Manipur: Kuki-Zo protest in Delhi to demand separate administration

The Kuki-Zo people gathered in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to assert the demand for a separate administration for themselves in Manipur.

This comes after the union government held separate talks with representatives of Kuki groups and members of the Coordinating Committee for Manipur Integrity (COCOMI).

Wearing T-shirts with ‘Separate Administration Only Solution (SAOS)’ and 'We are David' slogans, protestors pressed the demand for a separate administration as several of them stressed that the tribes are already living separately.

“We are deeply pained and shattered by what has happened in our state. We want separate administration if our people have to live without fear for their lives. The separation is already complete. They have burnt all the Kuki houses in Imphal, in addition to 300 churches. 70,000 people are homeless now. Status quo is no longer possible. We do not trust the state government,” said Dr Mary Grace Zou, the convenor of the Kuki-Zo Women’s Forum Delhi.

“How can the government speak of peace when there is ongoing violence in the state and the government has done nothing to control the strife? Roads are blocked, there is no electricity in our villages. They should stop suppressing the voice of the Kukis,” said a protestor who did not want to be identified.

Violence broke out on May 3 in Manipur between the Meiteis (who are currently not recognised as a scheduled tribe) and mostly Kuki tribal people. It originated after a Tribal Solidarity March called by the All Tribal Students' Union, Manipur (ATSUM) in the Torbung area of Churachandpur district. The violence has claimed more than 150 lives in Manipur and displaced around 70,000 people since May.

The march was organised to protest the Meitei demand for inclusion in the scheduled tribe (ST) category after the Manipur High Court ordered the state government to study their demand.

The demand for including the Meitei community in the ST category has been a matter of contention in Manipur for a while. Proponents argue that it would provide necessary safeguards and opportunities to the Meitei community, while critics—including ATSUM—express concerns about the potential dilution of reservation benefits for the existing tribal groups, including the use of land.

Having spent more than two months in Manipur during the strife in Kangpopi district, Lhing Doungel underscored that a union territory with legislative powers under Article 239 of the Constitution is the only solution. Article 239 governs the administration of union territories.

“The women of the families would carry guns at home and the men would guard at the boundary of the village. I am not saying this with pride but to explain that it was the only way we could survive. We had to protect our villages and we couldn’t trust the police. So, the police had bunkers near the boundary of our village and our men also had,” said Doungel, who has taken a semester off from her university in Bangalore to be at home with her sportsman husband to guard their village.

Explaining the situation, Zou said there are many such cases of women having been raped and killed. “Even in the video of the two Kuki women that went viral, there was a third woman too. Her father and brother died trying to protect the young 20-year-old girl. Most people in Imphal and the surrounding districts have fled to relief camps. Most people have no idea how their lives will progress,” added Zou.

Siam Phaipi, a lawyer who used to practice in the Manipur High Court, said a student who studied in the school his family owned were burnt to death. His mother, sister and sister-in-law were kidnapped on May 4, just after the violence broke out.

“After the security forces intervened, they were returned around 7 pm on May 4. They had to stay in the relief camp organised by the Manipur Rifles. They are alive and I'm grateful that nothing happened to them,” said Phaipi, who believes he cannot go back to his state to practice law. His family now lives in Churachandpur.

Phaipi, a Kuki-Zo from the National Games Village in Imphal West, said two of the Kukis who died in the strife are alumni of St Peter School, which belonged to his family. These are Letminthang Haokip, who was lynched in Imphal on May 4, David Thiek, a footballer who was beheaded in Bishnupur district on July 2. Another alumni, Nancy Chingthianniang, was sexually assaulted but survived, saw her husband and mother-in-law being bludgeoned by the mob. Her family did not survive the attack.

Phaipi said that he had filed two FIRs in 2022 against Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha – Manipur and other Facebook pages for racist and derogatory remarks. “They had posted that STs of Manipur are enemy aliens or illegal migrants of Manipur. They called us foreigners. They had been trying to instigate enmity between Kukis and Meiteis. The violence which began on May 4 was not spontaneous,” said Phaipi.

The Kuki-Zo protest comes after the union government held talks on Wednesday with representatives of Kuki groups under Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement with the government. The current round of talks focused on finding ways to end the ongoing violence in the state. The talks earlier had been about finding a political solution to the demands of several tribes.

The SoO pact was signed on 22 August 2008, with the main objective of initiating a political dialogue with the militant groups. Nearly 32 Kuki insurgent groups operate in Manipur, 25 of which are subject to a tripartite SoO agreement with the Government of India and Manipur.

In March 2023, the Manipur government backed out of the SoO signed with the Kuki National Army and the Zoumi Revolutionary Front, two tribal underground organisations in Manipur. The union government is still part of the pact.

The government had held separate round of talks with the Coordinating Committee for Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), a Meitei civil society organisation. At a press conference on Tuesday, COCOMI had stated that if the government engaged with the Kuki-Zo tribes, they would “defy everything to determine our own future”.

According to news reports, before the ethnic violence had begun, a solution for political settlement with the Kuki-Zomi insurgent groups had been worked out where the hill districts dominated by Kuki-Zomi and Naga tribes would be divided into two territorial councils —one for the Nagas and the other for the Kuki-Zomi groups. This is, however, no longer possible as Kukis want a separate administration and Meiteis are opposed to it.