A First Information Report (FIR) was filed against the Editors’ Guild of India (EGI) on after it came up with a report following the visit of a 3-member fact finding team comprising senior journalists to Manipur. The comprehensive 24 page report was a sincere attempt by the EGI team to find out the ground realities obtaining both in the Imphal valley and the Kuki-Zo inhabited hills districts. But for any group that’s new to the situation in Manipur and its embedded ethnic pressures and pulls and with the short time available to gather information there’s bound to be some discrepancies and these have, as expected been pointed out by Meitei intellectuals/academics. The EGI has no vested interest in creating a narrative of its own. It spoke to a cross section of media personnel both from the Imphal valley and also from the hills and reported what the media had been observing which is that the,“ division along ethnic lines was not only in terms of peoples’ consciousness, but a physical division or geographical separation has also taken place between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo inhabited areas observed what they saw on the ground. visited trying to look for the truth.
The EGI observers also noted what sections of the media had been reporting which is that there is a ‘buffer zone’ that divides the two communities with women protestors on each side. They found women protestor everywhere, checking vehicles, stopping trucks but not stopping cars carrying the media. Perhaps what did not go down well with the Meiteis was the EGI observation that Manipur police and commando units of the state were partisan and allegedly openly sided with civilians and raided Kuki villages in the outskirts of Imphal. What has been stated by different individuals in discussions on TV channels that the weapons from police armouries were allowed to be taken since there was no attempt on the part of those guarding the armoury to stop the loot, also formed part of the EGI report but they were careful to cite the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF).
The person filing an FIR against the three members of the EGI accuses them of misreporting certain facts. Even if this were to be true should the person not just counter this in and through the media instead of using sections of the now defunct IT Act? Separate FIRs were also filed with Chief Minister Biren Singh also throwing his weight behind the complainants. The Editors’ Guild of Manipur has also supported the FIR filed by a social worker. To wade into troubled waters at this juncture is fraught and although the EGI has given a statement correcting some editorial errors, that has not found acceptance and the reasons are clear for those that have been following the conflict in Manipur.
Meanwhile in a show of solidarity all the journalists’ union of the country have condemned the FIR and called it unwarranted. It remains to be seen how this issue pans out in the coming days. The judicial enquiry by a retired judge of the Guwahati High Court and two other former civil servants is still pending although the trio were given a timeline of three months.
