From Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, May 10: Renowned journalist, author and social activist, Patricia Mukhim on Saturday came down heavily on the Centre and the Manipur government for not coming to the help of scores of Kuki-Zo women and their children who faced inhuman torture during the longest ever ethnic violence in the region which is still smouldering.
Driven from their homes, the women and their children are still languishing in cramped relief camps where even proper food is not available, not to mention other basic necessities, she said.
The children are missing their homes and schools and still traumatised by their mothers and sisters faced during the peak of the conflict in different parts of the border state, she added. Mukhim was speaking at the Kuki-Zo Women’s Forum of Delhi and NCR, which hosted the official release of a book titled Silent Scars: Weaving Stories of Kuki-Zo Women in the Manipur Conflict here.
It took 78 days for most of India to wake up what was happening in Manipur, Mukhim remarked sardonically.
She was hinting at the neglect of the far-off region and its plight by New Delhi, but mainly the central government.
Mukhim, Editor of The Shillong Times and a Padma Shri awardee, also questioned how in the sensitive state most of the infrastructure work was carried in the valleys and hardly anything in the hills.
On the other hand, theories like increasing cannabis farming and trading were floating thick during the difficult period, she added.
She also accused the then Manipur government led by Biren Singh which did not take any action to prevent the killing and torture of the Kuki-Zo women and children in broad daylight. It has become amply clear that violence was allowed to continue for a long time for which the wounds might heal but not the psychic, she said.
Her presence affirms the academic and socio-political significance of the volume, which documents the miserable experiences of Kuki-Zo women amid the protracted ethnic violence in Manipur, according to Juliana Doungel, advisor of the Forum, said while welcoming the guests. Other speakers reminded that only after a video of a mob of men parading two women did the Centre and the rest of the country take note of the gravity of the heinous crime. This book, which systematically chronicles such ghastly incidents with precision, will remain as recorded history, they said.