ZoRO leaders attend UNPFII meet
Source: The Sangai Express / Newmai News Network

Dimapur, May 31 2014 : Zo Re-Unification Organisation (ZoRO) representatives have just returned to India after participating in the 12-day long United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigeneous Issues (UNPFII) meeting in New York.

The ZoRO leaders reportedly presented their position in the meeting from May 12 to May 23 .

ZoRO is an organisation working to integrate or unify all the Kuki kindred tribes from Myanmar, India and Bangladesh.

In India the Kuki kindred tribes confine mostly in North Eastern part of the country.

In Myanmar, they are mostly confined in Kachin State and Chin State and Sagaing Division and in Bangladesh they are found mainly in Chittagong Hill Tracts.

There are nearly one hundred kindred tribes of the Kukis.

In Myanmar alone there are 55 dialects speaking people under this group.

In Manipur alone, according to the 1956 Tribe Modification Order, there were 22 tribes under this category.

Meanwhile, ZoRO is reliving the Calcutta's 1892 Fort William Conference.The Chin-Lushai Conference of January 29, 1892 decided to keep the Chin-Lushai Hills under one administration.

The conference opened in Calcutta under the presidentship of Sir Charles Alfred Elliot, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal.

It dealt with a variety of connected questions on the future, civil and military of the Chin-Lushai Hillls.

Interestingly, one of the two umbrella bodies of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo, the Kuki National Organisation (KNO) has become part of ZoRO sometimes ago.

"It does not meant that the Kuki State demand in Manipur is not relevant anymore.

The Kuki State is integral to the whole movement," explained Dr Seilen Haokip, the spokesman of KNO.

This pursue of the broader perspective by the kindred tribes of the Kukis has been considered as 'focussing or shifting gear' by way of attaching all the kindred tribes of the Kukis in the three countries of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh into the fold of the movement by the Kukis.

Dr Seilen Haokip told Newmai News Network that the Government of India considers Kukis are insignificant.

He said the Government of India had never honoured its words which were promised or assured to the Kukis.

Interestingly, KNO president PS Haokip had mentioned it in his message on the KNO Raising Day on February 24 this year in Churachandpur district of Manipur that stretching from Kachin state of Burma covering up to Changlang district in Arunachal Pradesh and Tuensang and Mon districts of the Konyak and Khimniungan region in the present day Nagaland in India, as well as the land of the Heimi people in Myanmar (Burma) to which tribe SS Khaplang, leader of Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K), including Upper Chindwin and Kale Kabow valley in Sagaing Division are entirely ethnic Kachin-Kuki inhabited.The Kachins have always maintained their link through folklore connections with the Kukis, the KNO chief had added.

On January 29 this year, ZoRO had fondly remembered the 1892 Fort William (Chin-Lushai) conference at Saikul under Sadar Hills in Manipur's Senapati district.

ZoRO marked the 122nd anniversary of the Fort William Conference under the theme of "Together We can Ascend" .

About 2, 000 people, Including Zo delegates from Myanmar, Bangladesh, Mizoram, Assam, and Tripura attended the conference-cum-commemoration event.

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