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The world's longest hunger striker, Irom Chanu Sharmila of Northeast India, completed her fifteenth year without food or water on Monday without progress on the repeal of the draconian act she is protesting.
Activists organized solidarity rallies around India and Southeast Asia on Sunday and Monday and local civil rights groups renewed calls for the end of the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA), which allows the military to arrest and shoot any suspicious insurgent with impunity.
Sharmila began her strike in 2000, when she saw 10 civilians killed by the Assam Rifles, India's oldest paramilitary group. She was at a bus stop in Manipur, a state that has seen insurgency from separatist rebel groups since its incorporation into India. Already fasting in honor of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, Sharmila decided to continue until the AFSPA was repealed. Police arrested her soon after under grounds of attempted suicide.
Fifteen years later, she is under house arrest in the security ward of a local hospital, force-fed liquid, refusing to see her mother until AFSPA's repeal. Every 15 days, Sharmila sees the local magistrate to repeat her refusal to stop, after which she is arrested for attempted suicide. Even when she is released for a couple of days, she pulls out her tube and continues her protest.
When she began, about 2,000 women striked with her in solidarity; now, she regrets that the ‘Save Sharmila Solidarity Campaign’ reproduces her image—on shirts, in gossip columns—while no longer appearing in court to support her case.
As a symbol, "they want me to stand on a pedestal without a voice, making a statue of me," she told the Wall Street Journal. "But I am against it because I have bad sides and good sides." When fellow activist Babloo Loitongbam told her about the 'Repeal AFSPA' protests, she reportedly answered that nothing would change unless public figures joined in. Loitongbam was able to visit her after an application and payment to authorities one month in advance.
While the number of rebel groups has grown to 42, the army has insisted that only central and state governments can repeal the act. Politicians in Manipur have capitalized on Sharmila's popularity by echoing her call but have only gone as far as creating committees on the issue. The Tripura state stands alone in its repeal of the act, and Imphal, Manipur's capital, has seen less enforcement in some parts. According to First Post, the advances came on the heels of female activists, who were since appeased by the government.
Meanwhile, the Indian Army scaled up its fight against rebels. In June, it led "hot pursuit strikes" on the camps of now allied groups, reportedly killing 30 to 50 insurgents in Myanmar after an ambush on its own troops. Babloo told Catch News that had Sharmila known her fast would have lasted 15 years, she would have never started.
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