'The sacred cause of liberation can never be defeated-I'
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, September 24 2026: The proscribed Revolutionary People's Front (RPF) has categorically stated that the sacred cause of liberating Manipur and her people can never be defeated.

On the 48th raising of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the armed wing of RPF, the outfit's president MM Ngouba offered revolutionary salute to the heroes who had made supreme sacrifice in the struggle of liberating "our motherland and our people" .

The RPF president has also saluted the people, fellow revolutionaries and comrades who have been faithfully carrying on the movement.

A statement issued by MM Ngouba said that the PLA was founded with a sole mission of fighting for independence of Manipur and its people.

48 years have now passed since "our people and PLA" have been fighting the enemy with unwavering perseverance.

Throughout this period, the enemy has deployed its full might and several strategies to suppress this movement.

Yet for all their efforts, they have never succeeded, and their attempts have borne no fruit.

"Today, we witnessed that they can no longer conceal their waning conviction of being capable of subduing us, their diminishing strength and their precarious condition", it said.

A clear example is the Government of India's declaration that they will uproot the people's liberation movement by 2029 .

"It is evident that our adversaries can never defeat the sacred cause of liberating our motherland and our people.

Judging from the movement's present state and even when considering the future circumstances, there is no indication that they will succeed in uprooting us within their scheduled deadline", MM Ngouba remarked.

Nevertheless, the situation demands utmost vigilance and it should not be taken lightly, given the enemy's new deceptive ploys and risks of harm to the people, he added.

The enemy's long-standing, atrocious campaign against the people's independence movement unfolded in several distinct stages, each with its own specific characteristics.

Following the annexation of Manipur by Bharat, many people unwilling to submit to colonial domination launched a resistance movement, confronting the colonial Government to win back the stolen independence.

In order to suppress the newly established resistance movement alongside the uprisings by the Naga people throughout the hill regions of Manipur, the enemy hastily enacted the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, in short AFSPA across Manipur on December 15, 1958, wielding as a weapon of suppression, read the RPF leader's statement.

The torturing of people without cause on the grounds of mere suspicion, arbitrary imprisonment, the destruction of homes and property, the forcible seizure of land, and threats of harm against family members, these atrocities became the enemy's primary tools for countering the resistance.

"Beyond these brutal tactics, from that point onward, the enemy began laying insidious traps, offering cash incentives and government employment to movement participants to create rifts among our people", it said.

Hampered by incomplete ideological grounding and limited operational resources, the resistance failed to mobilize the masses on a comprehensive scale at that critical juncture.

"The enemy seized every opportunity to capitalize on our weaknesses.

That era was defined by the enemy's dual strategy: coercion through atrocities and co-optation through persuasion" it said.

With the progression of the armed struggle, the enemy's policy underwent new transformations.

Bharat's underlying objectives and the true nature of Indian armed forces were laid bare.

The rationale behind the enemy's imposition of the AFSPA in that period became plainly evident then.

This period was characterized by the armed forces' attempts to flaunt its military power through heinous acts: disregard for human life, wanton killings, the herding of civilians like livestock from one place to another, arrests on whims, beatings at will and constant intimidation of civilians, alleged the RPF leader.

MM Ngouba said that the enemy's terror campaign, far from achieving its intended success, yielded the opposite effects.

It is an undeniable fact that Manipur was forcibly stripped of its independence.

Military operations and repressive measures carried out in Manipur, shielded by the AFSPA clearly demonstrate that Manipur is an occupied territory of Bharat under the governance of the Indian armed forces.

It became patently obvious that the people's struggle for independence is not an internal law-and-order concern of Bharat.

Manipur and Bharat are separate Nations, and the AFSPA was created as cover for Bharat to deploy the Indian armed forces in Manipur as an occupying force, the statement alleged.

In later operations, the Government of India revised its military-led war strategy.

Instead of having the Bharat forces bear the whole operation single-handedly, the enemy adopted a new strategy aimed at turning kins against one another.

However, they did not discard its former tactics and repressive practices, instead the enemy escalated these practices on a much larger scale, it further alleged.

Fake encounters commonly labelled by the people as "Fakap" (meaning abduction and killing) became prevalent, murdering people under whatever pretext suited them stood out as one of the enemy's most prominent tactics at the moment.

The Government widely used its armed forces to make money by arresting civilians and extorting ransoms for their release, while staged surrender dramas concocted by the same authorities were also rampant at the time, it said.

One could clearly perceive the enemy's mindset: it believed itself empowered to kill any person from Manipur on any excuse, confident there would be no repercussions for such murders.

One Government leader made an explicit remark, "Haatpa nattana upai leite" (There is no other way than killing) .

This pronouncement marked the introduction of New Delhi's policy of turning kins against one another, Ngouba said.

Bharat conceived a strategy named "North East Vision 2022" under a programme to commemorate the 75th year anniversary of its independence, and the vision's stated target was "to finish off insurgency and bring peace" in the so-called "North East", read the statement.

The RPF leader said that three action programmes were envisaged to implement Vision 2022 .

The first was the "Political Track": to expedite political dialogue with groups already in talks, and to bring the remaining groups into negotiations.

Concurrently, it aimed to expand the surrender-cum-rehabilitation package.

The second programme was the "Security Track" to deploy additional armed forces and annihilate the insurgent groups under AFSPA.

Within this second track, the enemy explicitly referenced "Zero Infiltration" .

The real-world manifestation of this "Zero Infiltration" would be laid bare a decade later.

The third programme was the "Development Track" to double the Central Government's planned funding allocated to the so-called "North East" region.

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