On 4 December 2021, a unit of India’s 21st Para Special Forces, the Special Forces unit, killed six civilians near the village of Oting in the Mon District of Nagaland, in a clear case of staged encounter. Eight more civilians and a soldier were killed in subsequent violence. The killings were widely condemned with many calling to repeal and revoke the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.
The military unit has gone on record to admit failure on their part and accepted their mistakes and that the botched up operation was a case of ‘mistaken identity’, a term slapped to justify their atrocities and intentional act of human right violation. The atrocious act was committed not only on the villagers of Oting, but symbolically on all the Naga brethren who stood together as one, having felt again the pain of past senseless atrocities of the brutal Indian military machineries that has killed in thousands and violated the rights of many more.
Protest broke out from various parts of Nagaland, condemnation poured from all over the country and made headlines in international newsprint across the world, thousands took to the streets to protest as the news shook every being that stood for the dignity of human rights. Subsequently the ENPO took a very rightful and tough stand. Some of the prominent decisions it undertook were:
1. Non-cooperation: to abstain from any national celebrations or such activities; non-participation in army civic programmes; non-attendance to any of their official invitations and disallow any recruitment drive within eastern Nagaland areas,”
2. It demanded that Indian security force personnel involved in the killings be booked under relevant law and be brought under civil court for trial.
3. It demanded the withdrawal of Union home minister Amit Shah’s “self-defence statement” in the parliament,
4. To repeal the ‘draconian’ Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1958 from the entire Northeast states.
5. To write to the state government to immediately set up the Nagaland State Human Rights Commission.
6. It declared to observe December 4 and 5 as ‘black days’ in the entire ENPO jurisdiction
Barely 5 months down the line, the ENPO along with the newly elected MP Ms Phangnon Konyak shocked the whole people of Nagaland, in a despicable act of treason against one’s own innocent brethren killed in cold blood by their shallow and unconvincing compromise on the ground of Christianity. And as if that were not enough to insult the intellect of the Nagas, they went further to rub salt on the raw wound by showering praises on the Indian Security Forces and glorifying them as “Friends of the hill people, enemies to none”.
What changed the equation? Why have the ENPO betrayed the trust that the people of the region bestowed on it? The people of Nagaland stood with the ENPO to fight for justice for the fallen brothers. The issue is no more only about Oting, nor about the great Konyak people or of the eastern brethren. This is also about the human rights of the Nagas, and of humanity. How could the same ENPO that took a tough stand, melt so helplessly in an act of betrayal to bring shame on the whole of ENPO?
Can a seat in Rajya Sabha for 6 years be equated with the lives and blood of more than a dozen innocent Naga brothers killed and spilled in a cold blooded staged encounter? Is the MP seat worth the denial of justice to the surviving families and the victims whose lives were ruthlessly snatched away from them and their families? When Phangnon Konyak was nominated as the BJP candidate from the UDA coalition and NPF withdrew its candidature, there was a sinister feeling that she was chosen as an appeasement politics to quell the churning of the rising anger that has been fomenting in Nagaland, and esp in the eastern region and Mon in particular. Optimism however called for shedding away those negative intuition to force oneself to believe that she was chosen to be an ambassador of the Nagas as well as to ensure that a louder voice of the recent cold blooded massacre in Oting can be resonated and sounded in the corridors of power. We all hoped that she would be an ambassador for truth and justice to voice out for those murdered souls of Oting so that the cries of their blood can be heard loud enough in the parliament to ensure justice. It will also be her moral obligation to do so. All our optimism was proven wrong. It is now very clear that she was not propped up to the present political dispensation to give voice to the people, or to represent the sentiments of the people, which she otherwise could’ve if she ever had a conscience and sense of moral responsibility to the people. It is now clear that she was elevated to supress the people. And she just proved it so with her full consent and active participation to abort the truth and facilitate the miscarriage of justice. This is an injustice not just to the Oting victims, or the Nagas, but to humanity.
Phangnon’s candidature served the benefit of the government of Nagaland for several reasons:
· The candidature from a BJP party worker struck the right chords with the central powers.
· It advocated women empowerment that appealed to both the central and the regional societies.
· It ensured a vote guarantee for BJP in the upper house.
· It benefitted the NDPP by indebting the favour and benevolent goodwill of the central govt to itself by not opposing a BJP candidate.
· The NPF by withdrawal of its candidate and supporting her candidature, struck a good relation with its coalition partners
One likely reason however was the pressing need to quell the anger of the Nagas and esp a community in particular of which more than a dozen had been slaughtered in cold blood and the Government of India was indebted to the state and the community in particular in terms of lives and human rights violation, having been also projected poorly in the international domain. She was the embodiment of a Naga, a victim, a mother, and a brother to the fallen brothers. All we hoped was that she would stand for the sentiments of the people to ensure justice and was therefore given the needed space to be elevated on to a high pedestal without contest. How wrong had we been to trust her that she would use her position of power to ensure justice for her Naga brothers.
How could ENPO, of all people have such a short memory against the staged encounters that snuffed out innocent lives, and the subsequent lies and injustice spoken on the floor of the Indian parliament? How can the very people that were loudest of all, eat up their words without shame and remorse and quote Christian forgiveness to cover their naked hypocrisy and guilty conscience? For the ENPO to jump the gun and proclaim forgiveness before it was even begged for, before the guilty even confessed their guilt for their abominable crime, and before the SIT reports and the due process of law made any attempts to deliver justice, was not only preposterous, but a betrayal of the worst kind, because it came from one’s own brethren on whom all hope and trust for the fight for justice was placed. Do the officials including the MP even have the moral high ground to hold their posts any longer for failing the people and the families of the victims in particular? If they continue to cling to their positions and chair like leeches after a treacherous betrayal to uphold justice and truth, it only affirms that they have compromised the cause of justice for personal gains. There can be no real peace without justice. The unwarranted and uncalled for attempts by the MP and the ENPO to hush up the abominable crime is a blot in the history of ENPO and negated all that it proudly stood for.
The last piece of the puzzle to prove the treachery of the Indian government and how it uses politics to its advantage, and how it had craftily managed to drag ENPO into its game plan, and which will not be a surprise is if the MP, the ace card of Indian Government to hush up the Oting massacre, belonged to the village of Oting. Is she?
That the hushing up of Oting massacre is the first significant mission she took up for the Indian Govt’s benefit after her induction into the parliament, it is now apparent that the chair in which the MP sits was paid for with the blood and lives of more than a dozen innocent Oting brothers. Was there a pre-poll agreement to lend her an MP seat in exchange of hushing up the crime? We will never get to know. Was there a motive in the minds of India to grant her a seat to hush up the matter? The circumstances are unfolding and speaks for itself. While it appears that the atonement for Indian military crime had been in the form of political rewards, what will be the atonement that the MP and the ENPO officials pay for to their conscience and that of others for having failed them so miserably and subverting the truth and justice? The people are watching….to what lower levels you will stoop, even as the people cringe in disgust and shame.
The people must rise above such selfish leaders that are willing to deny the pursuit of justice for their personal gains.
Kuolachalie Seyie KN Mhonthung Lotha
President, Naga Club General Secretary, Naga Club