March 04, 2007	Sunday	Safar 14, 1428

NEW DELHI, March 3: A panel of the UN’s top court urged India on Saturday to scrap a draconian law giving the military sweeping powers to curb insurgencies.

Eight legal experts appointed by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) on Friday met officials including Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil to press for a repeal of the 1958 legislation, the group said in a statement.

The act allows the military to arrest without warrant and to shoot-to-kill in disputed Kashmir and seven insurgency-hit north-eastern states.

“We informed the Indian government that there was a broad consensus that recommendations of the review committee to repeal the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) should be given effect,” said former South African chief justice and panel chairman Arthur Chaskalson.

A government forum last year also called for the scrapping of the law.

Premier Manmohan Singh promised a review of the law after large protests when Indian soldiers allegedly raped and murdered a 32-year-old rights activist last July in troubled Manipur state.

The AFSA, originally designed to stem strife in India’s remote northeast, was later extended to Kashmir where Islamic separatist militancy has claimed more than 44,000 lives since 1989.

Chaskalson said the ICJ panel also discussed rights violations during sectarian riots that left 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead in western Gujarat state in 2002.

“We specifically asked the government officials about the reports of human rights violations in the Gujarat riots,” Chaskalson said.

The riots erupted after 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a train fire initially blamed on Muslims.

Analysts hailed the United Nations’ call for repeal of the AFSA.

“The AFSA was borrowed heavily from laws passed during the British colonial era and is a dark legacy,” said Delhi University political analyst A.S. Ojha.

“It’s not only the ICJ but many global forums which have said its repeal will solve half of the region’s problems,” he said.

“The panel is of the view that counter-terrorism measures in South Asia should go in conformity with the international human rights standards,” panel chairman Chaskalson said.

“The responses to terrorism can be, and indeed are most effective if they comply with international human rights standards,” he added.

“Abuses lead to serious grievances and discontent and the alienation of communities... and thereby risk exacerbating rather than reducing tensions and violence,” the statement added.

The group also toured other parts of South Asia, including Sri Lanka, where violence has surged in a 35-year-old ethnic conflict in which separatist Tamils are fighting for an independent homeland.

Panel members “learned with grave concern” about a recent deterioration of the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, including large-scale human rights violations, such as extra-judicial killings, torture and enforced disappearances, the statement said.—AFP