SIPHRO

Patricia Mukhim

Very few in this country can imagine the travails of people living under the shadow of the gun. Fewer still can understand what it is like to be killed or maimed by landmines within one’s own country. Landmines are associated with wars and military strategies of incapacitating and eliminating the enemy in the most brutal manner. Yet Manipur, which India proudly claims is an integral part of it, is behaving like a country at war against its own people. With countless militant groups operating in the state, each with an ethnic identity of its own, turf wars make every part of Manipur a veritable killing field.

Terror tactics
Recently, the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), a Meitei group from Imphal Valley, unleashed a reign of terror in Manipur’s Chandel district, adjacent to Myanmar. Chandel district is where the border trade town of Moreh is located. Naturally, all militant groups want to control this trading outpost since the quantum of trade to and from Myanmar is huge. It would be difficult to put a figure to this trade, as most of it is unofficial. Goods coming from Moreh, including those from Myanmar, Thailand, China and other places, flood the Imphal markets and beyond. The trade is almost one-sided, as goods going from the Indian side of the border are negligible.

The 100-km Imphal-Moreh highway, which was once guarded by the Border Security Force (BSF), used to be extremely perilous. It used to be dominated by Kuki militants, who would stop vehicles coming from Moreh and loot the passengers and their goods. After the BSF was withdrawn, the Assam Rifles took charge of security operations. Things improved and the six-hour journey to Moreh and back became less hazardous.

Chandel district is also one of the most neglected areas of Manipur. Besides the Kukis, who are in the majority in Chandel, there are also a sprinkling of villages inhabited by fringe groups who do not belong to any major ethnic community. The Kukis are today being hounded out of their houses through terror tactics. About 33 Kuki villagers have so far been killed using landmines and improvised explosive devices (IED) planted by the UNLF. Several others have been injured and maimed. According to the Kuki people, the landmines and IEDs are of Chinese origin. Chinese-made guns and weapons are easily available and come from the porous borders of the Northeast.

Things have reached a flashpoint after the latest onslaught by the UNLF. The militant group has reportedly tortured villagers and burnt their homes literally forcing them to take flight. With few options left and absolutely no faith in the efficacy of the state government of Manipur to alleviate their problems, various Kuki organisations have taken their protests to Delhi.

Protests
Delhi-based students’ groups and others from Manipur congregated at Jantar Mantar on February 5 this year to make their demonstration more visible and perhaps loud enough for Delhi to take notice.

What all the dissenting groups of the Northeast have agreed upon is that Delhi is too distant from their world. Deaths and gunshots become irrelevant by the time the news reaches the Indian capital. No wonder Irom Sharmila, who has been on hungerstrike for seven years, temporarily shifted base to Delhi to draw the attention to the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Sharmila drew a steady stream of visitors and civil society activists sympathetic to her cause. She even managed to get the attention of Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi while the lady was in Delhi. But what must be admitted, albeit grudgingly, is the reality that struggles must be sustained from within. Sympathisers from outside can do very little. An international audience becomes interested only when suffering voices from within a geographical space collate and document evidences of state and non-state tyranny and torture and present it convincingly. Even that often fails to work because the international community is hesitant about intruding on the internal affairs of a sovereign nation.

No one knows this better than the people of Manipur, mainly the Meiteis, who have done everything possible to draw the attention of international human rights organisations to the pernicious clauses of the AFSPA. But look at the irony of the situation. Today when the Kukis, an ethnic minority within the same state are oppressed by the UNLF, a Meitei militant group, none of the Imphal Valley-based human rights groups are taking up their cause. This is what erodes the credibility of “human rights NGOs”.

When we preach of universal human rights we must be absolutely objective and inclusive. A human rights group cannot be ethno-centric or community specific. How could the human rights groups remain silent in the face of atrocities and outrage inflicted by a militant group, which far exceed those of the armed forces? Whereas the cry for removal of the AFSPA is extremely shrill in Imphal Valley it does not seem to resonate with the other tribes.

The Kuki people in their memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have actually demanded for a more vigilant and efficacious army operation to flush out the UNLF militants. The memorandum in fact questions the sudden cessation of army operations in Chandel district where over 39 Kuki villages have been uprooted and burnt down and food and livestock looted.

A deep sense of insecurity pervades Chandel district. Villagers, who have abandoned their homes, are now kept in makeshift shelters reminiscent of concentration camps, replete with chaos and insecurity that visits such camps. Women and children are the worst affected with the latter forfeiting their educational opportunities and women their livelihood.

Uncertainty prevails
The Northeast is truly in a state of grave uncertainty. The number of internally displaced people increases with every communal conflict or militant attack. Instead of gradually rehabilitating the displaced people, who are already a huge number and spread out in various parts of the northeastern states, governments are apathetic to their cause. In many cases they seem to be tacitly involved in adding to the number of refugees. The problem of displaced people can no longer be a state-specific issue. It requires a deeper enquiry and engagement at the national and international forum.

India is a sovereign nation, no doubt. But its behaviour towards citizens in the eastern periphery is at best indifferent and at worst callous. How do people within a nation redress their grievances when those elected to provide remedial action become the perpetrators of injustice and state-sponsored violence? Naturally people are caught in a bind. When appeals to Delhi fail as they usually do, suffering people reason that the only way out is to counter violence with more violence. So citizens acquire arms and encourage their young to form militant outfits in self-defence. These outfits later extort from their own kith and kin to procure more arms and maintain a certain lifestyle in the jungles. How can this obnoxious cycle be broken?

Delhi obviously does not have a coherent policy to deal with the northeastern frontiers. If there is one it must be a convoluted policy such as the one adopted by a conqueror towards the conquered. Sometimes, in a fit of generosity and more often because of a calculated move to extract resources from within the region, money pours into the region ostensibly for different development programmes. These programmes never see the light of day since money is diverted either to the coffers of militants or creamed off by politicians and bureaucrats. The Centre is fully aware of the diminishing returns of pumping money without putting in place a strong monitoring mechanism but it repeats its errors ad nauseum. What do you call this but a process of slow poisoning?

For people in many parts of this region, there are only two choices. They will either die violent deaths at the hands of militants or be killed by degrees through the Chanakyan state-craft of the Centre.

(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)

Source: The Telegraph