Imphal/New Delhi:

Ten Kuki-Zo MLAs who have been demanding a separate administration carved out of violence-hit Manipur have requested the Commission of Inquiry, formed by the Home Ministry, to expedite looking into a purported audio tape of Chief Minister N Biren Singh, which, the Kuki-Zo MLAs claimed, proved the Chief Minister was responsible for the outbreak of ethnic clashes in May 2023 in the state bordering Myanmar.

The 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs including from the state’s ruling BJP in a statement on Wednesday said the commission must speed up its process and prosecute Mr Singh “for his crimes if his guilt is established.”

“He must also be immediately debarred from the office of the Chief Minister so that he is prevented from influencing the outcome of the probe against him,” the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs said in the statement.

The Manipur government has refuted the allegations twice – on August 7 when the Kuki Students Organisation (KSO) released a part of the audio clip, and on August 20, when the news website The Wire reported about the matter. The state government has said it was a “doctored audio clip” meant to derail peace talks.

The KSO in a statement on Monday said it was “deeply shocked and outraged by the continued inaction of the government of India regarding the leaked audio recording of Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh.”

The 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs have also doubled down on their allegations citing a Facebook post by the Chief Minister’s brother Rajendro Nong, who the 10 MLAs claimed was “seen threatening those who sold out such sensitive tapes to others.”

Citing the purported audio tape, the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs asked the Union government to expedite their demand for a separate administration in the form of a Union Territory with legislature, “as that alone is the path to lasting peace in the region.”

“The complicity of the CM in the state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, which we have always maintained since day one, has now been established beyond an iota of doubt. The CM can be clearly heard reassuring his audience, which from his tone and tenor can safely be assumed to be members of his militia, that they (central agencies) have to arrest him first before any of them, and that they should not promptly show up when summoned to give him time to intervene,” the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs said in the statement, alluding to the Meitei group Arambai Tenggol, or AT, whose members say they were compelled to take up arms soon after May 3, 2023 due to attacks allegedly by heavily armed Kuki insurgents and in the absence of effective law-and-order enforcement.

The Chief Minister, who belongs to the BJP, is from the valley-dominant Meitei community.

In the early days of the ethnic clashes after May 3, AT chief Korounganba Khuman was seen in visuals walking with a bamboo stick, while in the distance smoke was seen rising from a village behind a treeline. More visuals purportedly of May 3, 2023 showed at least three men in camouflage battledress and body armour, carrying AK series assault rifles, walking towards a field with slogan-shouting protesters from the Kuki tribes. In these visuals too, smoke can be seen rising from huts in the distance.

Some Kuki civil society groups have denied any knowledge of the Chief Minister’s comment in the state assembly that leaders from the Meitei community and Thadou, Paite, Hmar tribes, among others, have been talking about peace at different levels.

These Kuki civil society organisations, the 10 MLAs, and 25-odd Kuki-Zo insurgent groups that have signed the Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement (a ceasefire of sorts, yet to be renewed) – all of them have been demanding nothing less than a separate administration, bringing them together on a common platform.

The SoO groups have been in talks for a separate administration – a political settlement – for many years before May 2023, and so the claim by some Kuki leaders that the violence led to their call to break away from Manipur was a lie, since the intention for separation was always there, two leaders in the Manipur government told NDTV, requesting anonymity.

“Thousands of Meiteis and Kukis are living in relief camps. The question everyone should be asking is, why are the displaced people who are living in miserable conditions not being allowed to return home safely? Look at who all are opposing the return of displaced people to their homes. It is not difficult to see,” one of the two leaders told NDTV on phone from the state capital Imphal.

The 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs who requested the commission to act against the Chief Minister have not attended the state assembly sessions since May 2023. They have cited threats to personal safety, and have declined to share space with the Chief Minister citing the violence broke out under his watch and it led to an exodus of people from the Kuki tribes from Imphal. Meiteis also had to leave their homes in Kuki-dominated hill districts and some foothills.

The clashes between the Meitei community and nearly two dozen tribes under Kukis – a term given by the British in colonial times – who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, has killed over 220 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.

The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kuki tribes who share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram want to have a separate administration, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.

Imphal/Guwahati/New Delhi:

The Manipur government on Monday said disinformation is being spread using a “doctored audio clip” of Chief Minister N Biren Singh to sabotage peace plans in the ethnic violence-hit state. The state government had on August 7 issued a similar statement on the matter.

Monday’s statement came after the news website ‘The Wire’ reported the purported audio file has been submitted to the Commission of Inquiry set up by the Home Ministry to look into the Manipur violence.

“State government views such acts of spreading misinformation/disinformation through such doctored clips as anti – national activities for likelihood of inciting hatred and mistrust amongst communities, thereby trying deliberately to disturb peaceful co-existence of communities to escalate the current law and order issues in the state, more particularly to derail the peace initiatives being started by both state and central governments,” the state government said in the statement on Monday.

The state government said the law-and-order situation has improved in the last three-four months. However, shelling of rockets and bombs in fringe areas such as Kangvai, areas bordering Bishnupur, Imphal East, Moreh and Jiribam by miscreants have been reported from time to time, the state government said.

Government sources said a first information report (FIR) was filed after heavy, long-range projectiles were launched from the direction of the hills towards Bishnupur as recently as August 10. They said the state government plans to come out with a list of incidents with evidence of firing by suspected insurgents, using “heavy weapons”, from the hills towards farmers and common people living near the foothills.

Search operations and area domination were conducted by security forces in the fringe and vulnerable areas of hill and valley districts. During the search operations the following recoveries were made:

i.67 (sixty-seven) Improvised Mortar shells, 25 (twenty-five) Fuse primer, 09… pic.twitter.com/G8CEd7Zilj

— Manipur Police (@manipur_police) August 19, 2024

“Police and other security agencies have been taking steps to book the culprits and to deter them. Many FIRs have been filed in this regard and investigations are going on through agencies like NIA, etc. So far, security agencies have been able to control such incidents to a great extent,” it said.

Kuki Students’ Organisation Demands Action

The Kuki Students’ Organisation (KSO) in a statement on Monday said it is “deeply shocked and outraged by the continued inaction of the government of India regarding the leaked audio recording of Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh.” ‘The Wire’ report said the KSO had shared a transcript of short excerpts of the purported audio clip in a press release on August 7.

The clashes between the valley-dominant Meitei community and nearly two dozen tribes known as Kukis – a term given by the British in colonial times – who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, has killed over 220 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.

Ten Kuki-Zo MLAs, close to two dozen Kuki-Zo armed groups under the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement, and groups such as the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum and the Committee on Tribal Unity, all have demanded a separate administration carved out of Manipur, bringing them on the same common stage.

“General public are hereby clarified and appealed for not relying on such unfounded contents circulating in social media and news reports and also to refrain from involvement in spreading such false and fabricated information through any media,” the Manipur government said in the statement.

During the discussion and voting on demands for grants on the last day of the Manipur assembly on August 12, the Chief Minister had said “violence was perpetrated by some, not all, people”, and that the state government has been in peace talks with a section of Thadou, Paite and Hmar tribe leaders.

On August 7 too, the Manipur government in a statement had said the doctored audio was a malicious attempt by certain sections to incite communal violence and to derail the peace process that has been initiated at multiple levels.

“Not every Thadou, Paite, Hmar had a hand in the violence. You have seen, Hmar people spoke so well (in the peace meeting), we had tears, they too had tears, that all this happened due to misunderstandings,” Mr Singh had said in the assembly, referring to the August 1 peace meeting between Meitei and the Hmar tribe representatives in Jiribam, where they agreed to work for normalcy nearly two months after ethnic violence that began over a year ago reached the district bordering Assam.

The Manipur assembly in February unanimously passed a resolution asking the Centre to scrap the controversial SoO agreement with some 25 Kuki-Zo insurgent groups. The SoO agreement has not been renewed yet.