New Delhi: Manipur’s violence-hit Churachandpur district has witnessed a massive public protest against the Union government over its purported decision to replace units of the Assam Rifles with those of the Central Reserve Police Force in the sensitive district.
The reported decision reached the hills of Manipur four days after Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla said at the CRPF’s Raising Day in Delhi that the paramilitary forces’ “involvement in Manipur is expanding”.
“They have significantly contributed in stopping violence in the state and ensuring the safety of shelter homes (relief camps) for the displaced,” Bhalla said. Around 60,000 are currently residing in the relief camps having lost their homes in the ongoing ethnic conflict.
According to local news reports, people belonging to the Kuki-Zo community gathered in large numbers at Gothol, Khousabung and Kangvai areas of the district, late on July 31 and “held candle light vigils in protest against the move for the removal of the Assam Rifles.”
“Protesters held placards inscribed ‘AR protect and save our lives’, ‘AR don’t go back’, ‘Meitei militants are problem, not AR’, etc., during the protest,” reported a local news outlet.
The Narendra Modi government’s reported decision is in tandem with the demand of the Meitei community, majority of whom reside in the state’s valley areas and have remained there since the ethnic conflict broke out in the border state. The Assam Rifles has been accused of being biased towards the Kuki community, the majority of whom reside in the Churachandpur district. This comes from the premise that the Assam Rifles, traditionally stationed in hill areas, would be biased towards its residents. State chief minister N. Biren Singh is among several Bharatiya Janata Party leaders belonging to the Meitei community to have accused Assam Rifles of being “biased” towards Kukis.
Last year, in August, heeding their demand, the state government replaced the Assam Rifles with CRPF and state police in several check-posts along the Kuki-majority Churachandpur district, at the points where it meets the Meitei-dominated Bishnupur district. Several cases of ethnic violence had been reported from the area.
This July 30, the Meitei women’s group at the forefront of the ethnic conflict, the Meira Paibi, held a protest in Imphal demanding the removal of the Assam Rifles from the state’s security forces, accusing the Army unit of “prolonging the conflict” in the state.
The Assam Rifles, a part of the Indian Army, has denied this allegation by the Meitei community several times.
The Kukis, on the other hand, have accused the state police, under the control of chief minister Singh, a Meitei, of acting partially and having looked the other way while Kukis were attacked in the valley areas, including in the state capital Imphal. This includes testimonials of two Kuki women that state police personnel did not come to their rescue before they were surrounded by a Meitei mob and paraded naked during the conflict. Hundreds of arms and ammunition were also purportedly looted from various state police stations in the valley districts, allegedly by Meitei mobs, to strike at the Kukis since the ethnic conflict broke out on May 3, 2023.
The Union government’s latest decision to bring in the CRPF in the fringe areas of the state, which includes the Churachandpur district, is being looked at by the Kuki-Zo community with deep suspicion because unlike the Assam Rifles, which specialises in the security of India’s Northeast, the CRPF is a paramilitary unit with no such specialisation and, therefore, would be dependent on the state force under the command of the chief minister to handle security issues of an ethnically sensitive state.
Reacting to the decision, Kuki Students Organisation (KSO), in a press statement, called it “untimely,” adding that it might prove “costly’.
The KSO said “Assam Rifles, after years of effort and dedication, won the hearts and minds of the hill people thereby resulting in mutual respect and peaceful coexistence. The decision of replacing (to replace) the Assam Rifles units with CRPF is an absurdity and is against the will of the local population…the government needs to rethink the decision discreetly and take the opinion of the respective local people and district civil society bodies.”
The Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) also termed the decision to replace Assam Rifles units with those of the CRPF as “potentially wasteful and detrimental to the hard-earned peace in the region” and urged the Union government to reconsider it.
In a statement, several women’s bodies of the district including Hmar Women’s Association, Hmar Women Union (HWU) and Kuki Women’s Union also opposed the decision and urged the Modi government to reconsider it “in the interest of peace stability in Churachandpur”.
