NC says YES; NO say Cong, PDP Could AFSPA revocation have saved Irfan, Tariq? Srinagar, July 05: While National Conference (NC) Thursday said the revocation of controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) could have saved the lives of the two youth in Bandipora, Congress and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) think otherwise. “Of course,” said senior NC leader and Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Ali Mohammad Sagar when asked whether lives of two youth killed in Army firing in Bandipora district on Sunday could have been saved had AFSPA been scrapped from the State. Irfan Ahmad Ganaie, 18, of Markundal village of Bandipora and Tariq Ahmad Laway, 24, of Mansbal Ganderbal were killed by Army men in Bandipora on June 30. Sagar said Government of India (GoI) should respect the aspirations of people of Jammu and Kashmir and revoke AFSPA from some areas of the State. However, NC’s ruling ally Congress and opposition PDP are on the same page on the recent killings and stated that lives of Irfan and Tariq could not have been saved even if AFSPA had been scrapped from the State. Senior Congress leader and Minister for Medical Education Taj Mohuiddin said the two youth would have been killed even after AFSPA revocation. “According to Army, troops had laid an ambush fearing the presence of suspected militants in the area. So even if there was no AFSPA, they would have been killed,” he said. He said people need to have faith in the government inquiry as the guilty troops had been prosecuted in the past and would be prosecuted in future as well. “AFSPA does not protect troops from being prosecuted from military court if not the civilian court,” Taj said. AFSPA was passed on September 11, 1958 by the Parliament of India. It grants special powers to armed forces in what the act terms as “disturbed areas” in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. It was later extended to Jammu and Kashmir as the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990 in July 1990. Like Taj, PDP’s senior leader and former deputy chief minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig said even AFSPA was not a protection against the killing of innocent people. He quoted the judgment of Supreme Court in a case ‘Nagaland Peoples Forum versus Union of India of 1997’ according to which troops have to follow criminal procedure of the State and guidelines of the Army headquarters. He said according to the judgment, Army cannot conduct operations at night. “They have to inform and take the permission of the magistrate. Even if they have to fire, they have to warn the people in the language they understand, in this case Kashmiri, and when they fire bullets, they have to shoot below the waist,” Baig said. He said in any case, AFSPA is not protection against human right violations.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 07:28:52 +0000