SIPHRO

Imphal, March 27, 2006: The Hmar Inpui has said that it greeted the March 21 The Telegraph news reports with reservation regarding the planned visit of the Manipur chief minister to the two Churachandpur`s subdivisional headquaters of Parbung and Thanlon on March 27.

The Hmar community apex body in a statement said that the people of Thanlon and Parbung subdivisions bore the brunt of UNLF/KCP atrocities of rapes, tortures and mayhem in January last and before. “As many as 160 landmine victimes and 21 rape cases have been so far been reported and more than one thousand innocent villagers had fled to the saving arms of Mizoram,” stated the Hmar Inpui.

The Hmar body said that chief minister O.Ibobi Singh and his government had been maintaining uncanny silence for long “as if the incidents had occurred in planet Mars and that now the chief minister had coughed up enough courage to visit these areas after more than two months of the occurrence of the incidents since the news of serious human rights violations had hit the newspapers headlines.”

It said that the chief minister and his cohorts should visit the affected areas by road and not by helicopters and spend few days so that they can interact and see the reality of things in the areas and even visit the victims homes.There have been no governance as there is virtual absence of government machineries in the areas of which the chief minister will notice only when he travels by road,stated the Hmar supreme body and then it stated that the Hmar apex body would not take part nor take responsibility in the reception programme.

“We welcome the chief minister`s decision to institute judicial inquiry on the rapes and the mayhem and the appoinment of a retired judge for the purpose but the Hmar Inpui categorically objects to the clubbing together of a case of the alleged mistreatment of M.Naobi by the Manipur police commandos with the cases of rape perpetrated by UNLF and KCP cadres at the Lungthuilien,Parbung,Turbung and elsewhere,” stated the Hmar Inpui reasoning that the two cases are quite different.

The Hmar Inpui demanded that the M.Naobi case and the Hmar rape/mayhem incidents should not be clubbed together. It demanded that the inquiry on the rape of the Hmar girls be conducted purely at the crime scenes and also that the Manipur government makes arrangements for the inquiry team to move to Parbung areas immediately to conduct the inquiry.

Other demands of the Hmar apex body are that the government ensures transparency in the inquiry and free from any outside influence particularly from the perpetrators of the crimes and then to be included or associated by the inquiry team with the representatives of Hmar students Association and Hmar Women Association.Hmar Inpui considers any attempt to move the inquiry outside the crime scenes as a deliberate attempt to hoodwind justice,said the Hmar apex body signed by its president S.K.Joute and its secretary V.F. Tusing.

Source: The Imphal Free Press