Imphal/Guwahati:

Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh and other leaders have condemned the attack on the house of a BJP spokesperson from the Thadou tribe in the state’s Churachandpur district.

Over two dozen people, some of them armed, had vandalised the house of the state BJP spokesperson T Michael Lamjathang Haokip on Sunday night. They fired shots in the air and set two rooms on fire, Mr Haokip had said, adding no one was injured. Four families displaced by the violence in Manipur also live in four small structures at his family plot, he said.

“The attack carried out on the family members of Michael Lamjathang, a leader of the Thadou community, the oldest among the ethnic tribes of Manipur, as well as a BJP spokesperson by vandalising his house was an act of cowardice,” the Chief Minister said in a post on X.

“I consider this personal harm being put on one of our recognised tribes as a direct challenge to the unity and integrity of the state,” Mr Singh said. “Attacks on any particular community of the recognised tribes of Manipur, as well as the attack on the family of the BJP spokesperson are condemned in the strongest terms. We will initiate appropriate legal action against the culprits,” he said.

The attack carried out on the family members of Micheal Lamjathang a leader of the Thadou community, the oldest among the ethnic tribes of Manipur, as well as a BJP spokesperson by vandalizing his house was an act of cowardice.

I consider this personal harm being put on one of…

— N. Biren Singh (@NBirenSingh) August 26, 2024

State minister Govindas Konthoujam said the attack on Mr Haokip exposed “the mentality of those who, unable to engage in logical debate, resort to violence.” “… This cowardly act of violence against his home and family is not just an assault on an individual, but on the entire Thadou community and our civilization,” the seven-time MLA from Bishnupur said in a post on X.

1/2 I strongly condemn the barbaric attack on Thadou student leader & BJP Manipur Spokesperson Michael Lamjathang Haokip in Peniel village, Churachandpur. This cowardly act of violence against his home & family is not just an assault on an individual, but on the

— Govindas Konthoujam (@KonthoujamG) August 26, 2024

Mr Haokip on Tuesday said he has been raising awareness about his tribe, Thadou, being inaccurately referred to as a Kuki tribe amid the ethnic tension in Manipur. He said it was the second time his house in Churachandpur was attacked, allegedly by some people who do not accept the Thadou tribe’s distinct identity.

“Around 30 people barged in at 10.30 pm. They poured kerosene on the walls and burned two rooms. They also fired many rounds in the air to scare our neighbours and other residents in the neighbourhood,” Mr Haokip told NDTV. “Everybody in the area is angry at the attackers,” he said.

Mr Haokip belongs to the family of a Thadou tribe village chief, under whose area some 70 families live in as many houses. Apart from their main family house, there are four small structures on the plot where people displaced by the ethnic violence are living.

“The attackers also threatened the displaced people to leave,” Mr Haokip said.

The attack at the Churachandpur house of the BJP spokesperson from the Thadou tribe comes days after three MLAs from among the 10, who have been demanding a separate administration carved out of Manipur, clarified that they want their own tribes to be called by their correct names, instead of being associated only with the term “Kuki-Zo”.

On social media, the three MLAs have received threats of boycott and other “consequences” for allegedly weakening the Kuki tribes’ resolve to persuade the Centre to create a separate administration. One of the BJP MLAs told NDTV everyone should feel free to state facts about the tribe they belong to. “I fail to understand why threats are coming my way for simply saying to which tribe I and the people I represent belong,” the leader told NDTV, requesting anonymity.

Mr Haokip is also a leadership team member of the Manipur-based Thadou Students’ Association (TSA) and the newly formed Thadou Community International, or TCI, a global body with professionals from the Thadou tribe living in nine countries including the US, the UK, Norway, Australia, and Malaysia, among others, as members. The TCI in a statement said the attack happened barely a few hours after Mr Haokip participated in a panel discussion in local media on the topic ‘Kuki supremacy and its agenda.’

“It was also an incident due to the fallout of relentless attacks on Thadou community and Thadou leaders by the Churachandpur-based Kuki supremacist-made fake Thadou Tribe Council (TTC), who have been actively engaging in disinformation campaign and violent rhetoric against Thadou, even boasting to know the perpetrators of the violent attack on Michael Lamjathang’s home last year,” the TCI said.

On August 5, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh had met representatives of several small tribes and heard their concerns about bigger tribes trying to suppress their identities.

During the discussion and voting on demands for grants on the last day of the Manipur assembly session on August 12, the Chief Minister had said “violence was perpetrated by some, not all, people.”

“Not every Thadou, Paite, Hmar had a hand in the violence. You have seen, Hmar people spoke so well (in the peace meeting), we had tears, they too had tears, that all this happened due to misunderstandings,” Mr Singh said, referring to the August 1 peace meeting between Meitei and the Hmar tribe representatives in Jiribam, where they agreed to work for normalcy nearly two months after ethnic violence that began over a year ago reached the district bordering Assam.

Imphal/Guwahati:

Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh has doubled down on the state government’s claim that a major factor behind the ethnic crisis in the border state was the “massive influx of illegal immigrants from Myanmar”.

Mr Singh said at least 996 villages have mushroomed across Manipur since 2006, and attributed what he called the “unnatural growth” to illegal immigrants settling down after scattering all over the unsurveyed hill areas of the state.

“Will anyone accept the unnatural growth of new villages and population, causing massive changes to the demography in their own state or country due to the influx of illegal immigrants?” Mr Singh said in a post on the microblogging website X.

“We’re confronting a serious issue within our nation, especially in Manipur, where several new villages have emerged due to a massive influx of illegal immigrants from Myanmar since 2006 till date. During this period, massive forest cover have been destroyed to establish settlements as well as carry out poppy plantations,” said the Chief Minister from the BJP who won his second consecutive term in March 2022.

On why the government chose to look at the influx of illegal immigrants from 2006, an official who has direct knowledge of the matter and access to the relevant departmental records told NDTV: “The stronger Nagas led by the NSCN had driven away the Kukis from border areas to Myanmar in the long ethnic conflict between them from the early 1990s till around the end of that decade. A large number of Kukis regrouped in Myanmar’s border region with the help of Myanmar-based insurgent groups — they share ethnic ties — from the year 2000 onwards, and along with them came a huge influx of illegal immigrants.

“It is no surprise that the 2001 Census for Manipur was never finalised because there was abnormal decadal population growth as high as 169 per cent. It had become impossible to do a proper survey. From 2001 onwards, the illegal immigrants gradually dissolved into new settlements and villages in pockets across Manipur. You don’t make a village overnight. It takes time, men, and material. So till 2006 they were busy with this aspect. The government eventually saw the problem and decided to start the count of such new settlements from 2006.”

The hill-dominant Kuki-Zo tribes hold the Chief Minister, who belongs to the valley-dominant Meitei community, responsible for the outbreak of the ethnic clashes in May 2023 that left 210 dead and thousands internally displaced.

Mr Singh has refuted the allegations, and pointed at the destruction of opium poppy cultivation and clearing of illegal immigrants from forest areas as the chief reasons behind the crisis. The total area of opium poppy cultivation declined 60 per cent since 2021, data from the autonomous government institution Manipur Remote Sensing Applications Centre shows.

“Not to mention, these illegal immigrants have started encroaching on the resources, job opportunities, land, and the rights of indigenous people. We have started collecting biometric data of the illegal immigrants as well as geotagging of their settlements. I appeal to everyone in the country to support the government in keeping our nation safe and secure from illegal immigrants,” Mr Singh said.

“When the British Prime Minister recently asserted their unyielding commitment to deporting illegal immigrants and even claimed that no foreign court can stop them, nobody dared to question the British government,” the Chief Minister said, referring to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill 2023, the UK government’s latest attempt to deport asylum seekers to the east African country as part of efforts to cut irregular immigration, after previous attempts were ruled illegal.

“Now, when the Ministry of Home Affairs and the government of Manipur adopt a similar stance and initiate the deportation of illegal immigrants from Manipur, certain sections of people are losing their sleep. They have been persistently spreading false propaganda to portray the government of Manipur as a communal government,” Mr Singh said.

Unnatural growth of 996 New Villages Due to Illegal Immigration: Threat to Indigenous People and National Security

Will anyone accept the unnatural growth of new villages and population, causing massive changes to the demography in their own state or country due to the influx… pic.twitter.com/k1lU4Pba7l

— N.Biren Singh (Modi Ka Parivar) (@NBirenSingh) April 29, 2024

The ethnic clashes between the Meiteis and the Kuki-Zo tribes began over cataclysmic disagreements on sharing land, resources, affirmative action policies, and political representation, mainly with the ‘general’ category Meiteis seeking to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category. A top factor the state government says led to the crisis was its ‘war on drugs’ campaign.

“The slow but steady decline in opium cultivation due to the ‘war on drugs’ campaign would have been a kick in the gut of powerful drug cartels. The Kuki insurgents, too, have been demanding a separate land for a long time. It was a dangerous combination,” a senior officer in the Narcotics and Affairs of Border (NAB) said, requesting anonymity. “The idea of a separate administration did not just fall from a tree after May 2023. The idea was always there,” the officer added.

The Chief Minister in the post on X also included an over two-minute-long video presentation explaining in brief what Mr Singh claimed was the root cause of the Manipur crisis.

“Illegal immigrants have been entering Manipur since 1967,” the presentation reads as it starts playing.

It shows a letter written by Henkhosei Haokip and Shochung Haokip, two senior members of the Burma Kuki Refugees Association Manipur, to the then Relief and Rehabilitation Minister in February 1973 seeking a loan to rehabilitate 1,500 Kuki families who came from Myanmar (formerly Burma). The two asked the Centre to give a “special sanction as a relief grant and loan to the Kuki refugees during the current financial year.”

The video also shows satellite imagery of how since 2006 forest cover has declined due to new settlements in Churachandpur, Tengnoupal, Kangpokpi, Pherzwal and Chandel districts.

“Due to the Myanmar coup and civil war, a significant number of immigrants from Myanmar are entering Indian border villages. To address national security concerns, a cabinet sub-committee led by minister Letpao Haokip with committee members minister Awangbow Newmai and minister Thounaojam Basanta (was set up),” the Manipur government said in the video presentation.

The initial findings of the first phase of the identification exercise as of April 24, 2023 – violence broke out the next month – found the data below. The government says the total would be significantly high as this was only the first phase of the exercise.

• 1,147 Myanmar immigrants in Tengnoupal (13 villages)
• 881 Myanmar immigrants in Chandel (3 villages)
• 154 Myanmar immigrants in Churachandpur (1 village)
• 5 Myanmar immigrants in Kamjong (24 villages)

“It was observed that the illegal Myanmari immigrants established their own villages in the first phase of the exercise,” the government said in the presentation.

“There was a major objection by the immigrant establishment here to such an identification exercise. The new villages were strongly opposed to the advised proposal of shelter homes to be built by the government for them… The total immigrant population in Manipur must be significantly higher considering the number of immigrants revealed in just the first phase of the identification exercise,” the government said in the presentation.

The infiltration and influx pose challenges to social cohesion and harmony, potentially fuelling resentment and conflict among different communities, the government said. It said strengthening border security, enhancing surveillance, and capacity-building measures essential to prevent unauthorised entry and curb illicit activities have already started.

“As the issue continues to garner attention and concern, it is imperative to examine the root causes, consequences, and potential solutions,” the government said in the presentation.