If you have ever tasted Indian tea, chances are that it came from a place called Darjeeling. It is quite possible that till today this is the closest most Kossacks have been exposed to the Indian state of Manipur. Both Manipur and Darjeeling are in the North East corner of India. Nice pictures below the fold!
This is Manipur. Darjeeling is to the north west. |
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| This is what Manipur looks like. A view of Swangdoh village, near the India-Myanmar border in Manipur's Chura Chandpur district. |
Wow, what a beautiful place! One almost wishes to retire to that serene beauty that is the Chandpur valley. But if you do venture out to that area, you will be greeted not by any friendly Tourism department officials. Instead, you will see these folks.
Zomi Revolutionary Army members participate in combat exercises at a camp near Swangdoh. |
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| Training sessions of the ZRA near Swangdoh. |
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Who are these nice boys playing with those guns? What are they doing there and what is their history? What is the history of Manipur? Here are some brief answer to all those questions, provided by Praveen Swami and Parth Sanyal, reporters for the 100+ year old Indian national newspaper The Hindu:
SOMEWHERE along the road to Singnat, the Indian state disappears. Tarmac gives way to unpaved rock and earth, churned up by thunderstorms and passing trucks. A local militia, the Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA), in return for a small toll fee, ensures travellers are not looted, kidnapped or shot by other, less civilised armed groups....
On paper, Singnat is a subdivisional headquarters, a key administrative centre within the border district of Chura Chandpur. The Sub-Divisional Officer's headquarters, though, has been abandoned in the past decade, its run-down rooms stripped of so much as a filing cabinet. Not much remains of the police station either, which was set on fire by ethnic-Meitei insurgents in 1993. The fire department has no staff, but an almost-red truck rusting in a shed bears witness to the fact that it once existed. A hospital building exists, but no doctors come to work there. There is also a government-run school, but again, without teachers. The boarded-up Singnat post office still has a sign proclaiming that it works from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., but no one who is not well past their teens has any idea what the red cylindrical box outside the building is for.
After the 2000 and 2004 elections, we know how difficult it is to conduct free and fair elections even in the greatest, the oldest, the richest, the most powerful, the superpowerful nation in the world. So, if someone raised the issue of conducting elections in this area, you would certainly ridicule that person. So what kind of a naive person would ask: Can democracy function where nothing else does? Can we conduct elections there? Turns out the Indian government did ask that question in 2002. How about we have free elections, let these people select their representatives, form their own local governments? May be then they will quit these militias, not smuggle drugs in from Myanmar (Burma). May be then whole sections of this population will not be drug addicts.
Inmates watching television at the Sahara drugs rehabilitation centre. |
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Here is a mystery: well over half of the district's voters chose to cast their vote. It is tempting to be dismissive about these turnout figures. Elders in parts of Outer Manipur have been known to cast votes for their entire family, a practice respected by both polling agents and election staff. Candidates have also secured the support of the welter of tribal militia and insurgent groups who pepper Manipur, a practice that has led to the institutionalisation of booth-capturing in some areas. Yet, these problems are not unique to the Manipur hills; other areas that suffer from election fraud do not register high turnouts. What, then, is going on?
So, to come back to our question, who are these boys with guns?
HE says he is 16 but looks 12, and will only identify himself as `Nixon'. It is afternoon. An M-16 assault rifle in hand, `Nixon' is collecting a toll of Rs.100 paid by the Chura Chandpur-Aizawl bus service's conductor at the small village of Swangdoh. `Nixon' dropped out of school after the 5th grade, since his parents could no longer afford to send him to school. After a few years of hard, unrewarding labour on fields owned by his parents and with no prospect of a job in sight, `Nixon' volunteered to serve with the ZRA. He receives no pay, but the weapon in his hand seems to have given him some sense of self worth. "I joined the ZRA," he says, "to defend my people." Asked who he is defending them against, `Nixon' is uncertain. "Our enemies," he says, after a long pause.
Now, note that the ZRA is for the most part the arm of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim's Isaac-Muivah or the NSCN.
In 1992-1993, NSCN insurgents initiated the wholesale ethnic cleansing of the Kuki from Nagaland, in reprisal for the support that elements of the tribe had given the Indian Army. Kuki refugees streamed into Chura Chandpur, dislocating the fragile balance of tribes in the region. At about the same time, the Zomi Reunification Organisation (ZRO) came into being with the support of several social and church groups, claiming to represent a welter of non-Naga hill tribes spread across India and Myanmar, mainly the Paite, Simte and Vaipeh. Although Zomi ideology included the Kuki among its ranks, the tribe, the poorest of those in the hills, felt otherwise. Convinced that the newly formed ZRA, the armed wing of the ZRO, was allying itself with the NSCN, Kuki insurgents joined ranks with Meitei insurgents in the plains of Manipur, who have historically opposed Naga claims.
Like in Akira Kurosawa's classic film Rashomon, everybody's accounts of what happened next are different and mutually exclusive. Whatever the truth, a full-scale ethnic war broke out in 1996. No accurate figures exist on how many died, but the figures could run into hundreds of people. For the most part, the Indian state did nothing to stop the carnage. A generation of young people turned to the armed groups within their tribes. Today, members of each tribe pay a percentage of their salaries to the militia organisations. Most militia groups have an unsavoury reputation for extortion, and politicians routinely pay protection money. Sometimes wars break out. The ZRA, for example, exchanged fire this spring with Hmar insurgents along the India-Myanmar border.
Today, Manipur has a "degenerated insurgency". The insurgent groups include:
*National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM)
*Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA)
*United Kuki Liberation Front (UKLF)
*Kuki Liberation Army (KLA)
*National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K)
*Revolutionary People's Front (RPF)
*United National Liberation Front (UNLF)
*Kangleipak Communist Party
*Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL)
*People's Liberation Army (PLA)
Are these ragtag, splintered groups? No. They often kill each other, but they also co-operate:
Alliances form and re-form. Three years ago, warring Hmar groups took the help of the Meitei PREPAK to settle a feud; Kuki factions have sometimes turned to their enemy, the NSCN.
They pack bombs with rusty nails and screws, with used needles from AIDS clinics and they kill innocent civilians. Last Wednesday, the KYKL lobbed grenades into a Hare Krishna temple in in Imphal, the capital of Manipur. Why Wednesday? Last Wednesday was the holiest day for the Hare Krishnas - it is supposed to be Krishna's birth day (For Christians: think "Christmas" and imagine grenades being lobbed into the midnight mass crowd).
LAST JOURNEY: The coffins of those killed in Wednesday's blast at the International Society for Krishna Consciousness temple in Imphal being taken in a procession. -- Photo: PTI |
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A news report, two days later:
New Delhi: Outlawed militant group Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL) is suspected to be behind Wednesday's blast at the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) complex in Imphal, a senior Union Home Ministry official said here on Thursday.
Though none has claimed responsibility for the grenade blast, which claimed four lives and left 66 injured, the hand of this outfit is suspected, he said.
The Meitei militant group, KYKL, which was formed over a decade ago, has been indulging in extortions. It is said to have demanded a hefty amount from the ISKCON's chief priest.
Refusal to pay led to the lobbing of ``Chinese-make hand grenades'' when the shrine was teeming with Janmasthami devotees, the official said.
Centre in touch with State
He said the Centre was in constant touch with the Manipur Chief Secretary and Director General of Police and reviewing the situation from time to time.
In Imphal Manipur Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh visited the injured in the hospital and enquired about their treatment.
Commenting on the security measures, he said it was not possible to provide adequate security to all temples since Janamashtami was being celebrated in all the temples across the State.
``This is our religious function. Not only ISKCON, most of the temples celebrated it. But how can we provide each and every temple adequate security. It's just not possible,'' he said. He said the militants who carried out the attack were yet to be identified but search was on. The Government would foot the entire medical bill of the victims.
``I went to pray along with my children. I did not know what happened. I was standing far behind when the explosion took place in front of me. I was with my four children when something came and hit me on my neck. Afterwards I fell down and was not able to speak,'' said Shublata, a victim. -- PTI, ANI
This comes a few months after this incident:
Mr. Singh expressed unhappiness at the police's "inability" to contain the violence unleashed by the Meitei Erol Eyek Loinasillon Apunba Lup (MEELAL) members and the students' body, Democratic Students' Alliance of Manipur (DESAM). The Meiti activists torched 13 trucks yesterday as these were carrying consumer items violating their "economic blockade."
You see, Mr. Holiness is a leader of the Apunba Lup group. As the Hindu report says above, "alliances form and re-form". Who would you round up to interrogate under this situation?
UPDATE: My first diary, so I wasn't aware the links should be part of the diary. Here's the report I am citing from:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2112/stories/20040618000106500.htm