By A Mirsab, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: Human rights activists, especially the Amnesty International, have demanded immediate and unconditional release of Manipur’s ‘Iron Lady’ Irom Sharmila in wake of the Centre’s attempt to decriminalize suicide by dropping the section 309 of IPC.
Minister of State for Home Affairs on December 10 had stated in the Rajya Sabha that the central government had decided to repeal Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, which makes attempting to commit suicide punishable with imprisonment for up to one year.
Irom Sharmila [File Photo]
Civil rights activist Irom Sharmila, 42, has been held in detention in Manipur for over 14 years on repeated charges of attempted suicide. She has been on a hunger strike since November 2000 demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 (AFSPA).
“Authorities in India must build on the central government’s decision to decriminalize suicide by dropping all charges of attempted suicide against Prisoner of Conscience Irom Sharmila and work towards releasing her immediately and unconditionally,” Amnesty said in a news release on Tuesday, December 16.
“The Indian government’s decision to decriminalize suicide is in line with the increasing global trend. This move should lead to the immediate release of Irom Sharmila, who has been held in detention merely for exercising her freedom of expression in a peaceful manner,” said Shailesh Rai, Programme Director at Amnesty International India.
Commenting that she should not have been arrested in the first place, Rai said, “Now that the authorities have acknowledged that attempting to commit suicide should not be considered a crime, those in Manipur and Delhi should drop all charges against her and start to engage with the issues this remarkable activist is raising.”
After the Centre’s decision, Sharmila’s brother Irom Singhajit had expressed a strong desire of her release. “We are very happy to know that the government will have to release Sharmila once the law is changed. Whatever happens, she will continue with her fight for the repeal of the draconian AFSPA,” Singhajit had told PTI on December 12 from Imphal.
Who is Irom Sharmila?
Irom Chanu Sharmila is a civil rights and political activist and a poet from the Manipur.
She is also known as the ‘Iron Lady of Manipur’ or ‘Mengoubi’ (the fair one). On November 2, 2000, she began a hunger strike, which is still ongoing demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 (AFSPA). She was arrested by the Manipur police shortly after she began her hunger strike and charged with attempting to commit suicide – a criminal offence under Indian law then. She was force fed by authorities through IV measures.
In March 2013, a Delhi court also charged Sharmila with attempting to commit suicide in October 2006, when she staged a protest in Delhi for two days.
Having refused food and water for more than 500 weeks, she has been called “the world’s longest hunger striker.” On International Women’s Day 2014, she was voted the top woman icon of India by MSN Poll.
In February 2012, the Supreme Court of India observed in its ruling in the Ram Lila Maidan incident case that a hunger strike is “a form of protest which has been accepted, both historically and legally in our constitutional jurisprudence.”
Earlier this year, she was offered to contest the Lok Sabha polls on the Aam Aadmi Party and Indian National Congress tickets but she denied both the requests describing herself as a protester and not a politician.
On August 19, 2014, a Manipur court had ruled that there were no grounds to charge Irom Sharmila with attempted suicide and instead described her protest as a ‘political demand through lawful means’, a belief thousands of her supporters have long held. Irom Sharmila was released after the verdict but she was re-arrested in farcical circumstances just two days later on the same charges.