On FMR issue Naga club seeks UN, President of India to intervene

Kohima: The Naga Club has written to the President of India and the Secretary General, United Nations opposing the scraping of Free Movement Regime (FMR) and construction of permanent fencing, which it alleged, is another instrument of India’s persistent and successive aggression over the Nagas.

Terming the decision to scrap the FMR a crime against humanity in general and the Nagas in particular, the Naga Club said it is compelled to seek their intervention in “preventing the perpetuation of another systematic orchestrated organized repression by India against the Nagas.”

Alleging that the present dispensation of the Government of India continues to uphold Nehru’s legacy of arrogant aggression against the Nagas by its decision to end the FMR, the Naga Club said, “What makes it even more cruel, inhumane and criminally inclined is that it has decided to end the FMR purportedly at the behest of the sitting Chief Minister of India’s Manipur, who is already infamous for the alleged ethnic cleansing orchestrated on a section of its tribal Christian population, thus making the present ruling dispensation in Delhi a partner in crime that the dispensation in Manipur is accused of.”

“What makes it more malicious in the policies of India towards the tribal populace is that it purportedly decided to end the FMR on the strength of the justification by the Chief Minister who accuses the existence of FMR to justify and condone the occurrence of unimaginable violence and crimes committed on a section of the tribals under his watch,” the Naga Club further alleged.

It stated that to cover up the crimes on ethnic minorities in Manipur, another crime is being manufactured against the ethnic tribals in the whole region around the arbitrary international border in the form of abrogating the FMR and the proposal to erect permanent fencing to divide the indigenous ethnic tribals.

The Naga Club therefore vowed that the Nagas shall oppose any restriction of movement of its people in its indigenous ancestral lands as well as oppose the erection of any physical barrier that is built on arbitrary and imaginary lines devised to divide and separate the ethnic Nagas in their own dwelling places.

“The Indo Naga conflict is one of the longest conflicts that continue till today. It continues to persist so because India refuses to acknowledge the ground realities of its occupational aggression and/or its policies of oppression that it continues to perpetrate in the likes of the scrapping of FMR. Such acts shall only serve to push the wedge of mistrust deeper into the Indo-Naga political conflict that refuses to cease,” it stated.