[Reader-list] Nilanjana Roy: Torchbearers for Victims in a Violent Land (NYT)

[Patrice Riemens]

original to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/world/asia/09iht-letter09.html

Torchbearers for Victims in a Violent Land
By NILANJANA S. ROY
(Feb 8, 2011)

NEW DELHI — Whenever Ojas Suniti Vijay performs the one-woman play “Le
Mashale” (The Torchbearer), whether at a recent conference on peace in the
insurgency-racked states of northeast India or at colleges in Delhi, the
audience flinches at exactly the same point. This is where Ms. Ojas
intones the line that declares how women have been treated by the security
forces in Manipur State through a decades-long conflict marked by
incidents of sexual abuse and rape: “Just a piece of flesh with two round
breasts and a vagina.”

“Le Mashale” has gained a cult following over the past two years on
India’s independent theater circuit, in large part for the woman it
celebrates, Irom Sharmila — the Torchbearer whose story testifies to the
courage women have shown in the face of the armed struggle for greater
autonomy for the ethnically distinct northeast and an often controversial
military occupation.

This month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh celebrated what he called the
“trend of declining violence and casualties” in the northeast. Several
months earlier, another milestone was observed. Nov. 4, 2010, was the 10th
anniversary of the start of Ms. Sharmila’s hunger strike in response to
the killings of civilians by the military in the region. What was intended
to be a fast to the death has continued through a decade of forced
feedings.

Ms. Sharmila was 28 in November 2000, when the shooting of 10 civilians in
the village of Malom rocked Manipur, a state with a long history of
clashes between military forces and insurgents. A group of rebels had
attacked a convoy of the Assam Rifles; the soldiers retaliated by opening
fire on people at a bus stop.

Ms. Sharmila began her fast, a form of protest made popular in India by
Gandhi during the struggle for independence from British rule. Her main
demand was the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958,
which had often been used to detain local residents on the suspicion that
they were aiding rebel groups. Reports of torture, disappearances and
deaths were common, with women often being caught in the cross-fire
between insurgents and the military. Long criticized by human rights
groups, the act grants expanded powers to the armed forces to search,
arrest and, under some circumstances, use lethal force against, civilians.

Ms. Sharmila’s hunger strike to garner support for the act’s repeal put
her in direct conflict with the Indian state. She spent much of the next
decade in judicial custody for “attempt to suicide,” detained at hospitals
in Delhi or Imphal and force-fed through nasal tubes.

Although her campaign at first attracted little attention, she has since
become an emblem of resistance, her name invoked by authors like Mamang
Dai and Arupa Kalita Patangia whenever the question of the insurgency,
women’s rights or the repeal of the act comes up.

It was in 2004, after the killing and apparent rape of Thangjam Manorama
by security forces, that Manipur saw its most startling protests — and
that Ms. Sharmila emerged as an icon of public resistance. In July 2004,
Ms. Manorama’s bullet-ridden body was found in a field near her village,
after she had been picked up for questioning by members of the Assam
Rifles.

That discovery was followed by one of the most remarkable demonstrations
in the recent history of the northeast. Several elderly women stripped in
front of the Assam Rifles headquarters, while carrying a banner that read:
“Indian Army, Rape Us.”

One of the women, L. Gyaneshori, was quoted as saying, “The women of
Manipur have been disrobed by the A.F.S.P.A.,” using the initials for the
special powers act. “We are still naked.”

Last month, Ms. Sharmila announced that she would persist in her hunger
strike until the government repeals the act.

Around the same time that women’s rights and peace advocates were
observing the 10th anniversary of Ms. Sharmila’s fast, Binalakshmi Nepram
was assessing other aspects of the damage inflicted by decades of strife.

“Violence against women has been on the rise due to the ongoing conflict,”
said Ms. Nepram, who has lived and worked in Manipur and Delhi for the
past decade. In 2007, she founded the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network
to assist victims of the violence against women that she says is routinely
committed by the state and insurgency groups, or that arises from the
proliferation of firearms that has accompanied the turmoil.

The impetus for Ms. Nepram was an incident in 2004. A 27-year-old man was
dragged out of his car-battery workshop and killed by three unidentified
gunmen. Ms. Nepram and others helped his 24-year-old widow rebuild her
livelihood and life with the donation of a sewing machine, and the idea
for the Survivors Network was born.

Through her work she has concluded that the involvement of women, in
effecting social change and peace, is key.

“There can be no peace and no peace process without the active involvement
of women, in villages as well as at the negotiating table,” she said.

Temsula Ao, who has written about the effects of violence in the northeast
in a collection of short stories titled “These Hills Called Home,” agrees.
“No one will give us peace,” she said. “We women have to take it for
ourselves.”

Between the figure of a woman in a hospital bed, kept forcibly alive, and
women like Ms. Nepram, seeking ways to counteract the violence, the women
of this generation from the northeast are ready to fight for the peace
they so badly want.