On June 7, Ngurthansang fled his home in Manipur’s Jiribam district, as violence caught up with an area that had, for over a year, been relatively buffered from the ethnic clashes in the rest of the state.
With 80-odd Hmar families, Ngurthansang moved to Lakhipur in neighbouring Assam, just across the Jiri river. The 33-year-old, his wife and three children spent four months in a relief camp in Hmarkhawlien, a Hmar village in Lakhipur.
In October, as peace slowly returned to Jiribam, and the school in which his wife worked reopened, the family made its way back to their home in Zairawn, a Hmar village. “Things were peaceful but all the villagers would stay together at night, and some men from the village would guard us,” Ngurthansang told Scroll.
On November 7, however, the village came under attack allegedly by members of the armed Meitei group Arambai Tenggol. Ngurthansang’s wife, a 31-year-old teacher, was tortured, allegedly raped and burnt to death.
The raid on Zairawn was the start of a new cycle of violence in which women and children have been ruthlessly targeted.
Four days later, a group of armed Hmar men attacked a relief camp in the district and abducted six women and children – one an eight-month-old infant – of the same Meitei family. Their bodies were recovered from the rivers near Jiribam a few days later.
Ten of the assailants were killed in retaliatory fire as they allegedly attacked a post of the Central Reserve Police Force near the relief camp in Borbekra.
Security officials told Scroll that the attack on the Meitei settlement was “revenge” for the death of the Hmar woman in Zairawn.
They also described the first attack on the Hmar village as “unprovoked” and “surprising” – and designed to disrupt a fragile peace of the past few weeks.
“Why did they kill the Hmar woman without any instigation?” said a senior Meitei police official, who was part of the efforts to defuse the animosity between the communities. “Because the Arambai Tenggol wanted to send a message. To disrupt the peace, they targeted Zairawn.”
The Arambai Tenggol is a Meitei vigilante group, whose cadres are alleged to have carried out brutal attacks on the Kuki-Zo community during the ethnic conflict in the state, and are believed to have close ties with the Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh.
The long-drawn conflict in Manipur between the majority Meiteis and the minority Kuki-Zomi-Hmar tribes has led to 255 deaths and the displacement of 60,000 people.
A build-up of armed men
According to the senior police official, the Arambai Tenggol has grown in strength in Jiribam since violence broke out in June, with many cadres arriving in the district from Imphal Valley to defend Meiteis.
An Assam Rifles official posted in Jiribam told Scroll that armed outsiders from both communities have been trickling into the district as reinforcements. “Since the June violence, there has been a build-up of armed men from Imphal valley as well as Churachandpur,” the official said.
Of the 10 Hmar men killed on November 11 while raiding a Meitei settlement, none was from Jiribam. Seven men had come to the district from Churachandpur, while three had arrived from Pherzawl, the district that adjoins Jiribam.
Security officials and community leaders pointed to a worrying militarisation of both communities in Jiribam.
A political leader, who does not belong to either community, said, “The number of youths taking up arms on both sides has shot up significantly – mostly under the influence of outsiders.”
A lull that did not last
Jiribam is a tiny district home to many communities, from Muslim and Hindu Bengalis to Meiteis, Pangals, and Kuki-Zomi and Naga tribes.
In May last year, when ethnic clashes spread from Churachandpur to Imphal, a peace committee comprising people from different communities, security forces and district authorities kept violence at bay here for nearly 13 months. In June, however, the killing of a Meitei man shattered the peace, leading to an exodus of both communities.
Despite the setback, the Jiribam Peace Committee coaxed the representatives of the Meitei and Hmar communities to return to the talks table. They met twice in Cachar and an agreement was signed on August 1 to restore normalcy and “prevent incidents of arson and firing”.
“We believed that some of the Meiteis also wanted peace,” said a Hmar leader, who was part of the peace committee.
The senior Meitei police official said the ground had been laid for a third round of consultations between Hmars and Meiteis in Guwahati.
However, not all wanted violence to end. “The Meiteis are a divided house,” the senior Meitei police official said. “A section wanted to derail the process for gaining political mileage. And so the attack on the Hmar village. It is unfortunate that Jiribam people were swayed by external influence.”
A Meitei leader, who was part of the peace committee, told Scroll that after the June violence, several Jiribam residents joined the Arambai Temggol “as they are for our protection and defence.”
The central security official told Scroll that “the number of arms reaching Arambai Tenggol cadres had gone up” in recent months.
While most of Jiribam seemed peaceful, Kuki-Zos and Meiteis were often engaged in crossfire in two villages on the periphery of Jiribam town.
‘Help’ from the hills
As violence simmered, reinforcements began arriving for the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar tribes too – from Churachandpur and Pherzawl.
“Jiribam is our area, but we have fewer resources and people there,” said a Churachandpur-based Hmar leader. “So, in order to stop the enemy from invading our areas, the armed village volunteers need to go there.”
The festering ethnic conflict in Manipur has led civilians from the warring communities to take up arms to guard their villages. They are often described as “village volunteers”.
Twenty-two-year-old Lalthanei Hmar was one such armed civilian.
Before he took up arms last year, Lalthanei Hmar worked as a daily-wage painter in Churachandpur town.
Two weeks ago, he made his way to Jiribam – a day’s journey, involving two vehicles and a river crossing.
“Our villages in Jiribam were attacked. That’s why the volunteer committee here selected two-three men from each village and sent them to Jiribam to guard the villages,” R Hmar, his cousin who lives in Churachandpur, said.
Lalthanei Hmar was allegedly among the group of armed men who sprung an attack on the relief camp in Borobekra on November 11.
A sparsely populated area, Borobekra is surrounded by Bengali and Hmar villages. Over a hundred Meiteis, displaced in the June violence, had taken shelter at the relief camp. Security officials told Scroll that this was an area where the Meiteis were “vulnerable” and “easy targets”.
To repulse the attack, CRPF personnel opened fire at the assailants, who, according to several eyewitnesses, were setting shops and houses ablaze and had opened fire at a CRPF post in the area.
Lalthanei Hmar was one of the 10 armed men killed in the firing.
However, Kuki-Zo-Hmar groups contest this version and have criticised the CRPF for shooting the men. They also alleged that armed Meiteis and the perpetrators of the violence in Zairawn village were hiding in the camp – a claim denied by the Assam Rifles.
A measure of the deep divide between the ethnic communities is that several Hmar people defended the action of the assailants – even the violence against unarmed civilians – arguing that “the presence of Meiteis is a threat to the lives of the Hmars”.
“The village volunteers did what they had to do in a civil war or ethnic conflict,” a Hmar resident told Scroll. “And so they attacked the remaining Meiteis in that area.”
‘A cycle of violence and counter-violence’
Security officials and police officers told Scroll that bringing back peace to the area is now a near-impossible task.
One of the reasons is that both communities have decided to arm themselves.
“Every person is either a village volunteer or a member of the Arambai Tenngol or the UNLF [United National Liberation Front, an armed separatist Meitei group],” said the central security official. “Most of them are armed. Or they are informers.”
The official added: “The mindset has got restricted to the cycle of violence and counter-violence. The young men are not able to think beyond that.”
The political leader, who does not belong to either Meitei or Kuki-Zo groups, added: “The young men have stopped studying and taken up arms in the name of protecting their motherland.”
The senior police Meitei official pointed out that “protracted violence” over 18 months was to blame for Jiribam getting sucked into the spiral of clashes. “If you think it will automatically improve, you are wrong.”
He said he was not optimistic of peace returning. “Jiribam was once the hope, but it is the epicentre of violence now.”
All photographs by Rokibuz Zaman.
