The Oliver Stone 1986 movie ‘Platoon’ had a powerful dialogue: The first casualty of war is innocence. In Manipur, everyday innocence is lost.
Manipur is in a state of civil war. Hiding this fact does not change the truth about the situation on the ground. The conflict has not been resolved and the violence continues unabated though sporadically.
The violence caught the attention of the world, especially the inhumane act of a mob of men parading two women belonging to the Kuki community naked and gangraping them and more recently the murder of two youths – one girl and one boy belonging to the Meitei community but the humanitarian crisis faced by both the Meitei and Kuki communities have been inadvertently ignored or brushed under the carpet.
According to the Manipur government data, over 70000 persons have been displaced due to the violence during the conflict. Most of the displaced persons are living in relief camps. These relief camps are schools or empty spaces for the people in both communities that have been turned into shelter homes. Food and medical supplies are scarce. Most of them are living on rice and lentils. In fact, in one of the relief camps, my team visited around Moirang in August, we experienced a lunch of rice and dal.
A girl, aged one, died in the relief of pneumonia. But she is not the only infant to die in the relief camp. Our data sources indicate a girl aged one and a half died of measles, and another girl aged two died of measles, while a boy aged two was suspected to have died of measles. A boy aged twelve died of scrub typhus, while a thirteen-year-old female died of malaria. Relief camps particularly in the hills are facing shortages of medicines and healthcare facilities. Out of the eleven senior citizens who died, some died of cardiac arrest, some died of asthma, and a few died due to diabetes according to the data collected by a humanitarian organization – Kuki Khanglai Lawmpi.
Even more disturbing and depressing for the families of the people who fled the valley to stay safe in the hills is their inability to claim the bodies of their dead relatives currently in the morgues in Imphal Valley. Attempting to venture into Imphal to claim the bodies from a Kuki territory will be nothing but writing a death wish.
In addition, if look at some of the data from our sources in the two communities, 27 children have lost both their parents in the ongoing conflict and turned into orphans. About 14 children have been separated from their parents and living with relatives and friends; while 162 children have lost a parent in the violence during the conflict.
So far a compilation of information from different sources in the valley in particular data provided to GoaChronicle by COCOMI indicates that 1797 people had injuries during the the ongoing violence over the last 5 months. 90 percent of the injuries reported across different hospitals in the state were bullet injuries. In the relief camps in the valley, we were informed that there had been a total of 12 deaths mostly women: two in a relief camp in Thoubal, 2 in Imphal West, 4 in Bishnupur, and 4 in Imphal East.
According to the data put out on the Wall of Remembrance in Churachandpur, 132 persons have died in the Kuki community due to the ongoing violence, while COCOMI data informed us that the death toll in the Meitei community is 61 persons. A total of 193 people so far as revealed by the data kept by the two warring communities.
One of the major problems for people in the relief camps in the hills and for people otherwise living in the hills is that are facing a shortage of medical supplies and healthcare facilities. For this people from the hills have to make a 14-hour journey through poor road infrastructure to Mizoram. Even essential food and medicinal supplies cannot pass through the highway in the valley if it is routed for the hills, they will be stopped and confiscated. In one such tragedy, an elderly man died en route to Mizoram when he was being taken for medical treatment due to a lack of facilities in the hill region.
Many of the Kukis in Manipur have turned to the government of Mizoram for assistance because of the lack of trust in the Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh. The response to the plea for assistance came four months after Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga on May 23 wrote a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, seeking assistance of ₹10 crore to provide aid to the internally displaced persons seeking shelter across the 11 districts of Mizoram. The state finance department had disbursed ₹5 crore from the exchequer for humanitarian assistance and relief to the displaced persons, according to officials of the home department. Mizoram hosts 11,973 displaced persons from Manipur as on September 23.
Kuki organizations claim that 4550 plus properties were destroyed during the violence, 357 Churches were burnt down, and 292 villages burned. The Working Committee on Protection of Meitei Temples (Under the UKAL) has informed sections of the media that 393 Meitei temples and shrines were destroyed and burnt. The Meitei Society has claimed that in Churachandpur alone 1310 houses were destroyed to rubble. Another data from a source in the administration revealed that according to their information, 1,988 homes belonging to Meiteis and 1,425 Kuki homes spread across 158 Meitei-dominated villages, 83 Kuki-dominated villages, and 33 villages of mixed-population, were burnt down or vandalized.
Out of the 70000 displaced persons, 14763 school children have been displaced due to ongoing conflict in Manipur according to a statement of the Union Minister of State for Education Annapurna Devi in Rajya Sabha. Out of the 4617 schools in Manipur, reportedly 96 are being used for relief measures as camps for the displaced people. The education of children in Manipur has been greatly impacted by the conflict in Manipur. The government has reported that 93.5 percent of the displaced students have been readmitted to “the nearest feasible school free of cost” and the requirement of permission for students of class IX to class XII opting to change school has been relaxed for those affected by the violence.
One of the saddest truths about the Manipur conflict is that those displaced and those whose houses have been destroyed in the valley or hills are not able to go to their homes because if the home was in a Meitei territory it would be impossible for a Kuki to go to verify their claims to the government or if it is in a Kuki area it would be impossible for a Meitei to go to verify their claims and extent of the damage.
The first real damage in the Manipur conflict is not just the deaths of the people but the impact the violence has on those living in the conflict. People have to live knowing that they have lost their family members, their homes, their livelihood, their investments, their identities, and most of all the future of their children which has now to be rebuilt. The second damage of course is the trust lost between the Meiteis and Kukis due to this unprecedented violence that both communities have inflicted on each other due to their hate.
Manipur must return to its innocence but unfortunately, the first casualty of this war is ‘innocence’. No one is a Saint in the Manipur conflict.
