Irom Sharmila: "Iron Lady of Manipur"

The 42-year-old Manipuri started her fast in 2000, after the death of 10 Manipuris at the hands of the Assam Rifles in Imphal.

Her only friends are the pair of guinea pigs she has adopted in confinement!

Also known as the "Iron Lady of Manipur" or "Mengoubi" ("the fair one") is a civil rights activist, political activist, and poet from the Indian state of Manipur. On 2 November 2000, she began a hunger strike which is still ongoing. Having refused food and water for more than 500 weeks.

She was already involved in local peace movements with regard to human rights abuses in Manipur when, on 2 November 2000, in Malom, a town in the Imphal Valley ofManipur, ten civilians were shot and killed while waiting at a bus stop. The incident, known as the "Malom Massacre", was allegedly committed by the Assam Rifles, one of the Indian Paramilitary forces operating in the state. The victims included Leisangbam Ibetombi, a 62-year-old woman, and 18-year-old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 National Bravery Award winner.

Sharmila, who was 28 at the time of Malom Massacre, began to fast in protest.^[12] Her primary demand to the Indian government has been the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA). She began her fast in Malom on 5 November, and vowed not to eat, drink, comb her hair or look in a mirror until AFSPA was repealed.

Three days after she began her strike, she was arrested by the police and charged with an "attempt to commit suicide", which was unlawful under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at that time, and was later transferred to judicial custody. However, Amnesty International and the World Medical Association both dispute that a hunger strike is equivalent to suicide as hunger strikers "generally hope and intend to survive".^] Her health deteriorated rapidly, and nasogastric intubation was forced on her from November 21 in order to keep her alive while under arrest.

By 2004, Sharmila had become an "icon of public resistance." Following her procedural release on 2 October 2006 Irom Sharmila Chanu went to Raj Ghat, New Delhi, which she said was "to pay floral tribute to my ideal, Mahatma Gandhi." Later that evening, Sharmila headed for Jantar Mantar for a protest demonstration where she was joined by students, human rights activists and other concerned citizens. 30 women protested naked in support of Sharmila in front of the Assam Rifles headquarters. They held a banner saying "Indian Army rape us" and all of them were imprisoned for three months.

This is how Indian judicial system works, where right to expression and those found protesting are put behind bars without even listening to them.

 In November 2013 she gave an interview to NDTV in which she discussed tensions with her organisation, the Just Peace Foundation, in which she claimed that members had made honour killing death threats against her due to her relationship with Desmond Coutinho, a British citizen, and complained that the foundation was preventing her from giving prize money she had been awarded to people or causes she wanted to help.

I am not a goddess; I can also fall in love: Irom Sharmila

A historic day went by quietly on Sunday as human rights activist from Manipur, Irom Sharmila, completed 15 years of her hunger strike against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The 42-year-old Manipuri started her fast in 2000, after the death of 10 Manipuris at the hands of the Assam Rifles in Imphal. Amnesty International, on Sunday said it was "15 years of the selfless and unparalleled protest".

Unfortunately, as the solemn gathering recognised, the state does not seem to listen. According to the activists these are the most peaceful times the north eastern states have seen in the recent past. However, "fractured" the Mizo Accord for peace with these groups, it has held for 30 years. Yet, as Amnesty said "despite repeated calls to withdraw the AFSPA from UN experts as well as national and international groups, the Act continues to be enforced and continues to cause flagrant human rights violations."

Sharmila herself, said Babloo Loitongbam, from Human Rights Alert, is living a legal and political paradox. Her fight, he said, was for the right to live. In her own words, she didn't want to die but live a full life. Yet, she has been charged with attempt to suicide and remanded to judicial custody 365 times; a "ritual" that takes place every 15 days. Loitongbam said that Sharmila wanted "people of prominence" to come to court with her to repeat her arguments.

The Special Ward at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal, Manipur, is cut off from the swirl of chaos that is the life of a hospital. Here, in Room No. 1, 42-year-old Irom Sharmila Chanu, the most recognisable face of this conflict-ridden state in the Northeast, has lived for 14 years.

The four walls of Sharmila’s room, a bright sea-green that has paled over the years, enclose her entire world. Mementoes of her friendships and love, gifts and letters from her family and supporters, are stacked on overflowing tables, stashed in the sole cupboard or plastered on the walls. A poster of Irish birds of prey and the front page of the Irish Times, on the day Nelson Mandela died, are on the same wall as bright yellow Tweety bird stickers and hand-drawn cards. She has received six letters today. One is from a Frenchwoman, wishing her a happy Halloween in French.

The others are from her fiancé Desmond Coutinho, a British-Indian of Goan origin. (They fell in love through an exchange of letters.) She doesn’t open them in front of us. “He said he will visit me on my birthday, which is March 14,’’ she says with a shy, half-hidden smile. No videography is allowed in her room and each visitor is permitted no longer than 20 minutes. Though she is allowed visitors thrice a week, her family members or supporters are rarely permitted to meet the “undertrial prisoner”.

The walls of her room are plastered with posters people have gifted her!

Solitude fills the days of her life, shapes the hours and flows through the minutes — in the absence of human company, television, phones or internet or even a regular schedule. But she is not lonely, she says. “I have a very busy mind. My thoughts keep me company, they keep me busy,’’ she says.

 Time means absolutely nothing to her, she says, and you look around and see that there is, indeed, not a single clock on the wall. Happiness comes from her pets, a pair of guinea pigs she calls Thoi, (“Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night to see if they’re okay. They are my babies.”), the unexpected messages of support from strangers whose lives she has touched with her protest (an Australian woman in Vietnam writes to her regularly, and fasts once every three months in solidarity with her cause).

 Letters from her family and Coutinho, and the many soft toys that he sends her way give her joy. The newest addition to the menagerie is a brown bear. “He told me that he is like a brown bear, so this is to remind me of him,’’ she says with a laugh.

Who was Sharmila before the protest took over her life? Home was a large compound in Porompat colony in Imphal, where an extended family of 19 members lived. She was the youngest of nine siblings, a loner who stood out from the rest of the riotous gang of brothers, sisters and cousins. She was not a sharp child at school, and gave up her dreams of becoming a doctor when she realised she did not have the “brains” for it. She tried but could not clear her Class XII examinations.

That fast entered its 15th year this month. Though Sharmila has refused both water and food, the government continues to forcefeed her—and arrests her every year on the charge of attempt to suicide. She is fed Cerelac, juices like Appy, Horlicks and protein shakes—1,600 calories a day. “She refuses to drink water. So when we have to give her tablets or vitamins, they are crushed with her food,’’ says Dr Th Biren, head of the medicine department at JNIMS, and her attending doctor. 
A team of six doctors checks on Sharmila daily. “We weigh her periodically. Today she weighs 46 kg, the same as last month. It’s extraordinary what she is doing. Medically, you can be fed through the Ryles tube for months even, as we do with patients with strokes. But for 14 years, that’s unimaginable,’’ Dr Biren says.

In the 14 years of this remarkable, non-violent protest, much has changed in Manipur. The conflict has claimed more lives, found new icons in victims like Thangjam Manorama Devi, and even corroded Sharmila’s close ties with her brother. Though AFSPA was removed from a few parts of Imphal after Manorama’s rape and murder in 2004, the law has remained what it was. Against the implacable indifference of the Indian state, Sharmila continues to pit her iron will.
 “People in India see me as a separatist. But that’s not who I am. I am struggling for India’s integrity too. After the way the army has behaved here, if the government does not agree to repeal AFSPA, India will lose Manipur automatically. The government fears that repealing AFSPA will result in losing Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan as well. I would like to ask the government: why don’t you try and connect to the hearts of the discontented people?” she says.

Maybe one or two lives doesn't matter much to the Indian government, maybe!! Pity and shame once again.

#Satyam_Bruyat