Tamenglong, October 5 (MExN): The Global Naga Forum (GNF) has expressed outrage and anguish over the “deliberate attempt of the Indian Army to kill innocent Naga citizens, again.” This time with an improvised explosive device (IED) planted in Puilang (Kambiron) village, Tamenglong District, Manipur, on September 24, alleged a press statement issued by Media Cell GNF.
GNF stated that the explosive device was planted by army personnel of the 87th Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Battalion at Kambiron at the instruction of commanding Inspector Dogra Singh, and in collusion with the 39th Assam Rifles of Nungba HQ Tamenglong district, Manipur. “This is the fourth such device planted in the Nungba area in the last four year by the Assam Rifles, who have officially named themselves “Friends of the Hill People,”” it stated.
It said that had it not been thwarted by the vigilant women folks of the village many innocent people would have been killed in the explosive mayhem. Two weeks prior, the AR forcefully occupied nine Naga villages in neighbouring district of Ukhrul, Manipur.
A few months before that, December 4, 2021, Indian commandos massacred 14 innocent civilians in a botched Indian Army ambush against supposed Naga nationalist group near Otting village, Mon district, Nagaland. And, in April of 2022, in the Naga area of Tirap, Changlang, and Longding District in Arunachal Pradesh, the 12 Para Special Commando Force willfully shot two Chasa Villagers who were coming back to their village after a day of fishing. As the four youths were climbing up the hill towards their village, the 12 Para Special Commando unit shot at them from the back injuring two of them. This was not just a reckless act; “it was an attempt to murder,” it claimed.
“The simple reason all these military crimes against Nagas keep happening repeatedly and predictably is the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which has been in force since 1958, even during ceasefire periods and while the government of India is supposedly in the final stages of negotiations with the Nagas for a peaceful resolution of the 75-year old Indo-Naga political problem,” the Forum stated.
“These armed forces-related murders and violations of Naga people’s basic human rights listed above happened just in the last nine months, from December 2021 to date,” in light of this, the GNF demanded that “Amit Shah, Home Minister of India, under whose watch these murders and violations of human rights have taken place, and continue to take place, should be held responsible, and the perpetrators of the crimes be prosecuted under civil law.”
It reiterated the demand to repeal of AFSPA, the 64-year old Indian military law designed to kill Nagas with impunity and also appoint a Supreme Court retired judge-led independent judicial inquiry into the “bomb planting incident on the ground of prima facie evidence confessed by Thiyam Ashok Singh.”
