The International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS), with presence in 40 countries, even as strongly condemning the "murder" of 15 coal miners and injuring 11 more by the Indian army in Mon district, Nagaland, has said it is "joining" its network, Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), adding, it supports the Naga peoples, the people of India’s north east and all lovers of peace and freedom in calling for the immediate repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1958.
Releasing a statement by NPMHR, it said, AFSPA is sought to be implemented by the Government of India in Northeast States allegedly enabling Indian army’s "massacre of indigenous peoples and citizens with impunity." Calling for justice for all the "victims" of the Indian government, it has floated an online petition to repeal AFSPA to seek international solidarity.
NPMHR statement:
Ever since military aggression and occupation of the Naga homeland in 1954, civilians and common Naga people have been the target of the Indian army and the para-military forces. Armed with Draconian and inhuman legal immunity by the Indian Parliament, the Government of India continues unabated to kill civilians and common people at any time and at any place of its conveniences. Our women folks were stripped of all human dignity by the armed forces of the world’s largest Democracy, India.They are being raped, tortured, made to give birth publicly with no more human dignity left and are being subjected to live lives of untold trauma and heavy mental burdens. The Indian State does not spare any of its armed tools and occupational instruments to extinguish the Naga spirit of human dignity and spirit of equal human brotherhood. The world is prevented from knowing these ceaseless state-sponsored crimes against the Naga people and against humanity.
The reign of the Indian State-sponsored terrorism and war waged on civilian population is yet again showcased when the best-trained Indian elite forces butchered a group of humble people returning to their homes in a truck from their work places. The well-trained Indian army personnel engaged their most sophisticated firearms to kill them as if the simple, humble and bread-earning villagers were diseased and had to be culled.
Are the lives of the Naga people less than the lives of other fellow human beings? This evil act of the Indian government through its military forces once again reveals its true intent of owning our land after exterminating our Naga people.
Our people at all times seek to live in peace with all other people. Our history tells that we have never waged war on any people even in the days of old. We are being denied to live lives of dignity, to exercise our rights and are now being driven to live in fear. The Government of India, time and again, wages war against our Naga people. The actions of the Indian State upon our people are no less than the erstwhile apartheid. No power on earth had ever succeeded in subduing our Naga spirit.
We, the Naga Peoples’ Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), resolutely condemn the genocide committed upon the humble working-civilian villagers. We squarely hold the Government of India with all its draconian and fascist laws responsible for letting loose their dogs of war to maul to shreds the innocent villagers of Oting who have committed no crime whatsoever except commitment to humbly earn their livelihood with dignity and honor. Even at this moment when we are making this Statement, the Indian military and paramilitary forces are still engaged in their mayhem of killing the civilians in Mon Town.
Our anguish is unspeakable at this moment of grief. Our hearts go to the families of the slain innocent villagers. The NPMHR stands with them all and shall walk with them through thick and thin.
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