Save Sharmila solidarity campaign to kickoff across India

Newmai News Network

Imphal | September 3 : A joint initiative of various organizations and movements, Save Sharmila Solidarity Campaign, is launching a two-month nationwide signature campaign from October 2, 2011 to create awareness and generate public support for Sharmila and her fight against AFSPA.

Save Sharmila Solidarity Campaign have been working on the issue of Irom Sharmila Chanu since a long time. Now we have decided to start a nationwide signature campaign from 3pm of October 2 till December 10, 2011 in all state capitals and major cities of India, informed a statement issued by the joint initiative.

The campaign aims at spreading awareness in public about Irom Sharmila Chanu, a Manipuri poet and activist who is on a hunger strike since 2000, and to generate public support for the cause she is fighting in repealing AFSPA, added the statement.

Through the initiative, the signature campaign will demand the initiation of positive talks with Irom Sharmila and to listen to her demand seriously and to send a special team of doctors to examine her health. It will also demand sending of all party delegates and members of national women commission and national human rights commission to visit and take interest in the demand she has raised by fasting for over one decade now.

“We believe that non violent protest of Irom Sharmila Chanu should not be ignored. Non violence is the key to a peaceful and humanitarian society. Its time for all of us to come forward, regardless of our ideological differences, to strengthen her for democratic and peaceful society,” said the statement from the initiative.

The campaign will culminate with the handing over of the signatures to the president of India on International Human Rights Day on December 10, 2011 followed by a fast and peace march from India gate to Rastrapati Bhawan in New Delhi.

The signature campaign will travel to major Indian cities like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Delhi and Puducheery.

The indomitable Irom Sharmila Chanu began her fast-unto-death stir following the “Malom massacre” in which personnel of Assam Rifles gunned down 10 civilians at Malom near Tulihar Airport in Imphal on November 2, 2000. She clocked ten years of continuous fasting, demanding the repeal of the draconian AFSPA, late last year and has been kept in a high security ward in Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences (JNIMS) in Imphal where she has been nasal fed since. AFSPA gives unrestraint power to army men to shoot and kill at will.

Source: zolengthe.net

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