Reacting to the first-person account of an Amnesty International researcher >published in The Hindu on Thursday, former Home Minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram criticised the NDA government for deporting the researcher.
“Her account is a devastating critique of the manner in which the government handles the issue of AFSPA,” he told The Hindu in a message after reading the report.
Earlier, Mr. Chidambaram had tweeted about the action taken against the 23-year-old researcher Christine Mehta, who had come to India as a Person of Indian Origin (PIO). Ms. Mehta had been working in Jammu and Kashmir on an Amnesty International report on the immunity given to armed forces under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).
PIO who criticized >#AFSPA deported. Will citizens who criticize AFSPA be deported as well?
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) >July 2, 2015“PIO who criticized #AFSPA deported. Will citizens who criticize AFSPA be deported as well?” Mr. Chidambaram wrote in a sarcastic comment on Twitter.
In her article Ms. Mehta had recounted her experience of being told to leave the country after it emerged that she had been interviewing family members of about 58 AFSPA-related cases, where young men had been killed or had disappeared, allegedly due to the actions of armed forces, and sensed “signs of official unease with my work in Jammu and Kashmir”.
The >report , which was released by the international human rights group Amnesty on Wednesday, called for a repeal of AFSPA and wanted India to invite the UN Special Rapporteur as well as the UN Joint Working group on disappearances to visit Jammu and Kashmir. The group also asked for “unimpeded access” to victims and witnesses for UN officials inquiring into disappearances and Human rights violations.
In a column two months ago, Mr. Chidambaram had also said that the AFSPA law, deployed in Jammu & Kashmir and North Eastern states “has no place in civilised society”.
Interestingly, as Home Minister in 2010, Mr. Chidambaram had been criticised for the excessive force used by security forces to stop street protests over the fake encounter in the Machil sector where three young men were killed. In firing on protestors between June and September 2010, at least 117 men were killed.
Mr. Chidambaram, who was tasked with calming the situation said in parliament that the government was considering amendments to AFSPA, but later was over-ruled in the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). “As home minister, I was convinced that AFSPA deserved to be repealed. I proposed repeal; the Ministry of Defence and the defence forces opposed repeal, and the defence minister was unwilling to overrule them,” he wrote in the column.
