No functioning democracy in the world has a law that lets its military raid, arrest on mere suspicion, indefinitely imprison — and shoot — its own citizens. India, which prides itself as the world’s largest democracy, has had such a law for the last 57 years. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA, was drafted in 1958 to contain insurgency in Manipur and the Naga Hills. With AFSPA in place, the military is immune from prosecution, and the government’s right to impose it cannot be questioned in court. By 1990, when it was imposed in Jammu and Kashmir, most northeastern states, except Arunachal Pradesh, were under its ambit. On March 27, New Delhi extended AFSPA across wide swathes of Arunachal Pradesh. It borders China, but has never had any home-grown insurgent movement.

This newspaper has argued, as have global human rights organisations and domestic civil rights movements, that AFSPA — often called a ‘black law’ — should be scrapped. In Manipur, one of the states worst-hit by AFSPA, Irom Sharmila has been fasting against it for the last 15 years, and being force-fed through her nostril in custody. AFSPA figures as the most hated law in Kashmir. Yet, as anger against AFSPA has grown, so has New Delhi’s cussedness. The latter is goaded on by the defence lobby, which says AFSPA is essential to curb insurgency.

This is rubbish. The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) maintains a database of casualties due to militancy, which shows that between 2005 and 2014, while AFSPA was in force, 5,894 people were killed in the northeast. If AFSPA is so effective, why were 465 people, close to the 10-year annual average of 589, still killed last year? If New Delhi’s stubborn support of this brutal law is morally despicable, its decision to impose it on Arunachal Pradesh is surreal. In SATP’s 10-year northeast kill-list, the state accounts for barely 1.5% of all casualties. Imposing AFSPA on Arunachal could turn this peaceful region into a cauldron of home-grown militancy. This is a tragic pattern repeated in the northeast: local anger rises exponentially with state repression.