It is a tragedy that only after such crimes are committed on women’s bodies, public outrage is registered. Women continue to fight against this most ancient yet present form of Structural violence and strive to be agents and not mere repositories of imagined communal dignity. We appeal for sense and solidarity amongst all communities; to refuse to be pawns in machinations of no benefit to humankind.

We need not go far back in time to be reminded of such life-crippling brutalities by the Indian Army under the direction of their political leaders, in bringing terror to the region. The countless incidents of violence on the bodies of women and men in the Naga Hills have left irreversible dark scars in our collective psyche. Indian military and paramilitary forces were set upon our land to smother the Naga political right to self-determination and nationhood and break our spirit. Women were molested, forced at gunpoint to give birth in concentration camps and open grounds, raped on the Church pulpits and in front of family and community members, men tortured to death, beheaded, or simply shot in front of their family. These heinous crimes were shielded by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of India.

Even if we are yet to recover from such history, we need to interrogate the intent that lay behind such cruelty in order to understand and begin the process of healing.

The decades of indignity that the people and communities have been facing and fighting together cannot be allowed to be lost in this continued mayhem in Manipur. It is the mundane violence of being a disposable people, marked for death that has catalysed the incidents that are currently going ‘viral’. Does it have to take three months of burnings, beheadings, and rape before state machinery even decides to make perfunctory motions of redressal? The government has lost all legitimacy and should not stand. Besides those who were directly involved in the crime, the people abetting such perpetration and the apathy and justification of the community should be condemned by all.

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There should be no misdiagnosis of this conflict as a ‘law and order’ problem or an ethnic and religious clash. The people of the region, Indian leaders, and the Military need to open frank dialogue on the unresolved political issues of the region. Without addressing this, people will be hoodwinked into believing that the leaders are serious about restoring peace in Manipur when for 26 years they have not been able to conclude the Indo-Naga peace talk. When the Home Minister visited Manipur, he had hoped that 15 days would suffice to settle the matter. It not only worsened but was also side-lined till a naked parade went viral.

The Naga Peoples’ Movement for Human Rights comprehends that anything they promise to any community will be at the cost of more lives until they are genuinely interested in building the region besides exploiting it for the natural resources it possesses.

While we recognize these plots the government and powers-that-be adopt, we are also cautious of the violence growing in different forms and we re-assert that no person can be deprived of his/her life and that the dignity of the human person should be preserved as an unassailable, self-evident right. It is our resolve to uphold the dignity of the human person at all times. We stand with the suffering families and survivors. We understand that no rhetoric or gesture can undo the dreadful and unspeakable acts or the anguish of the survivors.

We would also appeal to the people and communities who have fallen prey to demagogues who strive to inflame prejudice and even try to appeal to our sense of justice and desire for better tomorrows. Instead, we must reason together in conscience. We can and must take a different path.

Issued by the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights