The tragedy of those who attempt to build bridges in a place set on fire. On the Wednesday morning of mid-May, three men were killed driving down a scarred and winding dirt road between Churachandpur and Kangpokpi in Manipur as the latest victims of the endless ethnic conflict in the state. They were not combatants operating a front line bunker. They were pastors. The Thadou Baptist Association’s Rev. Vumthang Sitlhou, Rev. Kaigoulun and Pastor Paogoulen were on their way home from a religious peace mission. By 10:25 a.m., they were in the middle of Kotlen village, on the notorious Tiger Road, when they were ripped apart by automatic gunfire. Three dead, four seriously injured. With that, the next bloody tally mark was impressed on a state that hasn’t gotten better in the past three years
https://e-pao.net/ge.asp?heading=2&src=150526
This is the only way to grasp the utter darkness of these killings: these were men. A former general secretary of the Manipur Baptist Convention, Rev. Sitlhou had been in Kohima recently, with Naga and Kuki leaders, trying to broker a move towards a fragile truce in a very polarized landscape. He was peddling the language of dialogue and reconciliation. However, in Manipur, every aspect of power is held by heavily armed militias and talking is considered as treason. The ambush had no randomness to it in the nature of highway banditry. It was a planned message and it was a well-timed one, implying that those behind the violence have no desire for peace
The process after a massacre becomes bureaucratic when a state’s law and order machinery fails altogether. Chief Minister N. Biren Singh immediately issued a statement condemning the ambush as a “senseless act of violence” and assured that the state would use all its resources to catch the perpetrators. It is the type of template condemnation that gets dusted off after each new round of bloodletting!
However, the ground situation is far darker and cynical. How exactly are convoys of heavily armed gunmen operating on the Imphal-Tamenglong highway in broad daylight, with its high concentration of the central and state security forces
What happened was nothing but a whirl of accusations. The Kuki-Zo groups blamed the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) and the groups of the valley. The ZUF, then, strongly refuted any such allegation and said that it was being used to fan the ethnic flames by the operatives of NSCN-IM. All of a sudden, there is a militant faction puzzle exchanging press releases and denials, and three families arranging for the burial of dead family members.
This is indeed the true sign of a failure of the constitution. The absence of a police patrol is not the only thing at fault; it’s the normalization of parallel governments. The state has delegated its power to shadow armies, placing ordinary people completely in the hands of warlords and check-points staffed by young local soldiers armed with assault rifles.
For a long time, the strategy of the government of New Delhi towards the Manipur issue was somewhat of a containment. It would appear the game plan is to physically separate the warring communities through buffer zones and fill the highways with Assam Rifles and Central Reserve Police Force battalions which will hopefully bring some war weary communities to their senses. However, the killing of Christian leaders on their way back from an interchurch assembly tells us containment is a sham. A civil war is not a situation that can be quarantined. The killing of religious leaders – men who are never supposed to be a problem and should be a moral beacon between ethnic groups – is a very bad sign. It is when the unwritten rules of conflict have been completely disregarded. Nothing is sacred. No one is exempt.
As the news of the ambush spread, an eerie, forced silence fell over the hills. The shops in the town of Kangpokpi were closed. Students’ groups demanded an indefinite closure of the arterial NH-2.
But blockades and strikes are weapons of the powerless. They are a desperate, frustrated scream of attention to a people who feel totally abandoned by the Constitution. A state ought to be an idea: The laws apply to everyone, a highway is reasonably safe to drive on in the morning, and attempting to negotiate peace won’t get you executed in a ditch. That is what happened in Manipur – even before the bullets got to Rev. Sitlhou’s car. All that is left now is the sobs, the muzzles and the tormented silence of the next person to pull the trigger.
