Trust, in the Mizoram capital on April 8.

Taraporevala said the Trust would provide Rs 18.8 crore over the next five years for rural development projects under the Mizoram government's flagship project, New Land Utilisation Policy (NLUP). He hoped the joint project, which aims at economic uplift of about 17,000 Mizo families, would bear fruit.

The joint project aims to uplift the living standard of the poor in the rural areas of the state by offering employment opportunities such as rearing of pigs by increasing the number of scientific pig sties, and increase in horticulture products, such as exportable fruits like orange, passion fruit and grapes and cultivation of flowers such as the anthurium.

The venture also aims to discourage farmers from practising the wasteful slash-and- burn jhum cultivation on hill terraces by providing them with an alternative, profitable agricultural practice.

Improvement of traditional Mizo handicraft items like knitted colourful puan (women's skirts) and jackets, and bamboo baskets and hats have also found primacy in the schemes to be executed by the NLUP grants.

The NLUP, an innovative rural project of the Mizoram government, was unfurled in 2010 at an initial cost of Rs 2,800 crore. The state government has already made some progress under the scheme and received accolades in the country and abroad.

One of the welfare wings of the Tata Trust, the North East Initiative Development Agency (NEIDA), will be involved in the joint collaboration with the Mizoram government. The venture aims to cover the entire state, which has a population of about 11 lakhs, in phases under the NULP programmes, the sources said. The NEIDA also has its footprints in other northeastern states like Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

Delhi Has 'Silently Extended' Harsh AFSPA Act To My State: Arunachal CM

By Rupesh Dutta

New Delhi, Apr 13 : The union government has "silently extended" the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to "entire state of Arunachal Pradesh" without consulting the state government and appears keen to deal with the insurgency in border areas on its own, state Chief minister Nabam Tuki has said.

Tuki said the central government could have tightened security in areas of the state that border Nagaland and Assam instead of extending the "harsh act in the entire state."
"The movement of insurgents is in these areas and not the mainland of Arunachal Pradesh," Tuki told in an interview during a visit here.

Tuki, who heads a Congress government in the state, said that there was an increase in the number of insurgent camps in areas bordering Nagaland and Assam but there has not been any increase in insurgent activity in other parts of the state.

"Can the Centre know better than the state government?" he asked.

AFSPA has been in force in Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts of Arunachal Pradesh since 1991 after they were categorized as disturbed areas. It was subsequently extended to a 20-km belt in districts that share borders with Assam.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government, in an order last month, extended the controversial AFSPA to other areas of Arunchal Pradesh.

AFSPA grants special powers to the armed forces in areas declared "disturbed" including arrest without warrant of a person who has committed cognizable offence or is suspected to have done so. It allows them to enter and search any premises, to stop and search any vehicle reasonably suspected. It gives powers to personnel to fire upon those acting unlawfully for the maintenance of public order Tuki, 51, who is into his second term as chief minister, said that it was due to efforts of his government that insurgent outfits such as National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Issac-Muivah), United Liberation Front of Assam (Independent), National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) could not extend their reach in the state.

"The central government has not been able to understand that it is because of my government's efforts that insurgency has not been able to reach the mainland Arunachal Pradesh from the bordering areas," he said.

Tuki said "if the central government was aware of it, they would have have consulted Arunachal government (before extending AFSPA),"
Tuki said he had got to know of the extension of AFSPA in his state through media reports.

"I met Home Minister Rajnath Singh and urged him to reconsider it. It is the common people who will be affected. The central government should see the atmosphere in my state and then take a decision."
Tuki, who attended the 64th plenary meeting of the North East Council here, said that extension of AFSPA in the state has made people apprehensive.

"It has led to a panic among people and they fear that the situation will became similar to that in Manipur, where there have been several controversies regarding the AFSPA," Tuki said.

Asked about reasons for increase of camps in the bordering areas of Arunachal Pradesh, Tuki said that there were several reasons and both the state and Centre need to understand them in a spirit of mutual understanding.

"Arunachal Pradesh has been an island of peace. Never ever any insurgent group has emerged from the state. But several major and minor militant groups have indeed tried to infiltrate seeing the peaceful atmosphere in the state, he said.

Tuki said the Centre should reconsider its decision on AFSPA
"If they don't, I will tell the home ministry about the consequent problems," he said.

"I will wait for some time to see how the Centre deals with my request. I have to look after problems of my own people. I cannot allow them to face problems because of the Act," he said.

Mizoram Mulls Ordinance To Impose ‘Disturbed Area’ Tag

Aizawl, Apr 10 : The Mizoram government is likely to issue an ordinance to declare the northeastern part of the state, bordering Manipur, as a 'disturbed area'. The region is dominated by people belonging to the Hmar community.

The move comes after the ambush of members and guards of a state assembly committee at Zokhawthiang, near the Mizoram-Manipur border, on March 28 in which two policemen and a driver of the police department were killed by suspected rebels of Hmar People's Convention (Democrats).

A senior state home department official said the bill to declare the area as 'disturbed' is being drafted.

"As the state assembly is not in session, the governor will issue an ordinance after the bill gets the approval of the council of ministers," the official said. He added that terming an area 'disturbed' does not necessarily imply the enforcement of the dreaded Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.

"The Mizoram government will declare the area as disturbed without involving the Centre," he said, adding that the concerned bill is being prepared by the state home department and the law and judicial department. He said the state government could reimburse 75% of the expenses involved in implementing the disturbed area ordinance.

Meanwhile, the Aizawl-based corruption watchdog, People's Right to Information and Development Implementing Society of Mizoram (PRISM), issued a statement condemning the government's move. It said Mizoram underwent unspeakable suffering, including rape, violation of human rights, torture, atrocities and displacement, for 20 years when it was a 'disturbed area'.

"The atrocities and excesses of the Army during the 20-year-long insurgency left an indelible scar in the minds of the Mizo people," the statement said, adding that such suffering should not be repeated in the state.

The 'disturbed area' tag will provide sweeping powers to the Armed Forces, which, in turn, would result in human rights violations, the statement said.

The Balancing Act in Manipur

By Sudeep Chakravarti


A file photo of Naga tribesmen during a festival at Kohima. Non-Naga communities fear that giving autonomy to Nagas in Manipur will be the first step to a Greater Nagaland that rebels have advertised for long. Photo: AFP

A peace deal with Naga rebels will require granting autonomy to Nagas in Manipur; this will need to be balanced by addressing the concerns of non-Naga inhabitants of the state


A peace deal with Naga rebels could make or break India’s peace-and-prosperity stakes in a region neighbouring Myanmar, the country’s stated overland gateway to hydrocarbon reserves and markets of South-East Asia, and a pivot to counter China.

Settling Naga rebels in Nagaland is only part of the story (See Naga peace process: New equations, Mint, 3 April 2015). A peace deal will also require settling Naga rebel leaders and cadres in their traditional homelands in adjacent Manipur, and granting administrative autonomy to Nagas there—articulated as Alternative Arrangement by United Naga Council (UNC), the apex body for Nagas in that state. This will need to be balanced by addressing the concerns of non-Naga inhabitants of Manipur, who constitute the majority.

Observers point to overtures like Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of a sports university for Manipur as being deal sweeteners. Imphal valley, home to the state’s majority Meitei population, and the southern arc of hills, home to most of Manipur’s non-Naga tribal people, won’t be bought that cheaply.

Modi and his team need to ensure that the territorial integrity of Manipur is seen to be preserved. Non-Naga communities, especially the Meitei, fear that giving autonomy to Nagas in Manipur will be the first step to a Greater Nagaland that rebels have advertised for long. This concern will likely be assuaged by the natural tribal politics that will, for a time, keep Nagas in Manipur away from the ambit of Nagas in the present-day state of Nagaland, and also by constitutional mechanisms that prevent absolute powers to UNC’s Alternative Arrangement.

Peace will require other grand gestures. A surefire buy-in would be withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, or AFSPA, which offers the armed forces both impunity and immunity, and remains the most explosive emotional trigger in Manipur after territoriality. The law that heaps gratuitous insult and brutality on non-combatants in a quest for national security has gradually been removed from the municipal limits of the state capital Imphal. Without any loss of influence—several laws besides AFSPA permit search, seizure and combat against enemies of the state—the gesture could easily be extended. If security hawks are wary of such blanket removal, AFSPA could remain only in a strip along the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur. It’s a porous membrane, as it were, that thrives on the smuggling of weapons, narcotics, sandalwood and other products, a food chain that caters alike to rebels and the political elite.

Low-key visits by senior army officers in recent weeks to Manipur are being interpreted by some local observers as evaluation of the ground for give-and-take. At any rate, the current chief of army staff, Dalbir Singh, is uniquely placed. Having commanded a Rashtriya Rifles battalion in Nagaland, and later the Army’s 3 Corps based in Rangapahar, near Dimapur, and the Eastern Command in Kolkata, he brings experience of a vast area that includes Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and Mizoram. He brings insights into nearby Myanmar and Bangladesh and the local and geopolitical impulses that, for all the recent bonhomie, impel these countries to harbour anti-India rebels.

Reconciliation would also be required between the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), the largest Naga rebel group currently in talks with the government of India, and the Kuki community. Kukis hold this group responsible for triggering a territory-oriented blood-letting in the 1990s that killed and massively displaced Kuki communities in areas that the Nagas—in particular the Tangkhul tribe—claimed as their own. The Kuki Inpi Manipur, the apex body for the community in that state, demands a formal apology. It seems like a small price for peace and reconciliation.

Balance is also likely to be driven by the needs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is making determined forays into northeastern India. Senior bureaucrats from Manipur tell me that the BJP would be wary of anything that permits the Congress and its entrenched and riotously controversial chief minister, Okram Ibobi Singh, renewed lease as protector of non-Naga communities when assembly elections come around in early 2017. The Congress has 42 seats in Manipur’s 60-seat assembly, mostly from Imphal valley. These plains account for 40 assembly seats: a BJP target.

Fancy footwork by the Modi government will, of course, not prevent undermining of a process of peace and reconciliation by fat cats in politics and the establishments of both the state and rebels that have grown plump in the economy of conflict. It’s a balancing act to top all balancing acts.

Sudeep Chakravarti’s latest book is Clear.Hold.Build: Hard Lessons of Business and Human Rights in India. His earlier books include Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country and Highway 39: Journeys through a Fractured Land. This column, which focuses on conflict situations in South Asia that directly affect business, runs on Fridays.

Officer And A Gentleman

By Hemendra Narayan

Trailing Brigadier (retired) Thenphunga Sailo, the second chief minister of Mizoram, from Aizawl to Lunglei as a journalist during the elections, was an experience. In the blue Mizo hills, the chief minister moved in a cavalcade of vehicles, the most striking of which was an LMG-mounted Jeep with a security jawan standing up, keeping an alert eye on the road. It was during the 1984 assembly election in Mizoram, then a Union territory affected by the armed insurgency of the Mizo National Front led by Pu (Mr) Laldenga, formerly a non-combatant havildar in the Indian army.

I had come to know Sailo, who passed away in an Aizawl hospital on Friday at the age of 93. Learning that I came from Bihar, he talked of being stationed at the Danapur Cantonment, not far from Patna, during his years in the army. He had successfully organised flood relief operations in the state.

Sailo had served in the British Indian army, having been recruited as a second lieutenant in 1942. The decorated officer retired from the Indian army in 1974. It was while I was trailing him that he talked about his experience in the armed forces and promised to give me a copy of the report of the human rights committee he had set up when I returned to Aizawl. The committee had listed 36 cases of violation by the security forces during the eight years of insurgency in the Mizo hills, which had been forwarded to then prime minister Indira Gandhi.

He kept his promise and gave me a copy of the report. It could have been one of the first instances of a former senior army officer seeking an inquiry into the atrocities committed by the security forces. Today, 41 years later, he would have found many supporters across the country for his campaign.
He had made an impassioned appeal to Indira Gandhi for a judicial commission of inquiry to “verify the truth” of the sound cases. In his letter to the PM, dated October 10,1974, the retired officer had said, “I have been increasingly depressed and perturbed as a soldier with 31 years of service at the reputation of the Indian army, in which I still feel so proud to have served… I am not given to irresponsible or emotionally hasty judgements nor to magnifying occasional unfortunate incidents into a general complex of bitterness”. To prove his point, Sailo wrote, “Some years ago when there was indiscipline amounting to mutiny among some troops from my own state and regiment, I was the first to depreciate leniency”.

“I am not squeamish about inevitable causalities that occur in combat with the underground hostiles,” he had claimed in the same letter, poignantly adding, “But the feelings of the entire village population of Mizoram are now totally alienated by what amounts to the denial of all decencies of human rights”. He had urged that something had to be done to bridge the gulf and restore confidence and that was the reason for setting up the committee. He had appealed to the PM’s “impartiality and understanding”, instead of taking up any “destructive or agitational approach”. In his letter, significantly from the “Ahimsa Cabin”, the retired officer had said, “We do not seek any vindictive punishments — merely that justice and decency be restored and fear of terror, torture and oppression is lifted from the hearts of our people”. The committee’s report had a three-page preface with the title “Civil-military relationship in Mizoram and the image of Indian army in Mizoram”.

Forwarding the report, he had mentioned that the image of the Indian army had reached its “bottom” and touchingly said, “Mizo is in my blood and the Indian army is in my flesh and bones.”

The writer is a former Northeast correspondent of ‘The Indian Express’ who was based in Shillong

Lounge Opinion - Message in a Bottle

After 18 years of ‘leaking’ prohibition, Mizoram allows the sale of alcohol

By David M. Thangliana

The opposition to alcohol in Mizoram began after the advent of Christian missionaries from Wales in the mid-1890s.

On 20 February 1997, the day Mizoram Liquor (Total Prohibition), or MLTP, Act, 1995, came into force in Mizoram, I was travelling to the state from Kolkata. People who were carrying liquor with them faced a hard time at the check-post set up by the excise department in Vairengte, the first Mizo village bordering Assam. On 16 March, the government ended the 18-year drought as a legally sanctioned alcohol shop opened in the state capital, Aizawl.

This historic event resulted from the new law passed by the Mizoram legislative assembly in 2014—The Mizoram Liquor (Prohibition and Control), or MLPC, Act, which came into effect from 15 January. However, local-level opposition meant that only one of the six government-approved licensed retail alcohol shops could open on the designated day (16 March), while another, a state undertaking, opened the next day in Aizawl.

The fate of alcohol shops in the other seven district headquarters hangs in the balance from a combination of opposition to alcohol shops and the unpreparedness of district authorities. The state excise and narcotics minister, R. Lalzirliana, who is the No.2 person in the state’s Congress-led government, told the assembly earlier this month that if the opposition to opening wine shops continued, the government would consider online sales.

“The government has no intention of forcing liquor stores in localities that are against them. With online shopping becoming popular, the government can look into this and other angles for liquor sales,” Lalzirliana said.

The former MLTP Act, had become a standing joke. There was no dearth of liquor—black marketers of Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) made three- to four-fold profits and local brewers did roaring business selling moonshine.

In fact, two localities in Aizawl became infamous for their liquor dens thronged by young people on weekends. Even the setting up of an outpost by the excise and narcotics department and strong enforcement of the ban by the state’s biggest NGO, the Young Mizo Association (YMA), did little to discourage the illicit liquor trade. Mizoram was India’s wettest dry state, it was joked.

It is said the opposition to alcohol in Mizoram began after the advent of Christian missionaries from Wales in the mid-1890s. Before this, liquor had been part and parcel of Mizo society. However, drunkenness was heavily frowned upon. The new religion, which fully percolated the Mizo community by the mid-1940s, strongly adhered to the belief that Christianity and alcohol didn’t go together. Despite this, alcohol became the main source of Mizo society’s problems.

This gave impetus to the belief of Mizo Christians that alcohol is a sin. In the early 1980s, the government brought into effect the Mizoram Excise Act, 1973, that sought to regulate the sale of alcohol in what was then a Union Territory. Influential church and civil society organizations took initiatives to curb the use of alcohol.

Even the Mizo National Front (MNF), which went underground from 1966 to mid-1986 seeking independence from India and is now the main opposition party in the state, tried to stop the manufacture and sale of alcohol by resorting to violence during the 1970s, but to no avail.

In 1993, when for the third time the Congress party came to power (in alliance with the Mizoram Janata Dal), church leaders approached the then chief minister Lal Thanhawla (who is also the current CM) to impose total prohibition. The MLTP Act, 1995, emerged from such pressure. By 1998, when the MNF came to power for the second time, its founder-president Laldenga, who was against prohibition, was dead.

He was replaced by his second-in-command, Zoramthanga, a teetotaller. Not surprisingly, during the MNF’s decade-long rule, the state government and the powerful YMA made every effort to stop the illicit liquor trade.

The YMA even went so far as to form an extremist group called SRS, or Supply Reduction Service. The SRS dealt out severe punishment to illicit liquor dealers. The sale of IMFL in the black market and locally brewed liquor, however, continued to flourish even as the excise and narcotics department daily declared confiscations of illegal hooch.

The local illicit liquor—manufactured hurriedly and on the run, given the crackdown—started containing chemical substances and impurities detrimental to health (not to mention the economic costs incurred from buying IMFL at prohibitive prices).

This took a heavy toll; with a rise in the number of deaths from stomach and liver problems in relatively young people, some even in their 20s. When the Congress returned to power in 2008, chief minister Lal Thanhawla clearly signalled that his government would do away with the MLTP Act. The churches of Mizoram, however, again took a strong stance against this move and Lal Thanhawla toed their line. The Congress again regained power in the 2013 assembly election, securing 34 of the 40 assembly seats. The new government, again under Lal Thanhawla, announced that it would scrap the MLTP Act and enact a new law that would allow, to an extent, the sale and consumption of alcohol. The result is the MLPC Act, 2014. According to the new Act, any citizen above 21 years can apply for a liquor permit which costs Rs.500 for a year.

A permit owner can purchase six 750 ml bottles of hard liquor or IMFL and 10 bottles of beer and wine a month. Punishment for breaking the rules are harsh. The minimum incarceration period is one month and maximum five years. The least harsh punishment is doing social work, such as sweeping and cleaning public places, including market areas, public toilets and hospital premises.

The police are also equipped with breath analysers to check drivers and can make spot arrests. In Aizawl alone, over 25,000 individuals and counting have applied for a liquor permit.

State-wide, the number of applicants could be more than 30,000. While some people have welcomed the MLPC Act, 2014, as total prohibition had failed dismally, the resistance against the lifting of prohibition remains strong, something the opposition parties hope to benefit from during the next assembly election.

However, with the elections still some years away, sales of alcohol could be a normal way of life in Mizoram by the time 2018 comes around.

The Aizawl-based author is former editor of Newslink, a local newspaper, and was a correspondent for The Telegraph from 2003-06. He is currently affiliated with the Congress party.