Imphal/New Delhi:

An influential civil society group of the Meitei community in Manipur has criticised comments by former Union home secretary GK Pillai in an article, in which he called for a criminal case to be filed against Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh.

The Meitei Leepun in a two-page statement alluded to Mr Pillai’s comments as stemming from his close ties with the Kuki tribes.

“We never expect Mr Pillai to criticise the present government of Manipur and propose a dire consequence. The indigenous people of Manipur will never forget that the perpetrators of the present conflict, Kuki militants, signed the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement during the Congress-led UPA government and he was the home secretary dealing with northeast affairs,” the Meitei Leepun said in the statement signed by its chief M Pramot Singh.

“However, it’s not surprising that he was befooled by the kukis. It’s not the first or the last time that Kukis have engaged in distorting historical facts. For instance, the curious case of the Kuki rebellion of 1917-1919 which they presented as the Anglo-Kuki War to legitimise their imagined Kuki homeland within Manipur never actually happened,” the Meitei Leepun said.

“Their (Kukis’) academics have written extensively on it for decades to legitimise it and others have not left any stone unturned to validate that manufactured truth. Documents from the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) are readily available to dismiss such false claims. Fortunately for the rest of us without the western Christian tinted glasses, facts are objective and unchanging. Though Mr Pillai seems to have been heavily influenced by biases and experiences. It’s important to remember that feelings are not facts,” the Meitei Leepun said.

Similar to the controversial civil society groups of the Kuki tribes such as the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) and the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU), which face allegations of having direct links with Kuki militants, the Meitei Leepun has also come under scrutiny in the Manipur crisis. All of them claim they are working only for the defence of their respective communities. If action is not taken uniformly, if action is taken against only one of them, it would be seen as biased amid the deep divide, they say.

“… Mr Pillai should not have (got) carried away with the post-Independence history-building efforts of the Kukis,” the Meitei Leepun said.

On November 20, Biren Singh blamed “some vested interests” for reigniting a new cycle of violence in Manipur, after having been relatively peaceful for three-four months, and criticised Congress leader P Chidambaram as someone who “created the present crisis”.

Mr Singh’s frontal attack came hours after Mr Chidambaram in a post on X suggested “the Meitei, the Kuki-Zo and the Naga can live together in one state only if they have genuine regional autonomy”, and blamed the Chief Minister for causing the crisis. Mr Chidambaram, however, removed the post after Manipur Congress chief Keisham Meghachandra requested him to delete it , amid the volatile situation in Manipur.

Mr Chidambaram was the Union Home Minister under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2008 when he steered the highly controversial tripartite SoO agreement between over a dozen Kuki-Zo militant groups on one side and the Centre and the state government on the other, the Chief Minister has said. The Congress was also in power in Manipur at that time.

“I will say it openly. When he (Mr Chidambaram) was the (Union) Home Minister in the then Congress government, here in Manipur (Congress’s) O Ibobi was the Chief Minister. During their time, they brought a Myanmarese foreigner, Mr Thanglianpau Guite, a Myanmar-born who himself admitted in an interview that he contested an election for MP in Myanmar. That person is the chairman of the Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA) based in Myanmar,” Mr Singh said.

“I am surprised how Mr Chidambaram – there is a photograph, there is Chidambaram, then Union Home Minister, and here is Thanglianpau Guite, the chairman of the Zomi Revolutionary Army, who is from Myanmar – they never cared about people from the northeast, about indigenous people,” Mr Singh said, holding up an enlarged photo with a red circle on who Mr Singh said was Thanglianpau Guite seen shaking hands with Mr Chidambaram in a black suit.

Meitei leaders have alleged the SoO groups have been working to strengthen themselves over the years by taking advantage of the ceasefire, until a time came to engineer a violent attack for a separate land. Geopolitical analysts have speculated the Kuki armed groups were used as mercenaries to fight Meitei and Naga militants operating in the India-Myanmar border.

Kuki-Zo civil society groups such as the ITLF and the CoTU, and their 10 MLAs have joined the call for a separate administration carved out of Manipur, a demand also made by the nearly two dozen militant groups that have signed the SoO agreement.

This single demand has brought the Kuki militant groups, the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs, and the civil society groups on the same page.

There are many villages of the Kuki tribes in the hills surrounding the Meitei-dominated valley. The clashes between the Meitei community and the nearly two dozen tribes known as Kukis – a term given by the British in colonial times – who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, has killed over 220 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.

The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kukis who share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram want a separate administration carved out of Manipur, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.

Imphal:

A top human rights activist in Manipur has raised concern over threats by the Imphal-based group Meitei Leepun (ML) after he gave legal aid to a Norwegian national, who, he said, was misidentified as a “Christian Chin” by the ML.

Human Rights Alert (HRA) executive director Babloo Loitongbam in a statement on Tuesday said some 50 men came to his house in the state capital Imphal on Monday and threatened his family.

“This [threat] is following a press conference by Meitei Leepun (ML) the previous day levelling false charges on me as well as warning people against working with me,” Mr Loitongbam said in the statement.

The ML has alleged the longtime human rights defender has taken money from the Kuki tribes to work against the interest of Meiteis. At Monday’s press conference, the ML members also alleged Mr Loitongbam has been helping a “PDF Women Wing Commander” identified as Mya Kyay Mon, who the ML claimed was a Myanmar national of Chin ethnicity.

The PDF, or People’s Defence Force, is the armed wing of Myanmar’s National Unity Government that is fighting the junta.

Mr Loitongbam has refuted all these allegations. Citing his three-decade work as a human rights defender, the father of three daughters said he stood up for the right of every person to seek asylum in another country when they are facing persecution in their own country.

“This includes asylum seekers in India from Myanmar through the medium of appropriate institutions like a functioning Regional Foreigners Registration Office or by giving access to the UN High Commissioner for Refugee to offer its humanitarian services in Manipur,” Mr Loitongbam said in the statement.

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He said Mya Kyay Mon was referred to HRA as a woman prisoner in distress, and as an empanelled lawyer under the Manipur Legal Services Authority, the HRA offered legal aid, secured her bail and referred her to a woman’s home in Imphal pending her trial.

“She is a citizen of Norway, and is of Burma-Buddhist origin. She is not a Chin nor a Christian as widely circulated online. The only charge levelled against was that of overstaying her visa. There is no other charge against her. To the best of our knowledge, she is still detained in Imphal jail,” Mr Loitongbam said in the statement.

“The allegation that I have accompanied her to the UN and the US to raise funds is factually incorrect as she is still placed under judicial custody by the state authority,” he added.

Mr Loitongbam called a “figment of imagination” another allegation by the ML that he was in touch with the civil society group Manipur Meitei Association Bangalore to be part of a “Naga-Kuki-Meitei meeting” to frame the Meitei community for genocide.

The association, too, in a statement denied any such meeting was planned, and asked people to guard against “misleading information being shared by vested interests seeking to divide the Meitei community and tarnish our reputation”.

Caught In Crossfire

The ethnic tension between the valley-dominant Meiteis and the Kuki tribes, who are dominant in some hill districts in southern Manipur and a few other areas, have sharply divided the two communities to such an extent that both sides have publicly attacked and harassed any member of their community who held views not popular with their respective communities.

Mr Loitongbam is duty-bound to help anyone from any community as part of the Manipur Legal Services Authority empanelment. The case of Mya Kyay Mon being referred to HRA was, however, seen by the ML as working against Meiteis since the ML had already decided that Mya Kyay Mon was a Myanmar national of Chin ethnicity and the Kuki tribes share ethnic ties with the Chin people.

Mr Loitongbam’s house was vandalised in October 2023 after he discussed the ML and the Meitei village defence group Arambai Tenggol in a media interview. He later withdrew the comments following threats.

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Members of the Kuki tribes have also attacked a prominent Thadou tribe leader for his views that the Kukis saw as unhelpful in their narrative against the Meiteis. Thadou tribe leader T Michael Lamjathang Haokip’s house was vandalised twice and set on fire in Kuki-dominated Churachandpur district in August last week.

Mr Haokip has said he has been raising awareness about his tribe, Thadou, being inaccurately referred to as a Kuki tribe amid the ethnic tension in Manipur. This had angered “Kuki supremacists” as they do not want to accept the Thadou tribe’s distinct identity, Mr Haokip has said.

Three Kuki-Zo MLAs from among the 10 who have been demanding a separate administration carved out of Manipur had clarified 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 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 had 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 had told NDTV, requesting anonymity.

Right after the attack at Mr Haokip’s house on August 31, a video appeared on social media of a man showing a gun and a bullet and threatening to kill Mr Haokip. Another video shows a man in black tactical wear surrounded by three in camouflage battle dress carrying AK series assault rifles – all of them masked – saying they will kill Mr Haokip wherever he is, whether “Delhi or Guwahati”.