“An eye for an eye makes the world blind”
This aforesaid quote actually summarises what is happening in Manipur since the last 94 days. Blind hatred against each other has led to two important communities – the Meities and Kukis – bay for each other’s blood since May this year.
Ethnic riots broke out in the north-eastern State of Manipur on May 3, 2023, when the tribal ‘Solidarity March’ was organised in all district headquarters in the hill areas by the tribal Kuki community against the Manipur High Court’s order directing the state government to submit a recommendation to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs on the question of including Meiteis in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) list.
Since then, the people of Manipur have been reeling under ethno-religious violence. Over 180 lives have been lost, properties worth lakhs have been damaged, and thousands of people have been rendered homeless, who have been shifted to relief camps. School buildings have been razed to the ground and smashed to smithereens.
After being evacuated from the riot-hit areas, many of these students have been staying in the camps since July, with no education; no college, no books and backup certificates. These students don’t even know where the documents are and whether they would ever be able to retrieve them.
Such is the condition that the inmates of these camps don’t even have basic amenities. Lactating mothers living in relief camps need clean potable water to feed babies, to prepare baby food for the infants, and during menstruation they require more water for cleanliness. But the number of toilets per camp was abysmally low. In one camp there were only 10 toilets for 1,000 people.
In these trying times, a voluntary organisation from Goa — Street Providence — reached out to the strife-torn Manipuris by providing them with basic necessities like dry ration, sanitary pads amongst other essential items.
For over a month, NGO Street Providence, Goa, has been providing relief material to ensure that displaced and distressed people across the communities there get some solace. The NGO, through its founder trustee Donald Fernandes, has been sending consignments of dry ration, medicines, diapers, sanitary pads, etc till date, and for the first time a team led by Retired IPS officer Bosco George and Adv Caroline Collasso visited Manipur with the relief material.
As of now, about 33 tons of food grains have been sent to Manipur, along with three huge consignments of generic medicines, consisting mainly of painkillers, anti-virals, blood pressure and diabetes. About 1,000 organic sanitary pads have also been sent as they won’t need to burn it. These will disintegrate on their own. They have also given about Rs 1 lakh worth of inner wear basically for ladies and some other items like baby diapers and baby napkins.
All this has been done under the shadows of fear and uncertainty. It has taken a lot of courage from the Street Providence team and the various other civil society groups from various parts of the country, who are selflessly working towards providing succor to the people of Manipur. There is a huge difference between feeding the destitute in a peaceful place like Goa and providing holistic care to a large population in strife-torn Manipur, where life is always at risk.
Despite being far away from home, in an unknown region which is continuously erupting like a volcano, they have managed to win the trust of the victims and bring some smiles on their faces. This requires a lot of passion and dedication. It is really commendable that despite knowing the huge risks involved, the Street Providence team went inside Manipur and met the victims of this mindless violence on the ground. This shows that humanity is still alive.
It is really disheartening to see how humans have become so much blinded with hatred. Politicians have continued to fail the people of this country as always, which is clearly evident in Manipur. Country’s Prime Minister has time to do globetrotting, he still hasn’t been able to visit Manipur. In contrast, opposition leaders from the Lok Sabha and various civil society groups have managed to reach out to the victims of mindless violence.
The government must lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and hand over Manipur’s security to the Army. It has to give shoot-at-sight orders at the mobs to quell the violence. It also has to bring the murderers and rapists to book and provide justice to the victims. The entire legal machinery would have to give confidence to the women victims that they could go to court and get justice.
This is very important to heal the wounds, otherwise the hatred will continue against each other for the next many generations to come, as it has been happening since the past. We can’t afford to see this hatred lingering on for more decades.
As Martin Luther King had said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
