Days after arson of empty homes of Meitei people in Moreh and brief gunfire, the Manipur government’s efforts to send additional State police to the town along the India-Myanmar border has now been blocked by around 300-400 women protesters, who have been sitting along the Imphal-Moreh Road (NH-102) in the Tengnoupal district.
Moreh town is dominated by Kuki-Zo people and the small number of Meitei people in the area were among the first to be chased out of the hill areas when the ongoing conflict began between the two communities in early May. While the town already has the presence of Manipur Police, who are restricted within their camps, this latest stand-off with the State police has come as around 70-80 additional personnel were being sent to Moreh as reinforcement.
The Manipur Police on Saturday said in a tweet, “The plan is to move one Coy of MR/IRB led by CO 5th IRB to Moreh. But it was being halted at Tengnoupal.”
While the protesters in Tengnoupal, from the Kuki-Zo community, suspect that this could be an attempt to bring in radical Meitei outfits disguised as State forces into Moreh, the Manipur Police have called such allegations “misleading”.
The Company of Manipur Rifles/India Reserve Battalion (MR/IRB) has, since Friday, been unable to move beyond Tengnoupal and are currently stationed near the 20th Assam Rifles camp.
Meanwhile, Manipur Governor Anusuiya Uikey on Saturday made her second visit to relief centres in Churachandpur, where she met with the two of the Kuki-Zo women, who were stripped and paraded while being sexually assaulted by a mob on May 4. The Raj Bhawan in Manipur tweeted, “Significantly, to show her deepest sympathy to the two ‘sisters’ whose modesty were outraged publicly by unruly mob on May 4, the Governor personally met them and handed a cheque of ₹10 lakh each to their families.”
The Governor’s office also said that Ms. Uikey had made the visit with the message “to work together for restoration of peace, normalcy and harmony in the State”.
But with the months-long conflict continuing in the state, the protesters in Tengnoupal told The Hindu that they have “no faith” in any security personnel of the State government, which had “shown its bias” in the last few months.
“Some of the officers part of the convoy did not have ID cards to produce. So, we are suspicious that they might go into Moreh and it might lead to further escalation,” Thangboi Lhungdim, president of the Kuki Students’ Organisation in Tengnoupal said, suspecting that members of outfits like Arambai Tenggol and Meetei Leepun might be embedded with them.
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Mr. Lhungdim said that the women had been sitting in protest on the highway since Friday and that “we will not move unless the Manipur government forces decide to go back”.
In a joint statement issued by the Tengnoupal units of the Kuki Chiefs’ Association, the KSO, and the Kuki Women Union and Human Rights, the outfits said the intention of the government in sending State government forces into Moreh is “life-threatening for Kuki-Zo tribals as there are significant number of Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun often camouflaging themselves as Commandos, IRB, and other State forces”.
The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’s Forum (ITLF) added that the government’s attempts to send “Meitei security forces” in tribal areas “will only heighten tension and lead to more violence”, while the Kuki Inpi Manipur (KIM) pointed out that Home Ministry Amit Shah had promised to not send State government forces to Moreh during his visit, as reported by The Hindu earlier.
The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’s Forum (ITLF) said that if more forces were needed in Moreh, the government should be deploying Army and Central paramilitary forces. Personnel from the Assam Rifles of the Indian Army and the Border Security Force (BSF) are already stationed at Moreh.
But despite this, protesters at Tengnoupal said that they are not confident about being sufficiently protected if the additional State police are allowed into Moreh.
Meanwhile, amidst the ongoing conflict, the Manipur government said that it had resumed its campaign to capture biometric data of all migrants from Myanmar who had entered India illegally, as per instructions of the Ministry of Home Affairs. On Saturday, a team of the National Crime Records Bureau assisted government officials in collecting this data from the Foreigners’ Detention Centre in Sajiwa (Imphal East), where about 100 Myanmarese migrants (men, women and children) are being detained.
