'Manipur will be a land of widows if gun culture does not end'
Source: Hueiyen News Service / Newmai News Network

Imphal, June 17 2011: Manipur will be called a land of widows if armed conflict does not stop, said founder and secretary general of Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network (MWGSN) Binalaksmi Nepram at the fifth day of the week long Global Week of Action on Gun Violence Friday.

Over 20,000 people have been killed in the last five decades in Manipur due to arm related conflicts, she said and pointed out that according to official statistics, in 2008 alone more than 400 people lost their lives.

Nepram further maintained that most of the people killed in Manipur are young men between 19 and 42 years of age and as a result, an average of 300 widows are created every year in Manpur.

In 2009, over 450 people were shot dead in the state, outdoing Jammu & Kashmir with the highest number of killings due to arm conflict, she said, adding that the state is also infamous for registering the highest number of disappearance cases of students in the country.

"The UN says that 5000 people are killed in Manipur," she said.

"In any other parts of the country, the army or paramilitary forces do not and can not secure unauthorized access to people's houses, but in Manipur such oversight are all too common," she argued.

The Centre has stationed more than 40 battalions of army and paramilitary forces in Manipur and living is an abnormal condition and not a day passes without a gun killing, she added.

Mamtaz (38), a victim of armed conflict and a member of MWGSN, told NNN that her husband (L) Md Asad Khan was killed in an alleged fake encounter at Irilbung in Imphal East in March 2009 .

She said, the PULF had asked her husband to negotiate on their behalf with the government for the initiation of SoS.

He was killed in an 'encounter' on March 7, 2009, along with five others.

Mamtaz said that her husband had been framed by the police and the army in a failed attempt to stage a "fake" surrender drama of the outfit.

MWGSN members resolved on a four-point Imphal declaration: stop encounter killing; remove AFSPA; UN should look into the matter and assistance be extended to victims of armed violence.

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