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He
wakes up early. As the only active member of the Manipur Human Rights
Commission, Yambem Laba has at least half a dozen worried people waiting
for him every morning. His house is the "people’s court" and
his courtyard the "hearing room". The
visitors come to petition the MHRC on matters ranging from domestic spats,
land disputes to fake encounters and custodial deaths (a common enough
occurrence in strife-torn Manipur). "We
know he will initiate some action, that is why we come here. In
this state, nothing else works," says Binodini Devi, who has come
from the outskirts of capital Imphal to meet Laba and complain against her
nephew who is trying to grab her only piece of land. "Please file a
complaint with the local thana first. If they don’t act, only then you
come to me," Laba gently advises her. Another
elderly gentleman has come looking for help in trying to track down his
missing son. "I don’t know "I don’t know where he is after
the police detained him two months ago," the hapless father informs
Laba, who notes down the facts, consults some of the previous judgements
and precedents and proceeds to type on his weather-beaten Olympus
typewriter a showcause notice to the state police. For
nearly five years now, Laba, a journalist-turned-human rights activist,
has struggled against all odds to keep the MHRC flag flying by pronouncing
judgements, passing orders and sending show-cause notices to every arm of
the government. Everyone, from rickshaw-pullers to former chief ministers,
makes a beeline to his house to get justice, pure and simple. Laba
has a broad-spectrum view of civil rights. "We have extended to the
fullest the meaning of human rights. Earlier, only encounter deaths used
to be treated as human rights violations. Today, we have brought the right
to education, right to healthcare, right to good roads under the purview
of human rights." His suo motu action of sending notices to almost
every department of the government for failure to implement schemes meant
for common people keeps the administration on its toes. Manipur,
with its 40-year history of continuous conflict, has always had cases of
human rights violations such as fake encounters, forced disappearances,
custodial deaths, rapes, torture, assault. Most of the human rights
activists concentrated on fighting these. The MHRC, which was formed after
tremendous public pressure in 1998, also took up these cases, but at the
same time consciously attempted a paradigm shift. "By
giving space to the common citizen to voice his grievances concerning the
most basic issues like right to safe drinking water, right to good roads
etc we have tried to make the public servants more accountable. Today no
civil servant can take his duties lightly, thanks to the flood of
complaints that we get from the common people," Laba says with
justifiable pride. And
yet, the MHRC is on the verge of collapse for lack of monetary support and
official apathy. Laba and his colleagues do not even have support staff
for want of funds. Even members like Laba, who are of cabinet rank in
terms of protocol, have not got their salary for months. Laba has an
official car but has to pay for petrol out of his own pocket. There has
been no full-time chairman after the earlier chairman retired in June.
With the five-year term of the MHRC coming to an end in December, no one
knows if the state government will re-notify the commission. Whether
the MHRC gets a new lease of life or not, one thing is sure: Laba will
continue to fight for people’s rights."It has got into my blood. I
cannot do anything else now," he says. The daily morning rush at his
house is a testimony to the fact that people trust him, need him.
Contact Laba at Manipur Human Rights Commission, Imphal. Phone: 2410472,
2410869. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
