Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, 6 Jun: The Arunachal Law Students’ Union (ALSU) is launching a campaign against the Arunachal Pradesh Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (APUAPA), to demand its repeal.
The draconian Act has lately sparked a public debate once again after scores of people were arrested under the Act for enforcing the recent 72-hour bandh.
Addressing the media during a press conference here on Tuesday, ALSU spokesperson Gyamar Maya termed the APUAPA “a copy paste of the National Security Act, 1980.”
“The definition, ‘unlawful activity’, provided under this Act is broad enough to bring any democratic movement under the ambit of unlawful activities,” Maya argued.
He added that “such exhaustive and vague definition of the law amplifies the potential misuse of the Act by the state authority to silence the popular voice of the people against the state’s wrongdoings.”
Claiming that the authorities have misused the APUAPA “as a bargaining chip to bind down protestors,” the union strongly condemned the authorities.
“It is also witnessed in the recent episode of random detention of poor activists spearheading the movement against the infamous APPSC paper leak fiasco,” the union stated in a representation.
It informed that it would launch a democratic movement to demand the APUAPA’s repeal, and requested the people of Arunachal to write letters to their respective MLAs for scrapping of the Act in the coming monsoon session of the assembly.
Demanding immediate repeal of the APUAPA, the union stated that “prevention laws in India are a colonial legacy.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the ALSU submitted a representation to the chief minister, demanding repeal of the Act.
