Present ongoing situation in Manipur as on 04 October, 2009
PR from MSAD (Manipur Students' Association Delhi)

Office of the Manipur Students' Association Delhi
New Delhi

Ref. No. 20091004 – PR3

Press Release

Chief Minister Okram Ibobi denied reports of the fake encounter in September this year, where one man and a pregnant woman were shot dead by Manipur Police Commandos at the heart of the crowded Khwairamband bazaar in Imphal. After the exposure by Tehelka and many other witnesses to the crime scene on that day, of what actually was going on at the moment of killing of these two persons with others being severely injured, there was huge response from the people demanding punishment of the perpetrators and immediate resignation of Ibobi as Chief minister of Manipur, accusing him of morally responsible for the crime his security forces had committed. Ibobi began to crack down many people suspected to have stirred agitation against his rule and power. Hundreds of people have been arrested; most of whom being put under National Security Act, many on the search and this is just to imply that every body should be now on the hide.

The ongoing agitation in Manipur against the reign of terror of Okram Ibobi is a serious concern that every one living in Manipur has to have answers to the question that this agitation raises in the last few months or so. The fact that the oppressed cannot not have any possible form of constructive critique and the capacity to be critical of the wrongs that are being done to them is visibly portrayed in the repressive measures which are now in operation under Ibobi's regime. These measures have been used frequently for quite long in order to control and suppress the just and democratic upsurge of the people and his critiques. Democracy then is non existent in the absence of constructive critique which is made unavailable to those who is concerned with what happens around.

As part of the ongoing agitation, educational institutions including coaching centres cannot now open normal classes on the issue of Khwairamband killing. Ibobi interprets closure of working of educational institutions as disruptive acts while on the one hand, he is not trying to see the issue of the closure in light of what he has committed to the lives of those who are now liable to be killed in any possible manner, and on the other, he is so keenly protecting the rampant and atrocious acts of ultra legal excesses of his handpicked police forces that have been committed to the daily lives of people. The matter, now at stake, is whether to consider, his acts of favouring the police atrocities, those fake encounters and killings of innocent lives, as unsubversive, desirable and responsible acts of political leaders. Should we have to still consider his rule and the way he exercises power as what we as citizenry think of the ways to ensure security of life and rights?

This is the question that the ongoing agitation is raising, which the repressive regime of Okram Ibobi has too eloquently and slanderously misunderstood as the acts of subversion. If this democratic agitation to overthrow the repressive regime is not what the people should do when they are subject to any possible form of unrestrained atrocity, torture, killing, and perhaps most dangerously to a severe misrepresentation of the democratic aspiration of peoples' will to security and rights as anti-national, then what forms of citizenry is supposed to come up with what desirable political acts?

This is a serious political crisis that we have in Manipur, particularly about the relation between the government and the people or in the other words, the sovereign and the citizens, and of course, the law and its subjects. The relationship has been a concern for hundreds of years to mark and define it with what is now known as democracy in different parts of the world. There have been movements, revolutions and rages to transform the relation between the state and people, the government and the citizens and the law and its subjects. This is politics and this is what we know of what we call freedom and rights. However, Ibobi's regime seeks to define the relation between the two as prominently marked with two different positions, where the government is shown as legal, responsible and desirable while the citizenry, the population and the 'public' is sought to represent as illegal, dangerous, both potentially and actually disruptive, irresponsible and anti-national.

The ongoing agitation seeks to transform this relation into a more democratic one where people are not subject to the state's evil design to represent as 'dangerous' in any form. It is time to see Chief Minister Okram Ibobi steps down as the commander of the reign of terror while the democratic agitation should enhance the efforts to strengthen the process leading to his being deposed. One possible way and the only way to reshape our politics at this hour, MSAD believes, is this only that we strengthen democracy and Ibobi's autocracy gets to be weakened and buried for all time to come.

Sd/-
Oinam Sandhyarani Chanu
President,
Manipur Students' Association Delhi
04 October, 2009

Apunbana Yaipharae
(Unity is Victory)

Manipur Students' Association Delhi (Estd. 1971)