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KARDOM AND WELCOME

To the official web logs of KHRW

 

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MONTHLY ARTICLE

A FAR CRY

- Morningkeey Phangcho

 

There is a mayhem, chaos and confusion everywhere. There are fewer recruits in the seminaries and even fewer visits to the places of worship. People are scared to walk on the road and even their houses are no longer safe as scarcities and terror hit them every other day.

 

This is the present scenario of Karbi Anglong, the blue hills once regarded as the most serene, beautiful and the abode of nature lovers. Today those roads known to the people are no more theirs. As if even the pot-holed roads and the wayward pebbles that you often encounter in your mandatory journeys in Karbi Anglong are little terrorists staring at you in the face— as if warning you ….. ‘hey beware, you are entering a forbidden territory!’ Once the golden farmlands and mind refreshing lakes are no more the places you wished to loiter around and attain the oneness with nature. The abodes of Karbi gods and goddesses are sacrileged as blood spilled is too many and too often—as if sacrifices have no meaning anymore. The environments they love that beget Karbi traditions and beliefs seem to have all disappeared into the deeper morass of widespread senselessness. A person now knows nothing but can only see the ever-increasing grip of fear and darkness. He has even forgotten to feel how life was yesterday.

 

All those genocidal killings that have begun to dominate the ‘bigger news’— purported to be ‘communal clashes’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the mainstream psyche, have only shown the Karbis as the savage aggressors who only deserve to be dealt with usual administrative disdain and more brutality even as governments keep talking of ‘talks’. Here in Karbi Anglong, where every civilian is a victim, the realities are changing for them and so also for their relationship with their next-door neighbor who could well be an ‘enemy’ lurking at the next corner. Fear, mistrust and hurt have all but destroyed co-existence and feelings of brotherhood as the mysterious hands of the perpetrators are working furtively— unchecked, unbothered and safe! Peace has become a far-fetched object, as even dreams are increasingly becoming nightmares.

 

The recent killings of the Hindi Speaking people in Karbi Anglong committed by the cadres of ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom) and the “Karbi extremists” KLNLF (Karbi Longri N.C. Hills Liberation Front) have only given a way out for the beleaguered Indian Army to shift its forces to the ‘inaccessible’ hills of Karbi Anglong from the snowy mountains of Kashmir that had been under ‘too much’ media glare. Inaccessibility has its own beauty for the Indian army as the trembling souls and their cries are lost in the wilderness— unheard and unnoticed. Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 is already in place and the draconian law’s progenitor— the ‘Assam Disturbed Areas Act-1955’ has all along been in the hills of Karbi Anglong. As if the ‘democratic’ governments don’t need any justification why in Karbi Anglong the fundamentals of fair trials and natural justice are not safeguarded for the hill people, as there is no independent judiciary— where the District Magistrate (a Deputy Commissioner) combines as both the civil and criminal ‘judge’. Assam Disturbed Areas Act has been an off and on phenomena in Karbi Anglong since the district’s inception— ostensibly to ‘check infiltration of Naga extremists’. But alas….that is not to be. Insurgency has spread and it is a die-die situation for the Karbis here. If….if you are supporting the insurgency, you die. If..if you are against them…you die. And whenever any such incident of killings takes place (that often does), government offers ‘talks’. But what if the boys in the bush really want to ‘talk’— is there any taker? It’s a far cry. How many generations of Karbis can withstand this— already drenched emotionally, physically, economically…as insurgency is beginning to take larger and bigger tolls beyond their comprehension and the security forces from the troubled zones of Punjab and now Kashmir are gradually making Karbi Anglong their permanent postings. Assam government too has declared more ‘police districts’ in Karbi Anglong. Counter-insurgency has already claimed a reported case of rape of a 45 year old Karbi mother, just near Diphu, the head quarter town of the district. And Bihar Regiment Colonel Sakil in his press briefings 30^th September from his temporary camp of Diphu PWD Inspection Bungalow assured exemplary military punishment if any one of his ‘jawans’ was proved involved. He has even asserted full protection of ‘human rights’ (maybe, he is aware of the ‘naked fury’ of Manipuri women.) But to the common psyche of ordinary Karbi civilian, Colonel Sakil and his Bihar Regiment owe an explanation— is this rape of a Karbi woman the revenge of the killings of Biharis of Bakulia? Well…..we will have to wait…or it just might be another far-cry in the wilderness!