Indian activist Irom Sharmila Chanu is ending her hunger strike against a controversial law after 16 years, BBC News reports.

She told a court last month that she would end her protest on Tuesday, August 9 and begin campaigning as an independent candidate for the upcoming assembly elections in the northeastern state of Manipur.

Chanu had been protesting against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which gives soldiers sweeping powers to arrest without warrants and even shoot to kill in certain situations.

AFSPA is in effect in several Indian states, including in Manipur and Indian-administered Kashmir.

Photographer Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist has closely followed her journey in the past few years.

Chanu has been force-fed through a tube in her nose for more than a decade. She started her fast 16 years ago after 10 civilians were killed by Indian soldiers in Manipur.

She has spent most of the last 16 years in judicial custody in a hospital in Manipur's capital, Imphal, where she was force-fed a cocktail of medicines and baby formula.

Chanu was released in August 2014 after the court rejected the charge that she was "attempting to commit suicide". But she was re-arrested two days later after she refused to end her protest.