Ichan Hoakip, 38, is possibly one of the handful of people of Meitei ethnicity remaining in the hills of the conflict-torn Indian state of Manipur. She was married to Lunginlal Hoakip, a Kuki construction worker, who got killed by a Meitei mob on May 04 near Imphal, the capital city.
Lunginlal is among over 186 people feared to have been killed in the deadly ethnic violence that broke out between mainly Meiteis belonging to the Hindu faith and predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo tribes that began on May 03. Reuters say, two third of the people who were killed belonged to the indigenous Kuku-Zo community.
100 day on, the situation remains volatile with thousands of weapons being stolen from government armoury by the fighting groups engaged in regular gunbattle. Three Meiteis and two Kukis were killed last week, escalating the situation in the buffer zone at the border of the Bishnupur district, a furious battlefield between the fighting groups.
“He was crying… Ichan, Ichan,” the mother of five recalls from the last call she got from her husband. Even though police informed her that his body is in a hospital in Imphal, bringing it to their hometown, Churachandpur (renamed by Tribal bodies as Lamka).
His body is among 118 unclaimed bodies kept in various mortuaries in Imphal, a number submitted to in Supreme Court of India in a petition stated.
Tribal bodies want to have a mass burial in government land near the buffer zone, in an attempt to create a monument for the “martyrs” of “state-sponsored ethnic cleansing”.
Immediately after the violence broke out, the state was partitioned on ethnic lines. Entry for people from opposing ethnicity stopped and supplies through the main highway remains cut off. Even state officials have not travelled to the opposite territory fearing for their lives.
The border of the territories, the valley controlled by Meiteis and the hills controlled by Kukis, have check posts and bunkers put up by armed civilians.
Central forces maintain buffer zones between them.
The armed conflict got little attention in the country until a shocking video of two Kuki Zo women being paraded naked went viral on social media, forcing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to comment after two months.
The video from May 04 emerged after more than two months due to an internet ban in Manipur since May first week. Manipur government partially lifted internet suspension on broadband internet conditionally. Mobile internet remains suspended.
The state ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has a Meitei Chief Minister, N Biren Singh, who is widely accused of being complicit in the violence unleashed by his community against tribal people. His cabinet has not visited the hill area since the unrest.
Peace talks have not had any outcome while tribal groups demand separate administration for hill areas. The spokesperson of the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF), Ginza Vualzong, stated that no reconciliation is possible after what has happened.
India’s opposition coalition has blamed the “hate politics” of Modi’s party have led to the “civil war” in Manipur.
