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Journalism of Courage
MIZORAM is facing a new kind of problem: Poachers are frequently crossing over from adjoining Myanmar, entering reserved forests and killing wild animals. The authorities were particularly alarmed when a group of Myanmarese poachers entered the Ngenpui Sanctuary, killed an elephant and escaped with its tusks. Mizoram’s thick forests have a good number of elephants, and it is the lucrative trade in ivory trade that prompts poachers from Myanmar to sneak in. Their task is made easier by the fact that Mizoram shares a long international boundary with Myanmar that is tough to monitor. Mizoram’s wonderful orchids too have caught the fancy of some of the poachers who are reported to have removed a number of them from the Ngenpui Sanctuary.
Probe into Assam journalist’s murder
TEN years after Kamala Saikia, a veteran journalist based at Sibsagar in Upper Assam was gunned down by the outlawed ULFA, the Assam Police has announced reopening the case for investigations. Six years ago, they had shut the case citing the usual ‘‘lack of evidence’’. Saikia was the first of at least three journalists in the state — including Parag Kumar Das, executive editor, Asomiya Pratidin — to fall prey to militants’ bullets; all three cases are so far unsolved. According to Assam Police director-general Hare Krishna Deka, the Kamala Saikia murder case has been reopened at the request of the family, who had recently appealed to the chief minister in this regard. The Das investigation, on the other hand, is with the CBI which, too, is yet to come out with its final report.
Manipuri women all for prohibition
The ‘Meira Paibis’ (literally, torch-bearing women) of Manipur are well known for their long struggle with various kinds of social evil. This unique institution takes up social issues and then exerts pressure on the authorities to act on them. The Meira Paibis’ latest agitation is against Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh’s decision to lift prohibition. While Ibobi has said that lifting prohibition would enable the fund-starved government to collect more revenue, the Meira Paibi Welfare Association has described it as shameful. ‘‘The women of Manipur have been constantly campaigning against alcoholism, and it will be an insult to the women of Manipur if the government thinks lifting of prohibition will make its financial position better,’’ said a Meira Paibi Welfare Association statement in Imphal.
Dowry goes Assamese
NO longer can the Assamese claim that dowry has no place in their society. Reports about dowry-related deaths have become a regular feature in the state’s newspapers, even as police records shows that the number of such deaths has gone up from 21 in 1994 to 57 in 2000. So long, dowry in Assamese society only meant a double-bed, a dressing table, a sofa set, a few paat and muga silk mekhela-chadars and a few utensils. But senior police officials monitoring crimes against women say expensive items like refrigerators, bikes, colour TV sets and even cash and immovable property like land and flats too have have become part of the dowry. They attribute the rise in the number of dowry-related deaths directly to this phenomenon.
