Experts at the United Nations recently raised an alarm regarding the reports of serious human rights violations and abuses in India’s northeast state of Manipur, including acts of sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, home destruction, forced displacement, torture and ill-treatment especially of Christian Kuki ethnic minority.
In a press release, the 18 experts, most of whom are special rapporteurs working with the UN Human Rights Council, pointed at an inadequate humanitarian response in the wake of the grave humanitarian crisis in the state.
Referring to (among other incidents) the video of two Kuki women being sexually assaulted in public, the experts were appalled by the reports and images of gender-based violence targeting hundreds of women and girls of all ages, and predominantly of the Kuki ethnic minority. Their statement continued: “The alleged violence includes gang rape, parading women naked in the street, severe beatings causing death, and burning them alive or dead.”
“It is particularly concerning that the violence seems to have been preceded and incited by hateful and inflammatory speech that spread online and offline to justify the atrocities committed against the Kuki ethnic minority, particularly women, on account of their ethnicity and religious belief,” it added.
According to the statement, the experts said that the recent events in Manipur were another tragic milestone in the steadily worsening situation for the ethnic and religious minorities in India.
The experts welcomed fact-finding missions conducted by lawyers and human rights activists in Manipur, but noted that such initiatives were being responded to with harassment.
One such fact-finding mission, by the Editors’ Guild of India (EGI), submitted its findings, only for the Manipur police to file an FIR against it soon after. EGI’s report had criticised the BJP-led Manipur government’s internet shutdown and said that the media based out of Imphal had turned into “Meitei media”.
This is the second fact-finding team that has seen legal action after publishing a report on Ma-nipur. In July, a case was registered against Annie Raja, Nisha Siddhu and Deeksha Dwivedi, who were part of the National Federation of Indian Women’s team in Manipur and had said in their report that Manipur was seeing state-sponsored violence.
The UN experts also expressed concern over the Indian government’s response to the violence, which continues to rage over four months after it began. “We have serious concerns about the apparent slow and inadequate response by the Government of India, including law enforcement, to stem physical and sexual violence and hate speech in Manipur,” the press release quoted the experts as saying.
The UN human rights experts concluded their statements by hoping that public officials who may have aided and abetted the incitement of tensions in Manipur will be held to account.—KMS
