New Delhi:

The Meitei community of violence-hit Manipur held a protest demanding justice in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on Friday, the day ethnic violence broke out with the Kuki-Zo tribes last year.

The community appealed to all the elected representatives of Manipur to work together with the people by taking steps towards reconciliatory efforts with the sole mission of bringing a lasting peace and harmonious co-existence in Manipur.

“One year of continuous turmoil with sporadic violence has shown that intimidation and bloodshed cannot solve any problem. It is only through dialogue that lasting peace can be achieved. But peace has to come hand in hand with justice. We have to strive for just peace. Otherwise we cannot have lasting peace,” professor Bhagat Oinam said.

Rohan Philem, a social activist, said, “Yes to peace, but no to separate administration. Yes to solidarity, but no to the so-called Kukiland. I stand with Christians, but not with the Kukiland war mongers.”

Members of the Meitei community maintain they do not seek any control of the hills where the Kuki tribes are settled. The influx of foreign infiltrators, however, has caused massive unnatural growth of villages in Kuki-dominated hill districts where Meeteis are not granted land rights and controls, they said.

Poppy plantation of tens of thousands of acres of forest reserves has caused irreversible deforestation in an uncontrolled manner and the poppy trade has infused tens of thousands of crores of narcotics-funded activities that affect Manipur and the rest of India, the organisers of the solidarity gathering said in a statement.

“Through the call for justice cry, we seek justice from both the state and central government for those who have suffered immensely from the year-long crisis,” they said.

“The propaganda of lies has unfairly portrayed the Meiteis who are the real victims of cross-border terrorism as culprits. They have been misrepresented, humiliated, targeted, unprotected, and denied timely justice,” the organisers said.

The organisers comprised DeMaS, Delhi Meetei Coordinating Committee, Global Manipur Federation, Karnataka Meitei Association, Meetei Yaipha Lup, Meitei Alliance, Meitei Diaspora in America, Meitei Heritage Society, NUPI, Souls Offered Unitedly for a Lustrated Society, ⁠Team Meitei Personalities, and World Meetei Council.

Imphal/Guwahati/New Delhi:

An army patrol that found 11 armed men in police uniform in Manipur’s Bishnupur district was surrounded by a group of women protesters after the soldiers detained the men and seized their weapons, the police said.

The women protesters, part of a cultural movement known as Meira Paibis (she who holds the burning torch), demanded the army to release the men and also return the weapons.

The protesters alleged the 11 men were “village defence volunteers” and disarming them would put their village at risk of attack by armed men from nearby hills, amid the ethnic tensions.

Visuals of the incident that happened on Tuesday show the soldiers being pushed around by the women, who stood in front of an armoured mine-proof vehicle and stopped it from leaving the area with the confiscated weapons.

Surrounded by shouting and yelling protesters, the soldiers fired several rounds in the air to disperse the crowd. But it had little effect.

“Don’t go anywhere, stand here, stand here,” an elderly woman is heard saying to others.

“Why don’t you take guns from everyone, why only from us?” another woman said.

A Manipur Police team soon reached the spot and negotiated with the protesters, following which the army and the police team drove out of the area carrying the confiscated weapons, sources said. Even then, the protesters blocked the road with an abandoned, junked car, which the army truck hit and dragged on before it peeled off from the front bumper of the armoured military vehicle.

The hill-dominated Kuki tribes and the valley-dominant Meiteis have been fighting since May 2023 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, which led to the crisis was its ‘war on drugs’ campaign that ended up snatching food from the mouth of powerful, internationally-linked drug traffickers. The Kuki tribes call this a big lie for the Meiteis to grab their lands, as studies have shown poppy cultivation that provides fast, huge sums is linked to poverty and underdevelopment in the hills.

The “neutral” central forces – according to the Home Ministry – such as the Assam Rifles, the Border Security Force, and the Central Reserve Police Force are guarding sensitive areas in Manipur where Meitei and Kuki settlements meet.

But there are also hundreds of armed people in both communities who call themselves “village defence volunteers” who may need to be disarmed simultaneously due to mutual distrust.

This definition of the belligerents in Manipur has become the most controversial since nothing stops the “volunteers” from shooting others under the insurance provided by the “in self-defence” claim. A similarity between the “village defence volunteers” of both sides is they are well-armed and well-equipped with modern battle gear.

Just before the Lok Sabha elections, a Kuki group spearheading the call for a separate administration carved out of Manipur had asked members of their tribes not to give their licenced guns to police stations for safe-keeping, citing safety concerns amid the ethnic tensions with the valley-majority Meiteis.

The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF) in a statement had said licenced guns submitted last year have not been returned yet. “We need every available weapon to defend our ‘right to life’ and our land…” the ITLF had said.

The security forces have frequently recovered Russian-origin AK and US-origin M series assault rifles, and gun models commonly used by both the junta’s army and pro-democracy insurgents in neighbouring Myanmar.

Over 210 have died in the ethnic conflict; nearly 50,000 internally displaced people are still living in relief camps.

New Delhi:

A terror suspect in Manipur’s hill district Churachandpur has been arrested by the country’s top anti-terror agency in a transnational conspiracy case involving terrorist leaders in Bangladesh and Myanmar. The suspect is being brought to Delhi for questioning and further investigation.

The accused and his network in Myanmar and Bangladesh sought to exploit the Manipur crisis, the anti-terror agency said in a statement.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) in a post on X (formerly Twitter) said the terror accused, Seiminlun Gangte, is instrumental in a “conspiracy with Myanmar- and Bangladesh-based leadership of terror outfits to wage war against India by exploiting the ethnic unrest in Manipur.”

Gangte is also the main accused in the car bomb blast on June 22 in Manipur’s Kwakta that killed a person, police sources told NDTV. A Scorpio SUV parked near a small bridge had exploded on June 22 in what was seen as a serious escalation of violence. The attack had the typical characteristics of trained terrorist hands, sources had said then.

The NIA has not said which terror group Gangte belongs to.

Some 25 Kuki insurgent groups, mostly based in Churachandpur, have signed a trilateral suspension of operations (SoO) agreement with the centre, the state and the military, under which the insurgents are to stay at designated camps and their weapons kept in monitored storages. There are allegations, however, that some insurgents of groups that have signed the SoO agreement have been taking part in the Manipur violence.

The NIA had filed this case on its own in July.

ACCUSED ARRESTED BY NIA FROM CHURACHANDPUR DISTRICT (MANIPUR) IN TRANSNATIONAL CONSPIRACY CASE. pic.twitter.com/L0FSfDja85

— NIA India (@NIA_India) September 30, 2023

“Investigation… revealed that Myanmar and Bangladesh-based militant groups have entered into a conspiracy with a section of militant leaders in India to indulge in incidents of violence with an intention to drive a wedge between different ethnic groups and to wage war against the government of India,” the NIA said in the statement today.

“And for this purpose, the leadership have been providing funds to buy arms, ammunition and other types of terrorist hardware which are being sourced both, from across the border, as well as from other terrorist outfits active in northeastern states to stoke the current ethnic strife in Manipur,” the NIA said.

Gangte is the second terror suspect to be arrested in Manipur in the past nine days. On September 22, the NIA arrested Moirangthem Anand Singh in connection with a terror case.