Homecoming for 135 Meiteis who fled to relief camps to escape Manipur violence

As of the beginning of this month, there were a total of 768 Meitei people living in relief camps within Jiribam itself, and over 1,000 Hmar and Kuki people from Jiribam displaced and seeking shelter in the neighbouring Cachar district of Assam.

On Tuesday afternoon, 135 people from the Meitei community, who had been living in a relief camp at Chingdong Leikai Primary School in Jiribam since June 7, were taken to their homes in Mongbung village, a district official said. The village is located around six kilometres from the town centre.

“At around 3.30 pm, the inmates of the primary school left under the supervision of the District Collector and the Superintendent of Police. They had left their homes after disturbances in their area. Today, they went back with security forces, which include the Assam Rifles, the CRPF and the state police,” said the official.

The people living in the primary school included 62 children and 46 women. The younger men of the village had continued to remain in the village.

Mongbung is also located near where a CRPF man was killed last month in what the police had called an ambush attack. The incident took place in an area between Sejang Kuki village and Mongbung Meitei village. According to Jiribam SP M Pradip Singh, the district police asked for an additional company of the CRPF to be deployed in the area after the incident. On Sunday, the company was deployed there.

“Now, the Mongbung-Sejang area has one company of the CRPF as well as one platoon in Mongbung village, 10 policemen, two companies of Manipur police commandos and a dynamic deployment of Assam Rifles. We have to wait and see how this arrangement works. The villages will also take initiatives,” he said.

Representatives of different civil society organisations representing Hmar and Meitei interests – as well as Thadou, Paitei and Mizo representatives – had last week held their second meeting for peace talks in Cachar and resolved for “both sides to make full efforts to bring normalcy and prevent incidents of firing and arson”; to cooperate with security forces operating in the district; and for “controlled and coordinated movement” of both communities in the district. However, this had soon been met with backlash when the very next day, the home of a Meitei family was set ablaze. Also, the Hmar Inpui – the apex body of the Hmar tribe – had lashed out against its representatives in the Jiribam unit for participating in peace initiatives, and declared these “null and void”.

Separately, because of the unrest in Bangladesh, the district administrations of Jiribam and neighbouring Pherzawl in Manipur imposed night curfews with effect from Tuesday, citing the “likelihood of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh coming into the state”.