End the blockade, ease people's suffering
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: September 08 2011 -

The economic blockade of SHDDC and UNC's counter blockade continues along expected lines, stoning goods carrying trucks and burning them, for the idea is to stop transportation of all essential items.

The burning of 5 goods laden trucks by SHDDC and UNC volunteers at Kangpokpi and Keimai and the injuries sustained by blockade supporters as a result of AR personnel retaliatory action, though unfortunate, was waiting to happen. So is the suffering of the people as essential supplies become scarcer by the day.

We will get to see more violence, more destruction of public and private properties, injuries and in extreme cases, god forbid, even death, as the deadlock continues and the anger and frustration simmers across the 'Sadar Hill District' divide.

How many times have gone down this familiar path? Highways have been blocked over some issue or the other so many times that we have lost count of them. Bandhs, blockades, closure of academic institutes takes place in this land of ours with such regularity that people in general have come to accept them as part of their daily existence.

A numbing sense of Déjà vu pervades the air that we breathe in.

As in the other economic blockades, the impact of the present twin blockades is being felt with increasing intensity, causing immense suffering to the general public but more so to the most vulnerable sections of our society.

Stocks of nutritional supplements for newborn babies are drying up in the market, medicines for the sick and the infirm are running low, ART drugs for people living with AIDS are in short supply and prices of essential supplies have sky rocketed hitting the economically deprived section the hardest.

Then of course there is the usual clamor of petrol and gas, with people lining up the night before for a few litres of petrol the next day. Economic blockade as a means for leveraging to achieve certain end, to get a set of demands is rarely used anywhere in the world.

Though in times of war it is not uncommon for a raiding army to lay seize to a garrison or a whole city cutting off all its supply lines. Economic blockade imposes forced deprivation of essential items needed for day to day existence of people en mass, who have little say on the issue in contention for which it was imposed in the first place.

People's sufferings and their cry of help is used as a bargaining chip to inch towards a goal.

There have been appeals from individuals and various civil society organizations, out of humanitarian consideration towards the hardship people have to go through, to end the economic blockade and adopt some other form of agitation but the SHDDC has to this day stands firm in its resolve to continue with what they perceived is the only way to make the government give in to their demand.

While it should be the desire of every sensible person residing in Manipur to find an amicable solution to this vexed issue of 'Sadar Hills District', the forced suffering of the people should end.

The State Government, on the other hand, should leave no stone unturned to find a solution, though one admits the enormity of this task given the delicate nature of the issue, the polarization along ethnic lines, and the extent of passion it has aroused.

The government should explore all possible avenues, reach out to the SHDDC, UNC, political parties, civil organizations, intellectuals, leading members of society, hold dialogues and consultations and chip away at the areas of differences.

But at the end of it all, the O Ibobi led SPF government should take a firm decision, the sooner the better.