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Mothers
courageous: The protestors in 2004; and now (below) |
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‘Our
hearts were on fire when we saw her body,’ says Ramani Thaokjma.
‘When they were done, her body was like a bloodied battlefield’
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It’s a little
over two years since the night Thangjam Manorama Devi — 32 years
old and an alleged member of Manipur’s banned People’s Liberation
Army (PLA) — was taken into Assam Rifles custody, her body found
near her home in Imphal the next day, bullet-riddled and marked with
signs of torture and rape. Five days later in a state seething with
over four decades of secessionist discontent, an extraordinary protest
brought Manipur’s outrage to the nation’s attention —
on July 15, 2004, around 30 women, aged between 45 and 73, walked naked
through Imphal to the Assam Rifles bastion at Kangla Fort. “Indian
Army, rape us too,” they screamed at the astounded guards at the
gates. “We are all Manorama’s mothers.”
These were ordinary
women — few had had much political involvement before Manorama’s
murder; most led sparse lives held together by hard work; all had husbands,
children, some even grandchildren. But that July day, nothing mattered
to these women but fury. “None of us had ever met Manorama, but
what she endured horrified us all. The government’s silence on
her death was unforgivable. How can a civilised nation keep quiet about
something like this?” asks Madu Leima, one of the Kangla Fort
protestors. “Our hearts were on fire when we saw her body,”
says Ramani Thaokjma, the 75-year-old matriarch who led the protests.
“To hide the rape, the Assam Rifles men stuffed cloth into her
private parts and shot bullets through her body. When they were done,
her body looked like a blood-stained battlefield.”
Women across Manipur’s
deep ethnic divisions — Kukis, Meiteis, Nagas — were moved
to solidarity with the protestors in the weeks of unrest that followed
across the state. “It wasn’t just Manorama’s death
we were protesting,” says S. Hoibam Memon Leima, another guiding
spirit behind the march. “It was the law that made it possible:
the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Hundreds of women came
forward to give us support.”
The AFSPA was imposed
on Manipur in 1980 and accords draconian powers to forces deployed in
what it calls “disturbed areas”. Section 4(a) of the Act
states that the military may “fire… or otherwise use force,
even to the causing of death” — which means the licence
to kill. Section 4(c) allows arrest without warrant on the mere suspicion
that an accused “has committed or is about to commit a cognisable
offence”. Section 6 provides that “no prosecution, suit
or other legal proceedings shall be instituted, except with the previous
sanction of the Central government, against any person in respect of
anything done or purported to be done in exercise of powers conferred
by this Act”.
Over 20,000 people
have been killed in Manipur since the AFSPA was imposed.
Following the protests
over Manorama’s killing, the government appointed the Justice
Upendra Commission to look into the AFSPA’s “legal, constitutional
and moral” aspects. For many, the review came too late and gave
too little — Manipur, after all, was asking for the Act to be
withdrawn in its entirety. The government has preferred to remain tight-lipped
about the commission’s findings, but sources have told tehelka
that the commission was not in favour of the Act in its present form.
Its recommendations apparently include toning down the Act by making
it a civil law, and by making it applicable to “disturbed areas”
in all parts of India, without seeming to single out the Northeastern
states as its present wording does. However, sources say, the government
is fixated on the idea that tackling insurgency without the AFSPA is
just not possible.
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Public support for
the Kangla Fort protestors was spontaneous, open and widespread. The
government’s response, however, was not only clumsy but, say many,
blatantly unfair. Within days of the demonstration, the protestors received
word from friends in the police that they should go into hiding; three
weeks later, they were sent to jail. “We were detained under the
National Security Act, which is meant for terrorists and traitors,”
says Memon Leima. “That’s because our protests led to larger
demonstrations where some people burnt the national flag and effigies
of the home minister. The police told us that we were the ones who had
instigated the unrest and that we, therefore, had insulted the nation.
I told them that they had insulted all of humanity.”
From the first day
of their jail term, the Kangla Fort protestors were resolved that not
one of them would seek bail. “We all promised each other: we are
in jail together and we will leave jail together,” Memon Leima
says. “Our families gave us all their support,” remembers
Thaokjma. “Without them, it wouldn’t have been possible.”
“When my 12-year-old grandchild first came to see me in jail,
he was stunned. But all he asked was whether I slept there at night,”
Madu Leima told us. “I couldn’t control my tears. I told
him, no, they take me to sleep in a big house with all the comforts
I could ask for.”
Three months later,
all the protestors were unconditionally released.
“We did the
most we could, but two years have now passed since Manorama’s
murder and nothing has happened. The AFSPA is here, Assam Rifles is
here, nothing has changed,” Thaokjma laments.
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Rage
at the grassroots: No end in sight to protests against
the AFSPA |
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An
NSCN(IM) member scoffs at the police.
‘Who says we need a
post-mortem report to decide a murder case?’ |
That the AFSPA has
done little good for Manipur is noted even by those who work within
the state administration. “The AFSPA has only alienated the people
and does not help improve law and order,” said one deputy superintendent
of police, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Tackling militancy
should not only be about hunting down and eliminating underground cadres
— you also have to win people over and the AFSPA is the exact
anti-thesis of that.” The facts support his remarks. When the
AFSPA was imposed in Manipur, there were only four armed insurgent groups
in the state. As of now, while the exact figure is unknown, Manipur
is said to have the highest number of such groups in the country. Only
25 of these are on government watch-lists — the actual number
is said to go into the high hundreds.
And these are the
de facto authority in the state. Manipur is, in effect, divided into
the area strongholds of the major insurgent groups; in its inner reaches,
government control exists only on paper. “Who will the government
talk to? There are so many groups who claim to be the true representatives
of the insurgency,” said a member of the Kanglei Yawol Kann Lup
insurgent group in Bishnupur. Skirmishes to protect pockets of dominance
are frequent, both between the insurgents and the security forces, and
within the groups themselves.
Control of the drug
trade along the state’s porous 350-km border with Myanmar has
added a further dimension to Manipur’s inter-ethnic clashes. The
erosion of state control here has made the border a soft route for drug
trafficking; drug abuse, too, is widespread across the state. According
to one official report, Moreh (Southeast Asia’s gateway to India),
New Somdal in Ukhrul district, Churachandpur district and Bokan in Myanmar
bordering Molcham village in Manipur’s Chandel district, have
become major entry points for heroin smugglers.
Signs of the low-intensity
war that continues to plague Manipur, despite a now seven-year-old ceasefire,
are visible just two hours from the state capital, in the hill district
of Ukhrul, where the National Socialist Council of Nagalim calls the
shots. The district’s missionary-run schools are its only functional
institutions. “No one here goes to the police,” says NSCN(IM)
leader Joseph Jago. “We decide disputes in our village councils,”
which are dominated by insurgents, “according to our traditional
laws.” Ukhrul DSP Vashum ruefully corroborates this. “We
have registered only about 30 cases this year,” he told us. “We
get to handle road accident cases and sometimes murders. That’s
because these are technical cases, the insurgents don’t have post-mortem
facilities.” In the street, one NSCN(IM) member scoffs at this.
“Who says we need a post-mortem report to decide a murder case?”
Conditions are
not very different in Manipur’s three other hill districts, although
matters are said to be better in the valley areas. District officials
move under heavy security cover. A convoy of armoured vehicles escorts
them down the muddy, dilapidated roads. Police officials complain that
they are poorly equipped — the district police of Ukhrul have
200 men in all to cover their district’s insurgent-dominated terrain.
The ceasefire, most
Manipuris agree, is all that keeps the state together, critically balanced
though it is. In a situation where to command the loyalty of five families
is enough to float a militant group, having the ceasefire called off
would be a catastrophe. Criticising the paramilitary forces comes naturally
to the Manipuri, but, oddly, the general consensus is that they should
not go or be removed too soon. Even the insurgents agree. “If
the paramilitary forces were to leave too suddenly, there would be civil
war,” says a PLA operative in Imphal, a view that finds support
with the NSCN as well.
“People are
as fed up with extortion and intimidation from the insurgents as much
as with the government’s apathy. Who does the common man turn
to when the government at every level appears to be hand in glove with
the underground,” asks the owner of a stationery shop in the main
market of Imphal.
An elderly customer
agrees. “We have suffered so much,” she says. “I just
hope the ceasefire continues and there is no eruption of violence again.”
Two years from
the events of July 2004, and Manipur and its people find themselves
in the same quagmire that caused the agitation of those anguished weeks.
Thaokjma, Memon Leima, Madu Leima and thousands of their supporters
feel cheated. “We are still fighting for our basic right: the
right to live,” says Memon Leima.
To Thaokjma it seems
the end of the road. She is overcome by emotion as she speaks of her
last wish. “I am weak. We did what we could. Now the ball is in
the government’s court. My only desire is to see the AFSPA die
before I do.’’
