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18-11-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ GUWAHATI: Authorities in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur suspended internet and mobile services and imposed an indefinite curfew on Saturday in areas where protesters were besieging politicians’ homes over deadly inter-ethnic violence.
In the latest deaths, security forces found three bodies believed to be members of the majority Meitei community in a river on Friday. Meitei representatives said they were from a family of six captured by men from the Kuki ethnic group.
At least 250 people have died and 60,000 been uprooted in Manipur since May last year in inter-communal clashes over government grants and quotas in jobs and education.
A senior state police official told media that large numbers of protesters had gathered and demanded to meet lawmakers in the state capital Imphal on Saturday.
“When their demands were ignored, they stormed residences, set fire to vehicles, and vandalized properties,” he told media under condition of anonymity.
Mobs besieged the homes of at least nine lawmakers, according to security officials and the politicians.
Four residences were vandalized.
“My house is currently under attack,” BJP lawmaker L Sushindro Meitei told Reuters by phone from another location, saying he had information a crowd had surrounded his home.
“There has been some damage to my house, glasses (windowpanes) broken, but the security forces were able to disperse the mobs before they could enter,” he said.
The six family members were reported missing in the aftermath of violence on Monday when 10 armed Kuki men died in a gunfight with security forces.
Last week, a 31-year-old woman of the Hmar group within the Kuki tribal community was burned alive in the state’s Jiribam district. Kuki groups blamed Meitei militants.
The government has sent extra security forces and promised firm action against violent members of both communities in the state of 3.2 million people.
Manipur has become divided into two ethnic enclaves; a valley controlled by the Meiteis and hills dominated by the Kukis. The areas are separated by a stretch of no-man’s land monitored by federal paramilitary forces.
While the violence in Manipur takes another dip, with the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) re-imposed in some districts on Thursday, the NSCN (I-M) threatened last week to withdraw from the 1997 ceasefire agreement with the Union government if the Centre does not agree to its demands of a separate flag and constitution for the Naga people.
Over the past few years, the government has been highlighting various peace deals inked with insurgent groups in the Northeast, claiming to have brought down overall violence in the region but the developments in Manipur and Nagaland show that it may have underestimated the complexities of the region.
The fresh spurt of violence comes less than a month after the government gathered Meitei and Kuki leaders from Manipur in Delhi for the first such peace talks between the two communities since the clashes began in May 2023.
Cross-firing between alleged militants of the Hmar community and the CRPF in Jiribam district led to the largest number of single-day casualties this year in the violence with 10 suspected Hmar militants and two Meitei men killed, apart from injuries to a CRPF personnel.
Violence also stood out for being the first clash to involve the CRPF in a gunfight leading to casualties. So far, Central forces have acted with restraint in Manipur.
