10 Kuki-Zo MLAs And Manipur Cabinet Call For Political Dialogue, Differ In All Other Critical Areas

New Delhi:

Ten Kuki-Zo MLAs from Manipur have asked the Centre and the state government to start a political dialogue for bringing lasting peace in the troubled region, two days after the Manipur cabinet also resolved to do the same.

The 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs, who have been leading the call for a separate administration to be carved out of Manipur, in an eight-point statement on Wednesday also condemned the attack on the houses of “our colleague Meitei MLAs and ministers by frenzied Meitei mobs”.

The Manipur cabinet resolution, too, had called the attacks on MLAs and ministers “barbaric actions”, to be investigated by a high-powered committee.

The statement signed by the 10 Kuki-Zo leaders, including Saikot MLA Paolienlal Haokip, who is a fierce critic of Chief Minister N Biren Singh, acknowledged the need for the high-powered committee.

However, this is where the similarity in the call for how to bring peace ends. The Manipur cabinet’s resolution and the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs’ statement – both in eight bullet points – differ widely on other critical matters.

“The suggested high-powered committee should investigate into the role/involvement of vested interest political parties and individuals/Meitei CSO leaders with secessionist mindset taking undue advantage of the situation,” the Kuki-Zo MLAs said in the statement.

“The entire episode appears to be a mere political vendetta with sinister design for further escalation of the heightening violence and tensions in the troubled-torn state. The misdemeanour also seems emanating from certain quarters to save the shaky chair of the Chief Minister,” the 10 MLAs said in the statement.

The Kuki-Zo MLAs have not attended a single assembly session since May 2023, when ethnic clashes broke out between the valley-dominant Meitei community and the Kuki tribes, who are dominant in some hill districts in southern Manipur and a few other areas in the north, due to ostensibly insurmountable disagreements over sharing land, resources, affirmative action policy, political representation and other issues. They have cited reasons from personal safety to lack of conditions for a political dialogue for not attending the sessions held in the state capital Imphal, a valley area.

The Kuki-Zo MLAs attacked the Manipur government over the cabinet resolution that called for operations against whom the state government called “Kuki militants”.

“To start a mass operation against only one community is biased, mass operations must be conducted all over the state to recover all illegal arms from all militia groups. The resolution seeking the handing over of cases relating to the death of six civilians to NIA also smacks of a communalised State. We recommend that all civilian killings from the 3rd of May, 2023, both in the valley and hills be handed over to the NIA,” the MLAs said, referring to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) being handed over three cases from recent spike in violence to investigate.

Six members of a Meitei family including an infant and two children were taken hostage by whom the Manipur government now calls “Kuki militants” from Jiribam district last week. Their partially decomposed bodies were found in a river. The hostage-taking happened on the same day when the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) shot dead 10 men from the Kuki tribes in an “encounter”.

While the police have called them militants and showed evidence of what they say were weapons recovered from the encounter site and photos of police vehicles with numerous bullet holes, Kuki civil society groups have called the 10 men “martyrs”.

On November 7, suspected Meitei militants attacked a village of the Hmar tribe in Jirbam, 220 km from the state capital Imphal, and killed a mother of three. Her husband in a police case alleged she was raped before she was shot dead.

Kuki groups have said the Jiribam hostage-taking was a retaliation to the November 7 attack on the Hmar village. However, the Manipur government in a statement said “Kuki miscreants” set fire to several houses in Jiribam and attacked the police station in Borobekra on October 19, which sparked the latest cycle of violence, and not November 7 as claimed by Kuki groups.

“The resolution for declaration by the GoI (government of India) of ‘Kuki militants’ responsible for the killing of six innocents must be preceded by the declaration of the Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun as Unlawful Organisations under relevant laws,” the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs said.

“Village volunteers are not an organisation, but youth defending their villages from the murderous attacks by Arambai Tenggol, the so-called G5 (a conglomerate of five underground outfits of the Meitei majority) aided by the state police and, in the case of Jiribam, by the CRPF,” they said.

‘Kuki Militants As Village Volunteers’

Meitei civil society groups deny the Kuki tribes’ allegation about the Arambai Tenggol (AT). The Meiteis say AT was only a cultural youth organisation with hardly any public following, but was forced to take up arms to defend Meitei villages from relentless attacks by Kuki militants under the guise of “village volunteers”, especially in the foothills.

In the early days of the ethnic clashes after May 3, AT chief Korounganba Khuman was seen in visuals walking with a bamboo stick, while in the distance smoke was seen rising from a village behind a treeline. More visuals purportedly of May 3, 2023 showed at least three men in camouflage battledress and body armour, carrying AK series assault rifles, walking towards a field with slogan-shouting protesters from the Kuki tribes. In these visuals too, smoke can be seen rising from huts in the distance.

There are hundreds of verified and unverified visuals from Manipur showing men in bunkers from both communities, who call themselves “village volunteers”, but are armed with AK and American M series assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers.

The only time any authority in Manipur admitted to the involvement of insurgent groups of both the Meitei community and the Kuki tribes was on September 9, after five bodies were found following a fierce gunfight. Three of the bodies were confirmed as Kuki insurgents from Churachandpur district; the fourth was identified as a Kuki volunteer from Jiribam; the fifth was identified as a member of the Meitei insurgent group UNLF(P), the police had said in a statement.

The three Kuki insurgents were members of the Kuki Liberation Army (KLA), a signatory of the highly controversial suspension of operations (SoO) agreement. Former Union home minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram has sparked a fresh row over this matter, with the Manipur Chief Minister pinning the root cause of the present crisis to alleged missteps by the Congress and Mr Chidambaram, who was Union minister at the time of formally signing the previously clandestine SoO agreement in 2008.

The UNLF is the oldest Meitei insurgent group, which later broke up into two factions; the Pambei faction signed the tripartite peace agreement with the Centre and the state government in November 2023.

Sources have told NDTV there would be numerous instances of militants from both sides accompanying “village volunteers” and training them in Manipur, while the police have admitted to only one incident.