Freed activist won鈥檛 end 14-year hunger strike
Print Edition
INDIA’S most famous prisoner of conscience has walked free after nearly 14 years in jail but vowed to continue the hunger strike that landed her in prison for attempted suicide, her brother said yesterday.
Irom Sharmila, 42, has not eaten a single morsel of food voluntarily since November 2000, when she began her protest against an Indian law that suspends many human rights protections in areas of conflict. She was arrested three days later on charges of attempting suicide — a crime in India — and prison officials have force fed her through a tube in her nose.
On Wednesday evening Sharmila, looking frail and holding back tears, left prison after a court order threw out the charges against her.
“She says that she will continue her fast until her demands are met,” her brother, Singhjit Irom, said in a telephone interview from Imphal, the capital of the tiny northeastern state of Manipur.
“She is emotional,” her brother said, “but her willpower is still strong. She says she will continue to fight.”
The court order is a huge moral victory for the activist, said Babloo Loitongbam, the head of Human Rights Alert, a local rights group involved with Sharmila’s campaign.
In its order, the court said that Sharmila was not fasting to kill herself but to protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. During her incarceration, Sharmila was kept in a government hospital in Imphal and by law was released once a year to see if she would start eating. When she did not, she was taken back into custody and force fed.
“The state still has a responsibility to ensure that her condition does not worsen and the court has said that if she continues to fast she can be fed through a nasal tube but she cannot be charged as a criminal for her hunger strike,” said Loitongbam.
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