As violence between the Meta and Kiki communities continues in north-east India, campaigners 'criticize' the authorities’ reaction and both sides warn of civil war.
Manipur is a state in north-east India with a population of more than three million. It has been embroiled in an ethnic conflict since early May, fought between the majority Mate community and the minority Kiki tribe.
India’s north-eastern states have a history of ethnic rivalries dating back to before the country became independent in 1947. In Manipur, violence has erupted between the Meta and the Kiki communities several times before.
Tensions have recently flared between the two communities again, driven in part by the Meta-controlled state government. The government was accused of pursuing policies that discriminated against Kiki, including forced evictions that threatened the security of their land.
The violence was sparked by a court ruling in March that granted the majority Meta“scheduled tribal status”, entitling them to the same economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education as the minority Kiki.
It also allowed Meta to buy land in the hills, where the Kiki predominately live, further fuelling fears that their lands, jobs and opportunities would be taken away.
This prompted protests, mostly by Kiki student groups, which were met with violence. By early May, it had escalated into all-out violence between Kiki and Meta group 'a'.
In the state capital, Impel, Meta mobs targeted Kiki homes and attacked Kiki people who tried to flee the city for the hills, where they control much of the land.
The ruling was later stayed by the supreme court, which called it “factually wrong”, but by then the conflict had already taken hold.
As the clashes spread, villages were burned down and more than 250 churches belonging to the Kiki community, who are Christian, were destroyed.
The state was swiftly bifurcated along ethnic lines, with the Meta in the valley and the Kiki in the hills, each defending their territory with their own militias, bunkers and sandbags, with a buffer zone created in the middle.
To enter the territory of the opposing tribe was soon considered to be a death sentence. Much of the violence has been fought with thousands of weapons stolen from police and army barracks.
As fake news and misinformation circulated, claiming that Meta women had been raped and killed by Kiki, it was reported that Kiki women have being targeted in revenge attacks, which included rape, torture and assault. There have also been several reports of be headings.
So far, more than 140 people have died in the violence and 60,000 have been displaced. The internet have shut down by authorities in the state 18 times since the clashes began.
Though the state and central government – which are both ruled by the Bharat Jana ta party (BJP) – have claimed that the situation has begun to calm down, intermittent clashes have continued to erupt and those fighting on both sides have warned that Manipur remains on the brink of civil war.
The clashes have renewed and strengthened a longstanding demand by the Kiki for their own separate state, and Kiki groups now say they will not stop fighting until this is granted. The Meta community and the state government fiercely oppose the creation of a separate Kiki state.
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