IBN-E-REHMAT According to one of the ANIs last week report, New Delhi has outrightly denied discussing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) with Pakistan during the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan talks held on June 24-26, 2010, claiming that AFSPA is internal act to us and Pakistan does not have any locus standi on it. But Islamabad has reservations about the draconian act, as the gross violations of human rights under the same act in Jammu and Kashmir is bedevilling relationship between the two rivals. If India cranks up its security mechanism either by shooting or resorting to extrajudicial punitive measures against the freedom loving Kashmiris, it is bound to infuriate the Kashmiri youths. Such a political outcome is misconstrued as Pakistans mischief by the Indian administration, although it has absolutely no hand in any such disturbances. In this context, the act is like a sword hanging over every head in IHK that has paralysed the entire social fabric of millions of people, forcibly strangulated into federation. Under Section 4 of the AFSPA, the Indian armed forces have been empowered to kill anybody on suspicion or out of hatred without any judicial process. So this has enormously encouraged the Indian forces to precipitate and heighten their extrajudicial torture and execution. Even the Supreme Court of India upheld the black law by its judgment given on November 27, 1997. These judges are regarded as racists and chauvinists like their political mentors. AFSPA surprisingly is not enforced throughout India, but only in certain states declared as 'disturbed areas like Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram and Kashmir. Apart from Kashmir, where causalities now stand around 100,000, Tehelka.com reports that its first target were the Naga rebels in 1958. Then during 1992 to 2006, the northeastern states recorded 16,205 fatalities with and average 1,080 deaths per year. Since 1958 there have been more than 30,000 killings by the Indian forces, with Manipur being the most hard-hit area with 45 percent of the casualties in the northeast. According to this website, there are more than 50 militant groups pitted against the Indian army in Northeast India alone, whose strength is around 700,000. Most of the time, it continues to remain the immediate target of peoples ire since 1958; and is regarded as one of the decades old most oppressive law by all the successive Indian governments. Despite all this, over the years successive governments in New Delhi have justified the legislation on the plea that it is required to stop the northeast provinces from seceding from the Indian Union or as part of the repressive tool to suppress the freedom movement in Kashmir. All the mainstream Indian political parties, each trying to be more 'patriotic than the other, agree not to repeal AFSPA, despite the fact that it is damaging Indias image in the international community. Even today, as northeast is burning and the people are protesting against the draconian act, the Congress government in Delhi says that it is willing to talk to the 'insurgents but refuses to repeal the AFSPA. They actually ignore the fact that the unrest in the region is not about a handful of militants anymore but because of an insurrection by its entire population. The people of this region are the oldest victims of the tyranny wrought by the dubious 'anti-terrorism legislation. In addition, the Indian regime has authorised people from the high castes to execute or torture women and infants, who are not of Dravidian or Aryan origin. Hence, from the perspective of the Indian army, whenever they physically execute any non-Brahman they conscientiously assume that they have performed a religious duty. It may be recalled that the Arthasastra of Kautilya - the equivalent of a military manual of colonial 'Blue Books - that gives religious sanctity to the suppression and wiping out of minorities like Meities, Nagas, Kukis, Bodos and Muslims in order to establish Indian imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, the Indian army and its colonial rulers believe they have no alternative to cherishing a heritage of conquering the untouchable or other backward castes. New Delhi used the AFSPA as double edge weapon. On the one hand, India uses it to eliminate and oppress the indigenous insurgents, while on the other, it is employed as lethal propaganda venom against Pakistan through well orchestrated media blitzing to kick-up dust against Pakistan. In this backdrop, relevance of the AFSPA, as a tool of influence and an alibi to implicate Islamabad into a loop, is for killing the Kashmiris and demonising Pakistan. Pakistan should closely monitor the events that provide India any clue to shift the blame on Pakistan through such artifices and insist to include this black law in the dialogue process to permanently deprive New Delhi using this act as a trigger in the action-reaction syndrome in Kashmir. The writer is a freelance columnist.