Babloo Loitongbam and Irom Singhjit exposed human rights violations of the indigenous people of North-East India in the session of 28th UN Human Rights Council, Geneva.
Drawing the attention of the President of UN Human Rights Council, Babloo Loitongbam said that the effort of human rights council to voice the woes of the voiceless are indeed commendable. However, the people of North-East India feel that the council’s attention is needed to the continued violations of human rights of the indigenous people of North-East India. They are deprived of their ancestral land in the ambitious act east policy of the govt. of India. The fear of indigenous population, swamped by settlers from outside the region is also triggering many civil unrest today. Babloo also informed that the special rapporteur on violence against women Madam Rashida Manjoo in 2013, Prof Christof Heyns, special rapporteur on extra judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, former special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in 2011 who visited the region came out with the clear recommendations to repel AFSPA, 1958. It backtracked and jeopardized the incremental progress of the last few decades by rejecting the recommendation of its own Justice Jeevan Reddy committee to repeal the act. This recent decision of the govt. of India is also in clear contradiction to the recommendation of almost all the major human rights treaty bodies including those monitoring the international covenant on civilian political rights, international covenant on eradication of discrimination against women, convention on elimination of racial discrimination.
Irom Singhjit drew the attention of the house and mentioned the peculiar human rights situation in the northeast India reeling under AFSPA for the last 57 years and situation of Irom Chanu Sharmila, who’s detained and kept in isolation and is being forced fed for the last 15 years for her hunger strike protest against the draconian act.