The Alliance of Meitei diaspora associations in India and abroad implores the 10 Kuki MLAs to take actions that could bring peace to the state
TFM Desk
Meitei Alliance, an alliance of Meitei diaspora associations in India and abroad, has come down heavily on the alleged defamatory, anti-national, and derogatory accusation of 10 MLAs from Manipur against Union Home Minister. “These 10 MLAs, who have been misleading their communities for a long time, now in desperation, are speaking lies,” it said.
It may be noted that 10 MLAs, who claimed to be Kuki-Zomi-Hmar MLAs even though they were elected from constituencies where various communities live, wrote a letter to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the Central Government’s decision to withdraw the 9th and 22nd Battalions of Assam Rifles (AR) by replacing them with Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).
In the letter, the 10 MLAs alleged that the decision to replace the AR Battalions with CRPF at this critical juncture is nothing but “a sinister design” to expedite the Meitei majoritarian ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kuki-Zo community.
Criticising the 10 MLAs, the Meitei Alliance said that the letter challenges the Home Ministry’s authority in internal security matters, such as the relocation of two Assam Rifles from Manipur to elsewhere for counter-insurgency operations.
“This was a decision taken by military planners in the best interests of India’s internal security. However, the Kuki MLAs in their hour of brinkmanship have defamed and maligned the Home Ministry by saying it acted on the pressure of the Manipur government,” it said.
The Meitei Alliance asked how any responsible legislature in India can say that the Government of India would relocate / withdraw security force to enable genocide within the country. “As the two AR battalions would be replaced by the CRPF, they questioned the efficiency of the latter in such a manner that it amounts to portrayal of the force as a sectarian communal force deployed with a “sinister design” against their communities,” it said.
Maintaining that the MLAs’ accusations are defamatory, anti-national, derogatory, and meant to malign India’s security establishment, Meitei Alliance acknowledged and appreciated the recent efforts to bring peace in Manipur by making the Cachar agreement between the Meitei and the Hmar communities in Jiribam district which unfortunately was broken by arson attacks on Meitei houses.
Meitei Alliance implored the 10 Kuki MLAs to take actions that could bring peace to the state instead.
After the conflict broke out between Kuki and Meitei on May 3, 2023, both the warring communities accused sections of the security forces of partiality. The Kuki-Zo community alleges that the Manipur Police is biased in favor of the Meitei community, while the Meiteis assert that certain Central forces, like the Assam Rifles, show partiality towards the Kuki-Zo. However, both the Assam Rifles and the Manipur Police maintain that they have been working impartially over the past year to control the violence in the State.