Settle our issues before pact with IM: KIM
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, January 10 2018:
The Kuki Inpi Manipur (KIM) has sent a memorandum to the Prime Minister of India demanding that the grievances of the Kuki people, triggered by the genocide launched by the NSCN (IM), must first be settled before inking any final deal with the armed group.
In the memorandum the KIM noted that over 60 memoranda had been submitted/sent to five successive Prime Ministers of India out of which there were a couple of irresolute responses.
While stating the Government is in talks with NSCN (IM), KIM expressed that a solution to the deal is still beyond the horizon despite newspaper reports predicting an early and successful conclusion of the talks.
KIM went to the extent of stating whether at all it had been an agreement or disagreement, referring to the controversy surrounding the clandestine Framework Agreement.
KIM said that Manipur is inhabited by different communities and no one can take the land without the consent of the natives.
Referring to historical facts, it mentioned the Kukis had resisted the British on several occasions and most notably in the Anglo-Kuki War that was fought between 1917 and 1919.The memorandum also questioned why the Government of India had failed to make a separate State for the Kukis like those of Nagaland and Mizoram.
Instead, the Kukis had only been facing bloody onslaught as in the genocide perpetrated by the Nagas under the command of the NSCN (IM) and the United Naga Council in the 1990s.KIM also expressed its disapproval that the Government is in talks with a group which is responsible for the genocide while the Kukis have been ignored all along.
Giving figures, KIM mentioned that 905 Kukis were killed, 360 of their villages razed to the ground and 100000 of them displaced.
In the memorandum, the KIM pleaded that the Kukis must be resettled before the Indo-Naga peace deal is finalised.
Manipur has been turned into a killing field for the last many decades and the fact cannot remain hidden before the world community, the statement concluded.