GUWAHATI: The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF) in Manipur warned all 10 Kuki-Zo legislators in the state not to attend the special session of the Assembly, likely to be held on August 21.
“…it is strictly mandated that no #Kuki-Zo tribal MLA participate in any manner or form in the Manipur Special Assembly, scheduled for Aug 21, 2023,” the ITLF wrote on X, previously Twitter.
Seven of these MLAs are from the ruling BJP, two from the Kuki People’s Alliance, which withdrew its support to the government recently, and one is an independent. None of them is in the Meitei-majority Imphal valley now.
Earlier, some of them had said it would not be possible for them to attend a session of the Assembly given the volatile situation.
Meanwhile, the Kuki-Zo MLAs took exception to Union home minister Amit Shah’s comment in Parliament linking the ethnic violence to the influx of Chin-Kuki people from Myanmar.
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“While our people are still reeling under relentless attacks on our villages by Meitei militia led by Manipur Police, it is disheartening that the Union Home Minister should state in parliament that the ethnic cleansing on Kuki-Zomi-Hmar people is a disturbance caused by infiltration from Myanmar post the 2021 (Myanmar) Junta takeover,” the MLAs said in a statement.
They said the narratives of Meitei “fundamental organisations like Haomee Federation, Meitei Leepun and Kangleipak Kanba Lup” that Kuki-Zomi-Hmar people in the state are foreigners and the branding of the community as poppy planters which fueled animosity between the two communities have been ignored by Shah in his statement.
“We, as elected representatives of the Kuki Zomi-Hmar people of Manipur, hereby once again reiterate that the ethnic cleansing on our people is a pre-planned attack aimed at grabbing tribal land against constitutional provisions. Our people have been violently cleansed from the valley, and our colonies have been razed to the ground,” the legislators said.
They reiterated that the Centre must give recognition to this demographic segregation in the form of a separate administration through a political settlement.
“We urge the Union Home Ministry to furnish details of illegal infiltrators from Myanmar and proof of their participation in the village defence efforts of Kuki -Zo-Hmar villages. We urge the Solicitor General to furnish proof of the dead bodies in Imphal mortuaries belonging to illegal infiltrators, failing which due apology to the court and the nation would be in order,” they added.
