A Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, APRIL 2
The notion of human rights in the Naga context today, and its extended role in the future, was the central topic of a lecture initiated by The Morung Express, a Nagaland-based newspaper, here today at Dimapur.
The resource people at the lecture were Dr Visakhonu Hibo, the principal of Japfu Christian College and the secretary general of the Naga Peoples’ Movement for Human Rights, Neingulo Krome. Quite curiously, as acknowledged during the discussion session later, most of the discourse of both the speakers seemed to revolve around AFSPA and the Naga national movement.
According to Neingulo Krome, the emergence of NPMHR in 1978, in itself, was “basically to fight the Indian military force” and their human rights violations. And yet, the split of the erstwhile NSCN into two factions however forced the NPMHR to divert its focus as Nagas started abusing the rights of their own people, Krome shared.
Reflecting on this particularly turbulent period in Naga history, he said that the NPMHR “kept silent on many issues of human rights violation by our people on our own people in the name of freedom and nationalism.”
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Krome recalled that then it “became assort of mockery” for the NPMHR to condemn the “everyday killings” among the different Naga factions. “The situation as such that it was beyond the NPMHR to control it, or to even talk about it.”
To put this in context, he shared that back then certain Nagaland police officials were “hiring out” their pistols to the Naga underground cadres for Rs 5000 per day. “Because they (underground groups) needed the guns, bullets and money to keep the movement active.”
Krome had no hesitation in admitting that the NPMHR was “very inadequate” to address the human rights violation alone. On the continuation of AFSPA in Nagaland, he said that the primary reason for it was the silence of the people as well as the state government. “We are not raising enough voices.”
He also shared how RN Ravi, the former IB chief, had on one occasion stated that the only way to remove AFSPA from Nagaland was to remove the Indian military force, and replace them with Nagaland’s own.
Dr Visakhonu Hibo also remarked how, in Nagaland, we are made to forget our rights “when a country-made pistol is pointed at us.” She stated that the people have been “too restricted to even open their mouths. Even our thoughts are restricted.”
Hibo also remarked that “everyday people” in Nagaland today “struggles to identify with the kind of nationalism that we see.”
The event’s theme was, however, best captured by Akum Longchari, the editor of Morung Express, when he suggested that the pathway to the future is in the language of human rights. According to Longchari, the NPMHR should also question whether it is, in practice, a rights’ body or “a movement of resistance.”
