ST demand regressive, says UNLF-II
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, November 24 2013: To fashion a solution for the fragmented polity of Manipur is the joint responsibility of the different communities co-inhabiting it, said the UNLF central committee.

Towards this end, it is imperative that an environment for nurturing a sense of collective ownership of the land is promoted.

Every community that co-inhabits Manipur should jointly and collectively own all natural resources of this land.

"A perspective and outlook to ensure that all benefits and opportunities flowing from these natural resources should be equitably distributed amongst all co-inhabiting communities should inform our political system" .

"Zealously guarding the ethnic boundaries, both political and social, commu- nities co-inhabiting Manipur seems to be afflicted with a myopic vision that restricts our gaze towards extant as well as emerging global political and economic trends", it asserted.

Saying that to ponder over how India views and assesses the communities co-inhabiting Manipur and the WESEA both individually as well as a conglomeration is more than overdue, the outfit remarked that indigenous communities are seemingly not bothered by each one's inclination to rope in India as an ally/arbiter in a triangular or multi-polar equation.

The latter's illogical attitude has continued to bedevil relations between co-inhabiting communities.

The time has now come to exchange views freely on such negative biases that co-inhabiting communities in Manipur and WESEA region nurse against each other so as to try and correct the same.

Talking about global power and revolution of WESEA, the outfit said that the powerful nations are beginning to look at the resource-rich units of WESEA and their relative backwardness in development as an opportunity to earn good profits.

These powerful countries have already made road maps for the same.

Simultaneously, India is encouraging these rich and powerful countries to invest in WESEA region primarily with an eye on accelerating its economic growth.

India may not be far off the mark in its hidden calculation that these rich and powerful countries will, post their investment, increasingly tend to view the continuing armed struggle and the accompanying violence in the WESEA region narrowly through the prism of their commercial interests, and that this, in turn, will make these powerful countries amenable to India's official stance about the armed struggle in WESEA region as law and order problem.

Clearly, thus, the enhanced interest of the rich and powerful countries of the globe in the WESEA region could prove to be an ally in India's continuing policy of suppressing these freedom struggles through brute force.

"The WESEA region is going to see a change unlike any they have encountered before.

It will then be in each co-habiting communities' self-interest not to let the change sweep us all off our feet.

A common effort, whe-ther coordinated or not, to prepare ourselves for reaping the benefits of the encounter will begin to stand out as a crying need of all communities then", it cautioned.

The process of extraction of resources from the surface or under ground by these rich and powerful countries or their corporate companies for profit has begun long ago.

It was started more than a hundred years ago in Assam; the rest of the WESEA region is going to encounter it now.

In Manipur, the contract for extraction of around 5 trillion cubic feet of crude oil has been awarded to Jubilant Company from Netherlands by India with the State Government choosing to ignore the wishes of the people.

Questioning whether the present generation should not share these natural resources with the unborn generations of the future, the central committee asked, "Should not communities try and leverage the strength and wisdom of a common stance that best safeguards the interest of each community and the collective as well as allow a fair and unhindered regime of trade?" .

"While the trend for zealously protecting ethnic nationalisms forged in the heat of freedom struggle of the communities in the WESEA region is a strong reality, it is also our considered view that the times now call for nurturing a vision of a larger yet unrealized entity that can facilitate evolution of collective decisions based on our common interests as well as coordination among the units of WESEA as when circumstances demand.

This is also the demand of liberation struggles waged sepa- rately so far", it asserted.

The UNLF also reiterated the proposal for resolving the Manipur-India conflict through the democratic mechanism of plebiscite which was first floated in January, 2005 .

On the occasion of the 49th anniversary, the UNLF central committee greeted party cadres, local members, soldiers and officers of the army establishment, all communities co-inhabiting Manipur, leaders, officers and soldiers of the party currently under detention of the enemy, former colleagues maimed/handicapped by the enemy, leaders and soldiers of the member organizations of CORCOM, leaders and soldiers of the communities in the WESEA region waging freedom struggles against India, the people of Kashmir who are waging a struggle for liberation against India, CPI (Maoist) spearheading the struggle against the oppression by India, entities supporting the right to self-determination of the people of Manipur, Human Right Groups, the Manipur media, and regional and international media.

The central committee also paid respect to the founding leaders of the party, party cadres, and brave soldiers of the struggle who have laid down their lives in the liberation struggle as well as those whose lives have been terminated by the brute physical torture of the enemy.

The UNLF further pledged that it would follow in their hallowed footsteps in ceaselessly waging the struggle for liberation and change.

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