Be it the violence perpetrated by the 28-year old United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) or the little-known Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF), it is the ordinary and faceless migrant from Bihar who has been the worst sufferer in the seemingly endless and senseless violence that has kept Assam burning since the mid-1980s.A series of combined attacks by the KLNLF and ULFA, which has also emerged as a new security concern for the Congress-led Government in the state, has meanwhile claimed 26 lives—all migrants from Bihar—in just one district, Karbi Anglong, in the past four days. According to the All-Assam Bhojpuri Yuva-Chatra Parishad (AABYCP), at least 175 of them have been killed in the current year alone.The district administration in Karbi Anglong has started shifting migrants from Bihar from remote areas to safer places in the wake of repeated attacks on them by the KLNLF and ULFA in the past few days. While eight persons were gunned down on August 8 at Ampahar village under Howraghat Police Station in Karbi Anglong, one of the two hill districts of the state, 14 people, mostly children and women, were massacred in Dolamora village under Bokajan police station on August 10.On Saturday night, the militants struck at Rongmong-ghat, also under Bokakhat police station, and killed four Hindi-speaking persons. Two of them—Mohan Kanu and Sila Gupta—were from Bihar while the other two—Nandalal Swami and Mahabir Swami—were petty Marwari traders.“For the ULFA, or for that matter any other militant group in Assam, the easiest target is the innocent and hard-working labourer from Bihar and his family-members,” said Y L Karna, working president of Purvottar Hindustani Sammelan. And, data complied by the Sammelan says at least 350 Hindi-speaking people, including those from Bihar, have been killed by the ULFA, its allies and other militant groups in the state in the past six-seven years.Karna finds two immediate reasons behind this repeated attack on Hindi-speaking people. “First is that they (the ULFA) want to clear the Hindi-speaking labourer to make room for the Bangladeshi infiltrator. The ULFA is in the grip of the ISI, and it has to keep its masters happy by helping the Bangladeshis,” Karna told The Indian Express.“But the most immediate provocation is the renewed campaign against Bangladeshi infiltrators by the All Assam Students’ Union and other student bodies of the Northeastern states,” Karna pointed out. And if Karna is to be believed, over two lakh Hindi-speaking people, mostly belonging to Bihar, have left Assam since the ULFA stepped up violence against these communities in 2000. Official data says nearly 100 Hindi-speaking people were killed by the ULFA in Nalbari, Bongaigaon, Tinsukia, Dibrugarh and Sivasagar districts in 2000.A statement by the Government in the Assembly on March 26 had put the number of Hindi-speaking people killed by the ULFA from 2000 to March 2007 at 205. Meanwhile, the AABYCP has sent a memorandum to the Prime Minister saying ULFA and other militant groups have killed as many as 175 Hindi-speaking people in the state in the current year. “The ULFA’s stand is clear, they have to scare away the hard-working Biharis and accommodate the Bangladeshi infiltrators,” said Parsuram Dubey, general secretary of the Parishad.
