[Reader-list] A follow up...............silence won't count anymore!

[Rajkamal Goswami]

*CURRENT AFFAIRS* *cover story*

*Life In A Shadow Land*

*As Manipur comes to a boil in the aftermath of a fake encounter, **SHOMA
CHAUDHURY** maps the fractured truths and complex wars raging in the state.
Photographs by **SHAILENDRA PANDEY*

ON JULY 23, 2009, on an ordinary day in Imphal, six people were going about
their morning chores in a crowded market on BT Road. P Lukhoi Singh, a rider
working with the Assam Rifles, had just delivered a packet to the SP (CID)
and had stopped to chat with a friend. Gimamgal, a peon, was cycling to
work. Ningthonjam Keshorani, mother of three, was selling fruit. W Gita Rani
had just visited her doctor and was trying to catch an autorickshaw. Rabina
Devi, five months pregnant, was holding her 2-year-old son Russel’s hand and
buying a banana before she met up with her husband, working at a mobile
shop. And 22-year-old Chongkham Sanjit, a former insurgent, was on his way
to buy medicine for a sick uncle in hospital.
[image: image]*Counter kills* Sanjit, killed in cold blood; Rabina Devi lies
next to him, shot by accident

*View slideshow<http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne150809coverstory.asp#>
***

Suddenly, a young man ran from a police frisking. Shots rang out. Lukhoi
Singh heard a sound like “automatic firing” and tried to duck beneath his
motorbike but was badly hit. He saw two cops walking into the crowd, firing.
He told them he was hurt but they did not stop. Gimamgal heard a burst of
sound and kept cycling. He didn’t realise he had been hit till he saw blood
pouring down his body. His left arm was shattered. N Keshorani heard the
gunfire and started to push her fruit cart away but buckled suddenly. She
had been shot in the calf. Gita Rani just heard a sound. She didn’t realise
she had been hit till she saw blood staining her chest. Rabina Devi just
dropped dead. A bullet went straight through her forehead and out of her
neck. Her little son saw his mother lying in a pool of blood and began to
scream.

Sanjit was standing at a PCO when within minutes he was surrounded by
commandos. There were four civilians injured and one dead on the road: the
cops needed an alibi. On that busy road, in the middle of a crowded market,
in full view of Manipur’s citizens, Sanjit was dragged into a pharmacy next
door and shot point blank. His body was then dragged out by the commandos
and tossed into a truck along with Rabina Devi.

All of this passed for a routine day in Manipur. The area was not cordoned
off, no forensics were called in. The State Assembly was in session when the
incident happened. By late afternoon, Chief Minister Ibobi Singh had tabled
a statement saying Sanjit, a member of PLA, a proscribed militant outfit,
had shot five civilians while trying to escape a police frisking but
Manipur’s brave commandos had killed him in an encounter. A 9mm Mauser was
found on him. The CM also said there was no way to stem the menace of
insurgents except to “eliminate” them (a statement he later denied). The
Opposition swallowed the story without question. Everyone went back to
business.

Manipur is a dark shadow land. Nothing there is what it seems. Fear and
fatigue have become its universal character traits. It is estimated that
about 300 people have been killed in 2009 alone between insurgents and state
forces. But nobody dares to raise any questions. People suspect things, but
in the absence of proof, they look away. Each time someone dies, the
neighbourhood constitutes a Joint Action Committee (JAC). Token protests are
made, sometimes followed by token compensations, and everyone tries to live
on. The same would have happened this time, except an anonymous photographer
captured the damning extra-judicial killing of Sanjit on camera. Terrified
of publishing the pictures in local papers, the photographer contacted
TEHELKA.

Our story – *Murder in Plain Sight *– published last week was like a
pressure cooker burst. As the story traveled, protests erupted across the
state. People everywhere poured into the streets, demanding a judicial
enquiry and the chief minister’s resignation. Young boys fought off
commandos with slingshots and marbles. Women stretched their *phaneks* across
roads as deterrents (Manipuri men are traditionally forbidden to touch
women’s clothes drying on a clothesline) and openly courted arrested. As L
Gyaneshwari, a women protestor recovering in hospital, says, “TEHELKA opened
the gates to the tears blocked within us. We have always known the truth
about these killings but we never had any evidence and had lost the strength
to speak. Now, we’ve found courage again. If a vegetable vendor had not
grabbed Rabina Devi’s bag and kept it with her, the commandos would have put
a 9mm in it and passed her off as a militant as well.” “TEHELKA has woken up
Manipur,” says Arun Irengbam, editor of the news daily, *Ireipak.* The
sentiment runs strong. “We cannot thank TEHELKA enough for bringing the
truth to light,” says Dayanada Chingtham, co-ordinator of the Apunba Lup, an
apex body of activist groups. “We wish you had done this story two years
earlier, our police have become too brazen,” says a man, working —
ironically — in the office of Joy Kumar, the DGP of Police and the man, in a
sense, at the heart of the storm.

True to script, as the valley erupted in unarmed protest, the State
responded with typical ham-handedness. Commandos were deployed everywhere
and protestors were beaten back with water cannons, tear gas and smoke
bombs. Curfew was imposed. In a telling detail, Rabina Devi’s grandmother,
MRK Rajesana, was among a group of elderly women marching towards the
Governor’s house when they were stopped by commandos. “Arrest us”, they
taunted. Instead, the cops began to hurl smoke bombs at them. Some of the
old women ran into a tiny chicken shop for shelter and pulled the shutter
down. A cop found a small chink in the shutter and threw three smoke bombs
in. “Die, you hags”, he shouted. Imagine the outrage of the grandmother: a
pregnant granddaughter shot dead, buying a banana, and now the oppressive
suffocations of a vengeful State. “Manipur’s women fought the British in
1904 and 1939. We fought the Indian army in 2004 for Manorama Devi. It is
time for another *nupi lal* (women’s war). I am inviting our women to come
forward for another war,” says she.

*‘The problem is as much with Delhi as with Imphal. The situation in Manipur
can get much worse than Jammu and Kashmir but the Centre just does not want
to recognise it’*

*Ved Marwah,* former governor of Manipur

The central hospital in Manipur is full of such brewing stories. KH Lokhen
Singh, an autorickshaw driver, was walking down the road, not even part of a
protest, when a passing commando hurled a smoke bomb at him. As the bomb
exploded, Lokhen’s face was scalded. He lies in a hospital room now, face
burnt, blinded. His tiny two-yearold daughter Sangeeta — a baby with an
angelic face — lies sleeping on the floor on a mat beside him.

Finally, on August 5, 2009, a full week after the story first broke, Chief
Minister Ibobi Singh called a press conference, admitted he had been
misguided into making a false statement about the “unfortunate incident”,
and promised a judicial enquiry. Six commandos, including a sub-inspector,
were suspended. Though protests continued to rage across the state even
after his announcement, for the moment, the immediate crisis seems to have
been defused.

THE FAKE encounter of July 23, however, tells a darker story about Manipur.
It lays bare the pent up triumvirate of emotions that have come to dominate
the psyche of people here: extreme fear, extreme distrust and extreme
fatigue. Speak to anyone in the state — the sweetshop owner at the airport,
the taxi driver, historians, housewives, journalists, activists, vendors,
doctors, mechanics — and despair curdles just beneath. Everybody has stories
to tell. Stories of extortion. Kidnapping. Threats. Demand notes.
Corruption. And extra-judicial killing.

Far away from the national gaze, in fact, this tiny emerald valley
surrounded by cloud-kissed emerald hills is on the verge of internal
collapse. Much of this contemporary mess has historical roots. Manipur has
never entirely been a willing participant of the Indian Union. Its dominant
community — the Meiteis — claim a proud and unbroken history that goes back
2,000 years. In 1947, when the British left, the Manipur Kingdom established
itself as a constitutional monarchy and held elections to its own
parliament. Two years later, in 1949, the Maharaja of Manipur agreed to (or
was forced to, claim the Meiteis) merge with India. First as an inferior
C-State, then in 1963 as an Union Territory, and finally in 1972 as a State
of India.

*‘Guns will not stop the insurgency. Just stop the cycle of killing and
peace will come. We can earn money, we can manage our family, but “the Act”
is beyond bearing’*

*L Mem Choubi,* Apunba Lup

Almost immediately, in 1964, the first underground movement for independence
was born as the United National Liberation Front (UNLF). Other insurgent
outfits with varying versions of nationalism followed in the 1970s: the PLA,
the PREPAK, the KCP, the KYKL.

But these were not all. Manipur is made up of a rainbow community. Fifty
seven percent of its people are the Vaishnavite Hindu Meiteis, who live
dominantly in the valley. In the surrounding hills live the Nagas, Kukis and
Mizo- Chin tribes. The Nagas and Kukis, which themselves have sub-groups,
are mostly Christian. About seven percent of the state’s population is made
up of Muslims — Pangals — who also live in the valley in a district called
Thoubal.

Historically, the Meiteis have always felt and behaved superior to the hill
tribes. Predictably then, each of these communities have sprouted their own
militant underground movements. The Naga movement, in fact, predates the
UNLF to the 1950s. To simplify a long and complex history, what all of this
essentially means is that over the years, this tiny valley with a population
of no more than 25 lakh people has sprouted almost 40 insurgent groups. Some
of them are fighting the Indian State; many of them are fighting each other.
Equally, as Central funds for development have poured into the valley, but
failed to climb the hills, the fights have become less over identity and
more over money. With an eye on the pie, many of the big insurgent groups
have splintered into innumerable small factions. As every Manipuri citizen
will tell you with disgust: “Every sub-ethnic group in Manipur has its own
militia, and every militia has its own extortion industry.”

The stories of extortion in Manipur are epic. All well-heeled citizens are
routinely sent “demand notes” in the form of threat calls, kidnappings,
grenades or Chinese bombs hurled into shops and homes, or outright killings.
Apart from these individual payouts, every government contract or
development fund has a fixed scaffold of cuts that go to the underground –
or “UG” as they are collectively known. These fixed cuts have now peaked at
38 percent of every project. In early 2009, Dr Kishan, a officer of the
Manipur Civil Service, was shot for resisting extortion demands from a
development fund. As historian and former Apunba Lup leader, Lokendra
Arambam — an eloquent and disillusioned elder — puts it mildly, “There has
been a qualitative degeneration of the militants.” Things are so bleak that
the outfits that restrict themselves to “institutional extortion” are now
seen as honourable or principled.
EVERY ETHNIC GROUP HAS ITS OWN MILITIA, EVERY MILITIA HAS ITS OWN EXTORTION
INDUSTRY

The UG is everywhere in Manipur, permeating the skin of everyday life. Most
of them run parallel governments, complete with Finance-in-Charge, Auditor
General and Secretaries of military and cultural affairs. In several heinous
incidents, as in the infamous Heirok village episode, the PREPAK group —
fanatic revivalists who want the Meiteis to go back to their pre-Hindu past
— walked into a village celebrating a pre-Diwali ceremony and shot a boy and
girl in cold blood as a lesson for the village.

But the trouble is, the UG is only one facet of the fear that stalks
Manipur. The more damning facet — because you are groomed to expect better
from it — is the State itself.

LIKE CHAUVINISTIC nation States everywhere in the world, from the very
start, India has responded to the riddles of identity in the North-East with
brute force rather than patient dialogue. In 1958, it responded to the Naga
movement with a draconian version of an old colonial law: The Armed Forces
Special Powers Act (AFSPA). This Act allows even junior officers of the army
to arrest, torture or kill any citizen on mere suspicion, and to search and
destroy property without a warrant. It also stipulates that no army officer
or jawan can be punished without the sanction of the Central government.

With every passing year, different districts of Manipur were brought under
this Act. By 1980, all of Manipur had begun to live under its shadow. It is
difficult to imagine the history of violence this Act has brought to
Manipur, and the “psychology of impunity” it has bred. Think of a conflict
zone — a place where death comes easy, where everyone is jumpy — and think
of young men enabled to do as they please, ungoverned by law, unmindful of
any punishment.

*‘Our morality was so muddied and the fear of State and non-State players so
rampant, even civil society had taken a backseat. Tehelka has retrieved a
bit of our humanity’*

*Lokendra Arambam,* historian and dramatist

In the 30 years that the Act has been valid in Manipur, hundreds of young
men and women have disappeared, been tortured, raped or killed. Despite
dozens of human rights reports, no action was taken against the army. In
2004, the frustration pent up over decades spilled out like lava. A young
woman, Manorama Devi, was dragged out of her house in the middle of the
night by jawans of the Assam Rifles and led away. Her body was found the
next day, brutalised, raped. A spontaneous rage ran through Manipur. Amidst
protests across the state, a dozen elderly women stripped themselves stark
naked and demonstrated in front of the Assam Rifles headquarters carrying
searing placards: “Indian Army Rape Us.”

Their extreme despair had a tiny impact: The Jeevan Reddy Committee was set
up to review the Act. Its recommendations have still not been implemented,
but in a minor victory, the Act and the army were removed from the city
districts of Imphal.

In the five years since, a new monster has been born on Manipur’s already
ravaged landscape: the Manipur Police Commandos. With the army pulled back,
the state and Central governments took a conscious decision to groom a wing
of the state police to “stamp out” the insurgents. Unfortunately, that has
bred a fear in the people as crippling as their fear of the UG. As the
editor of*Ireipak,* Arun Irengbam, puts it, “The psychology of the AFSPA is
like a contagious disease. The commandos move around with the same sense of
impunity the army used to.”

He is right. The official mindscape in Manipur is so militarised, it cannot
think of approaching any problem except through violent suppression. As in
every conflict zone, the arguments are complex. On the one hand are the
excesses of the insurgents: the extortions, the murders, the intra-outfit
killings. As a top police officer puts it, “We can either let things drift,
or we can decide to take action. The truth is, we are hitting back more in
the last two years. Look at how the Punjab problem was sorted out. I accept
our boys might go too far sometimes, but you have to understand their
psychology too. They too can be shot at any time and they get jumpy. Our
police stations are unviable. We have just 10-15 men, we need at least 58
per station. We need more men, we need more weapons.”
IT IS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE THE‘PSYCHOLOGY OF IMPUNITY’ THE ACT HAS BROUGHT
TO MANIPUR

But power is a heady pill and the atrocities of the army over 30 years have
found a twin face in the commandos. The two years since the police decided
to “hit back” coincide with a huge spurt in police atrocities. The brazen
killing of Sanjit — in broad daylight, in a crowded market — is only a
symptom. The list of similar (but unproven) illegal executions in just 2008
runs a mile long. Even if you suppose for a moment that they are all
militants, as the police might claim, Johnson Elangbam of the Apunba Lup has
a timely reminder. “If even Kasab can be put on trial for Mumbai 26/11, why
don’t Manipuri boys deserve the same treatment under law?”

This absence of law — the absence of sanity — has created a corrosive
paranoia in Manipur. Drive into Imphal and you feel the fear everywhere.
Jeep-loads of commandos drive around the city, heavily armed, shooting and
bullying at will. According to activists, in 2005, Lokhon Singh, a commando,
was shot by Vikas, a PLA cadre, who in turn was killed. During Singh’s
funeral, the police stormed into Vikas’ house and arrested everyone in his
family. Then they allegedly gang-raped his girlfriend, Naobi. When Naobi
told the court, “They have taken whatever they could from my body,” an
officer apparently threatened her in front of the magistrate. No action was
taken.

In another sign of this paranoid fear bred by the State, after TEHELKA’s
story on Sanjit’s fake encounter, journalists and activists in Imphal tried
hard to deter anyone from TEHELKA visiting Manipur. “We cannot assure your
safety,” they said. “The commandos are looking everywhere for the
photographer who gave you the pictures.” At the chief minister’s conference,
local journalists who had helped us navigate the city asked us not to
recognise them for fear of reprisal. Sometimes, distrust can be more
damaging than empirical fear.

*‘We can either let things drift, or we can decide to take action. The truth
is, we are hitting back more in the last two years. That is how the Punjab
problem was sorted’*

*Senior police officer,* requesting anonymity

Ved Marwah, former super cop and former governor of Manipur affirms, “No
police in the country has a worse record than the Manipur police. There is
an allegation that they shot one their own officers in a fake encounter. The
force is completely divided along ethnic lines and functions like the armed
militia of the ruling party. That place is like the Wild East.”

There are immediate palpable reasons why the Manipur Police Commandos have
suddenly morphed into a new dragon face of the State. There is, most of all,
the psychology of impunity. But since the decision to use the police and
army as a combined force to “stamp out” the insurgents, there has also been
a sudden rapid expansion of the force. From a mere 300, the commando unit
has shot up to a 1,000. Now, according to the police source, 1,600 new
commandos have been sanctioned. But where are these high caliber men to come
from?

Local journalists and activists speak of a massive recruitment scam. To
become a sub-inspector, you pay Rs 10-15 lakh with kickbacks running all the
way to the top politicians. To become a commando, you pay Rs 5 lakh. To
become a rifleman, you pay Rs 1-2 lakh. Sources within the force confirm all
this to be true. Unfortunately, logic demands you earn back what you pay out
and the number of extortion demands by the police has risen proportionately
to the expansion of the force. Taking in former militants into the force, as
well as giving gallantry awards to commandos who kill militants, have all
contributed towards creating a force that is, at least partly, motivated by
a combination of greed, testosterone, vendetta and unbridled power.

“I admit 10-20 percent of our boys could be bad eggs,” says the police
officer. “We have to fine-tune their behaviour and make them more humane. I
also admit the AFSPA needs to be amended, particularly section 4 and 6 whose
wording now allows the boys leeway to torture or kill under any
circumstance. But, in general, the violence is unlikely to come down soon.
We need at least two years to clean up all this. We have to finish what has
been begun. And please don’t believe everything you read in the Manipur
press. First find out which UG outfit it is a mouthpiece for.”

TRUTH IS, indeed, a difficult thing to ascertain in Manipur. The state is
like an illusory pool, you step into it, and you are lost. Militants and
politicians are friends. Commandos and extortionists are collaborators.
Friends are informers. Law enforcers are killers. Beneath the table, every
hand is interlinked.
TRUTH IS DIFFICULT TO ASCERTAIN IN MANIPUR. EVERY HAND IS INTERLINKED
BENEATH

In early 2008, the police carried out a surprise raid in Babupara – the
elite colony where ministers and government officials live behind several
layers of thickly grilled iron gates. According to a top police source, who
asked not to be named, twelve KYKL insurgents were found in a Congress MLA’s
house. According to the same source, UNLF cadres were also found in a MPP
member’s house. Others will tell you that politicians themselves inform the
UG about every new scheme that comes into the state – expecting tidy thank
you notes in return for their courtesy.

What makes things worse is that, as the police officer alleged, the media in
Manipur is certainly part of the many mirages in the state. A complex matrix
of allegiance and coercion governs them. On August 4, for instance,
shockingly, *The Sangai Express*carried a glowing account of the KCP (MC), a
proscribed militant outfit’s third anniversary. The next day, the paper
carried an open threat from the outfit to Vodafone masquerading as a story.
“Tabunga Meiti, secretary in-charge of the revolutionary government of the
KCP,” the story went, “says that the bomb attack at the office of Vodafone
was the first and last warning for not conceding to the request for some
monetary contribution to the outfit… To run an important organisation like
KCP which is fighting for the cause of a nation, money is required…”

“The UG does try to use our papers as notice boards for their demand notes,”
says Arun of *Ireipak* wryly. Issued a threat by the UG outfit a few years
ago for not toeing their ultra-revivalist line, he went underground for six
months, before he decided he’d rather die than live a life of a fugitive.
But many others cave in. As Pradip Phanjaobam, editor, *Imphal Free
Press,* says,
“The government also tries to issue guidelines to us, but we argue with
them. Most of our real self-censorship is out of fear of the UG.” Or out of
allegiance. For as another editor admits candidly, “I do have great empathy
for the UNLF.”

*‘If even Kasab can be put on trial for Mumbai 26/11, why don’t Manipuri
boys deserve the same treatment under law? Why should they be eliminated?’*

*Johnson Elangbam,* rights activist

SANJIT’S MOTHER, Inaotombi, sits stoically in white against a bamboo pole in
Khurai. She refuses to conduct the *shraddha* ceremony for her son till a
judicial enquiry is instated and the CM resigns. Inaotombi has borne more
than a mother should. Her son joined the proscribed PLA when he was 13
though she pleaded with him not to. By the time he was 20, he had a chest
injury and had come overground. Two years later, he was dead. She has three
other sons and must now contain their fear and anger. When the neighbours
start rattling a stone on a metal pole — a cops want to kill. What made a
13-yearold boy join the PLA? Neither AFSPA nor commandos can answer that
question. The rift at the heart of Manipur is an internal one – between its
various ethnic groups. Neither AFSPA nor commandos can heal that either.

Equally then, the intellectuals of Manipur could draw some lessons of their
own. How valid is the injured sense of alienation that has kept the
insurgencies buoyant over 30 years? “Is there space for us in the Indian
imagination?” own communities. It needs inclusive growth with inclusive
governance.”

More emotional sensitivity from the Centre might help, though. When the new
Minister for the North-East, BK Handique was asked to comment on the crisis
in Manipur, he said, “Law and order is not our concern.” It should be,
though, because the militarisation has the Centre’s sanction and as Pradip
says, “You lose a bit of yourself every time you put up a fight. And you
lose more if nothing happens.”

*WRITER’S EMAIL*
shoma at tehelka.com

-- 
Rajkamal Goswami
PhD Student in Conservation Science
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)
Royal Enclave, Sri Ramapura, Jakkur P.O.
Bangalore 560 064 Karnataka, India.
Phone: 080-23635555, extn: 145
Mobile: 09740362460
Fax: 91 80 2353 0070

Web: www.atree.org



-- 
Rajkamal Goswami
PhD Student in Conservation Science
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)
Royal Enclave, Sri Ramapura, Jakkur P.O.
Bangalore 560 064 Karnataka, India.
Phone: 080-23635555, extn: 145
Mobile: 09740362460
Fax: 91 80 2353 0070

Web: www.atree.org