March 21, 2007 marked the day when five women of Assam decided to begin an indefinite hunger strike because all their attempts to know the whereabouts of their husbands since the last more than 3 years had failed. Their husbands and their friends had gone "missing" since December 2003 after the Indian Army, in a joint operation with the Royal Bhutan Army (RBA), attacked camps belonging to ULFA, National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO). It was a ruthless operation at the end of which there was no count of the dead or those taken alive by the military forces of the two countries. Those detained were never again seen by their relatives or friends. While the Bhutanese army claimed to have handed over those arrested in the course of combat to the Indian State, the latter has violated every principle of justice and human rights in refusing to account for those taken into detention or killed. Those never seen again have remained cases of "custodial disappearances" till date.

In a memorandum addressed to the President of India – just before they embarked on the hunger strike – the women made their key demand that the custodial disappearances of their husbands and others following the infamous ‘Operation All-Clear’ in December 2003 be addressed by the highest authorities of the land. The women have not been sitting quiet all these years. They have protested in front of the Royal Bhutan Embassy in New Delhi and continued to demonstrate in Guwahati as well. They have also submitted a memorandum to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances. But no response has come from any of the authorities. In 2004, the Guwahati High Court ruled that the government should clearly state what had happened to the persons who were detained and subsequently handed over to the Indian administration. However, the Government of India has refused to do so, claiming that such a disclosure would be tantamount to compromising the security of the country!

Faced with the prospect that the hunger strike by the women might lead to an uncomfortable chain of events for it, the government has tried to assuage their anger but in vain. When its efforts to appease the women with false promises did not work, it unleashed the police force upon them. In the early hours of March 31, 2007 police personnel forcibly entered the venue of the protest and dragged the protestors to hospital where they were fed intravenously against their will. A case was filed against them in the Panbazar Police Station. The government has announced that the women cannot be allowed to die this way!

The excuse given by the state authorities that all this is being done for “controlling terrorism and safeguarding the security of the country” cannot be accepted. As each event of death or disappearances in judicial custody, torture and encounter killings comes to light, the people are raising their voices ever louder in protest and coming out in large numbers in struggle against state terrorism. Political problems, like the problem of Assam, require political solutions, — state terror cannot solve them. It is extremely important to forge the widest unity of people in opposition to all expressions of state terror against any section of the people.