Tribal forum condemns eviction drive
Source: Chronicle News Service / Kaimuanthang Mangte
CCpur, February 22 2023:
The Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum (ITLF) has strongly condemned the state government's recent eviction drive that removed the entire K Songjang village and rendered the helpless villagers homeless.
In a statement issued Wednesday after series of meetings of tribes under the forum, the ITLF said that consent of the tribals should have been sought prior to notifying the creation of reserved forests and protected forests.
The forum observed that procedural lapses have occurred in the declaration of Reserved Forest after 1972 and said that the tribals of Manipur are hill dweUers since centuries.
To safeguard the interest of the hill tribal people, the then former President of India, W Giri, on June 20,1972 promulgated constitutional safeguard to protect the interest of the people of hill areas of Manipur including land ownership drawn from ancient times, it pointed out.
Traditional land ownership and land holding system along with customs, cultures and habits took cognizance of the British by introducing separate administration for the hill areas of Manipur.
The Forum said that with a view to protect their land, their forefathers had sacrificed their lives and for better clarity, wars and conflicts of different intensities were fought against outsiders such as the British by tribal chieftains/chiefs in order to establish their suzerainty over a particular stretch of land covering a large part of present-day North East India.
In the meantime, the ITLF fervently appealed to aH tribal representatives to speak out for the tribal people as and when necessary so that such actions which pertain to hill matters do not recur while urging the state government "to cease and desist from such irrational and inhuman acts in the days to come for the betterment of all" .