Crimes against North Easterners
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: May 04, 2012 -

Protest against crime against North Easterners in Delhi :: Pix - zolengthe.net

Incident of crime and racial discrimination against people from the North East region in other metropolitan cities of the country is not a new thing.

But this time around, one shocking incident after another has taken place in quick succession taking everyone by surprise.

After the brutal murder of 19-year old Loitam Richard, a second semester engineering student in Archarya NRV College of Architecture, Bangalore by some of his hostel mates following a tiff over changing the TV channel while watching an IPL match on the night of April 17; the 'forced suicide' of Dana Sangma, a 21-year old first year MBA student in Amity University, Delhi, and a niece of Chief Minister of Meghalaya Mukul Sharma, on the night of April 24 after she was accused of 'caught cheating' in the examination by her invigilator, has not just evoked widespread protest but also rocked the nation.

In between, there have been instances of molesting a Tangkhul girl, kidnapping of another Tangkhul boy, beating up and robbing of a Meetei boy, all on the night of April 27 and molestation of an Aimol girl, who was subsequently compelled to withdraw her case after the police started raising question on her character.

Even though all these cases which smack of racial discrimination are unfortunate, the fact that the issue has again pricked the consciences of the people, more particularly, the elected Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Northeast region, at least this time, is appreciable.

With the twin problem of lack of adequate educational infrastructure and employment opportunities on one hand and prevailing socio-political unrest and conflict on the other acting as the main push factor, every year thousands of people from the Northeast region migrated to other Indian cities for education, jobs and other purposes.

But they are always at the receiving end of racial discrimination and social profiling. In fact, a research study conducted by North East Support Centre and Helpline sometime between 2005 and 2011 had revealed that 78 out of every hundred people from North-East region living in Delhi lone face racial discrimination, with crime against women and violence against people from the community emerging as major concerns.

Compounding the problem of racial discrimination and social profiling faced by people from North East region has been the lack of political will of law enforcement agencies and the biased attitude of the investigating police officers who have been accused of refusing even to register complaint, not to talk of doing justice to the victims or initiating action against the perpetrators.

Now that the MPs from the region have jointly raised the issue of discrimination against people from North East in the Parliament, we would to speculate at least some positive results towards putting an end to the menace.

Nonetheless, besides the security measures which our Honourable MPs expect from the Union Home Ministry to ensure protection of people from North East, we strongly feel that there is an urgent need to educate the so-called mainstream people on the cultural and racial diversity of India so as to stop them from looking upon Northeasterners as the 'others'.

Then only, the problem could be resolved and the Northeasterners could feel safer in their own country.