Imphal: Irom Chanu Sharmila, who has been on hunger strike for more than 16 years, on Wednesday refused to appear before a court in Manipur, northeastern India.
The 44-year-old Marathon hunger striker, known as “Iron Lady of Manipur,” was supposed to appear before Judicial Magistrate First Class, Imphal West. However, she was directed to appear before JMIC Imphal as the judge of the other court was on leave.
Sharmila, who is on hunger strike to oppose the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), refused to appear before the court. The court fixed May 31 as the next date of hearing, kanglaonline.com reported.
Sharmila has appeared before the court every fortnight since the second week of March in connection with a case filed by Imphal City police station under Section 309 (attempting to commit suicide). She had staged hunger strike at a park in the state capital in February this year. City police station has already submitted a charge sheet against Sharmila.
Sharmila started her strike on November 2, 2000, refusing food and water. She is now called “the world’s longest hunger striker.” On International Women’s Day, 2014 she was voted the top woman icon of India by MSN Poll. Amnesty International has declared her a prisoner of conscience.
The Indian government passed the AFSPA in 1958 that grants security forces the power to search properties without a warrant, and to arrest people, and to use deadly force if there is “reasonable suspicion” that a person is acting against the state. The law is applicable in the seven northeastern Indian states and Jammu and Kashmir in the north.
Sharmila began her hunger strike after soldiers of the Assam Rifles, one of the Indian paramilitary forces, shot dead 10 people waiting at a bus stop in Malom, a town in the Imphal Valley of Manipur. The victims included a 62-year-old woman, and 18-year-old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 National Bravery Award winner.
Sharmila’s primary demand is the repeal of AFSPA. She has vowed not to eat, drink, comb her hair or look in a mirror until the law was repealed.
Sharmila has been regularly released and re-arrested every year since her hunger strike began.
In 2011 the Save Sharmila Solidarity Campaign was launched to highlight Sharmila’s struggle and Pune University announced a scholarship program for 39 female Manipuri students to take degree courses in honor of ISharmila’s 39 years of age.
On March 28 this year, she was released from judicial custody as an Imphal court rejected charges against her. Sharmila kept her vow of neither entering her house nor meeting her mother until the government repeals AFSPA and went to continue her fast at Shahid Minar, Imphal on the same day of her release. She was again arrested by the police under the same charge of attempt to commit suicide by means of indefinite fast.
Sharmila was awarded the 2007 Gwangju Prize for Human Rights, which is given to “an outstanding person or group, active in the promotion and advocacy of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights.” She shared the award with Lenin Raghuvanshi of People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights, a northeastern Indian human rights organization.
In 2010, she won a lifetime achievement award from the Asian Human Rights Commission. Later that year, she won the Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management, and the Sarva Gunah Sampannah “Award for Peace and Harmony” from the Signature Training Centre.
In 2013 Amnesty International declared her a Prisoner of conscience, and said she “is being held solely for a peaceful expression of her beliefs.” The influence made by Irom Sharmila is often considered as powerful as the influences by personalities in the past and present.