An army patrol that found 11 armed men in police uniform in Manipur’s Bishnupur district was surrounded by a group of women protesters after the soldiers detained the men and seized their weapons, the police said.
The women protesters, part of a cultural movement known as Meira Paibis (she who holds the burning torch), demanded the army to release the men and also return the weapons.
The protesters alleged the 11 men were “village defence volunteers” and disarming them would put their village at risk of attack by armed men from nearby hills, amid the ethnic tensions.
Visuals of the incident that happened on Tuesday show the soldiers being pushed around by the women, who stood in front of an armoured mine-proof vehicle and stopped it from leaving the area with the confiscated weapons.
Surrounded by shouting and yelling protesters, the soldiers fired several rounds in the air to disperse the crowd. But it had little effect.
“Don’t go anywhere, stand here, stand here,” an elderly woman is heard saying to others.
“Why don’t you take guns from everyone, why only from us?” another woman said.
A Manipur Police team soon reached the spot and negotiated with the protesters, following which the army and the police team drove out of the area carrying the confiscated weapons, sources said. Even then, the protesters blocked the road with an abandoned, junked car, which the army truck hit and dragged on before it peeled off from the front bumper of the armoured military vehicle.
The hill-dominated Kuki tribes and the valley-dominant Meiteis have been fighting since May 2023 over cataclysmic disagreements on sharing land, resources, affirmative action policies, and political representation, mainly with the ‘general’ category Meiteis seeking to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category.
A top factor, the state government says, which led to the crisis was its ‘war on drugs’ campaign that ended up snatching food from the mouth of powerful, internationally-linked drug traffickers. The Kuki tribes call this a big lie for the Meiteis to grab their lands, as studies have shown poppy cultivation that provides fast, huge sums is linked to poverty and underdevelopment in the hills.
The “neutral” central forces – according to the Home Ministry – such as the Assam Rifles, the Border Security Force, and the Central Reserve Police Force are guarding sensitive areas in Manipur where Meitei and Kuki settlements meet.
But there are also hundreds of armed people in both communities who call themselves “village defence volunteers” who may need to be disarmed simultaneously due to mutual distrust.
This definition of the belligerents in Manipur has become the most controversial since nothing stops the “volunteers” from shooting others under the insurance provided by the “in self-defence” claim. A similarity between the “village defence volunteers” of both sides is they are well-armed and well-equipped with modern battle gear.
Just before the Lok Sabha elections, a Kuki group spearheading the call for a separate administration carved out of Manipur had asked members of their tribes not to give their licenced guns to police stations for safe-keeping, citing safety concerns amid the ethnic tensions with the valley-majority Meiteis.
The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF) in a statement had said licenced guns submitted last year have not been returned yet. “We need every available weapon to defend our ‘right to life’ and our land…” the ITLF had said.
The security forces have frequently recovered Russian-origin AK and US-origin M series assault rifles, and gun models commonly used by both the junta’s army and pro-democracy insurgents in neighbouring Myanmar.
Over 210 have died in the ethnic conflict; nearly 50,000 internally displaced people are still living in relief camps.
