Supported Irom Sharmila for her protest against AFSPA: Mizoram CM

Aizawl, September 14: Mizoram Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla on Wednesday said he had supported Irom Sharmila of Manipur for her 16-year-long hunger strike protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Speaking at the premiere of a documentary ‘Rambuai’ (Mizoram’s trouble years) in Aizawl, Lal Thanhawla said a junior officer in the Army could execute “jungle rule” under the Act. He said grouping of hundreds of villages during the insurgency days in Mizoram into bigger villages known as Protective and Progressive Villages (PPVs) was not progressive as people were herded as cattle to a new place where they lived miserably. “Mizoram should know about its past and history, about insurgency and there should be records on the phase of the Mizo people’s history,” the Chief Minister said. The documentary ‘Rambuai’ is a film by Sanjoy Hazarika and Preeti Gill of the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (C-NES) on the 20 years of insurgency in Mizoram. Lal Thanhawla also released a book entitled ‘After Decades of Silence: Voices from Mizoram’ authored by Prof. Margaret Ch Zama of the Mizoram University and Dr C Lalawmpuia Vanchiau, on the occasion.