Recent Incidents of Targeted Violence in Karbi Anglong District
Recent Incidents of Targeted
Violence in Karbi Anglong District, Assam
(December 2013-January 2014)
This report presents our findings as a fact-finding
team (FFT) that went to Karbi Anglong district mid-January (2014) to inquire into a
series of targeted attacks and the retaliatory violence that followed. As a
team, we sought to fully comprehend the factual record and the specific
political context within which these incidents occurred. We have found that perpetrators
of violence have not been identified, far less brought to book. This has allowed
for rumour to flourish and mutual suspicions to mount. A deepening estrangement
between the Karbis and Rengma Nagas living in the district could be the outcome.
The multiple armed groups that operate in the district and the wider region
with agendas that remain unclear, often using methods of terror and extortion, could
become bolder as a result.
Separately, we have as a team, urged the Assam
We have found from our interactions with a
number of administrators, civil society organisations and individuals displaced
in the recent violence that the current trouble in Karbi Anglong began with a
number of minor incidents that were clearly identified by responsible citizens
as potential flashpoints for future trouble. Despite a repeated entreaties to
check the alarming spiral of hostile rhetoric and actions, the local administration
remained quiescent.
The tension probably has its genesis in the
claims of a section of the Karbi tribal community for turning the autonomous
hill district into a ‘Karbi state’, a project that clashes with the several
decades old aspiration of other groups for greater autonomy within the Indian
nation, and in the case of the “Greater Nagalim” project nurtured by factions
of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) for an even more radical
program of political separation. We have been told that in the absence of fair mediation
between these competing demands, a number of armed groups have sprung up which
claim to represent these communities but whose antecedents and agendas very few
know about. Several of them are seen by
civil society and political organisations to be active impediments to the
pursuit of collective demands through peaceful means.
Thus, a number of minor
incidents occurring over the recent past, particularly since June last year,
have created a larger conflagration in late-December and early-January
resulting in the death of six people of the Rengma Naga community and nine of
the Karbi.
Our inquiries have revealed that these killings
have been random and brutal, but with a clear intent to provoke communal
enmity. The shooting and burning of elderly women of the Rengma Naga community,
the burning of their homes and the destruction of their orange orchards and
betelnut trees, together with what seem to have been retaliatory killings of
Karbi youth who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, show
that the alienation between the communities has reached alarming levels.
We believe that there are ways of mediating
between the competing demands of the Rengma Naga and Karbi communities – and
indeed, all other tribal groupings in Karbi Anglong – without providing any
room for unresolved claims to spill over into violence. This would require a
comprehensive policy to be worked out within a consistent framework of
principles, to ensure every ethnic group a proper place of dignity, full access
to their traditional resources and every opportunity to pursue avenues for
growth and development. This will also require mediation by a genuinely neutral
group that has the skills of diplomacy and negotiation and also the trust of
all the rival groups on the ground.
We have concluded from our inquiries that
many of the demands of these ethnic groups have been manipulated for expedient
gain by political forces both at the national and local levels. Indeed, there
are grounds to believe that at least some of the armed groups that claim to be
working for the cause of these ethnic groups may themselves be playthings in
the hands of larger political forces.
Security officials that we interacted with
have informed us that militant groups on both sides have been securing easy
access locally to both home-made and professional arms. We believe that the
sources of arms procurement should be identified and blocked since the easy
availability of lethal weaponry is a powerful incentive for militant groups to first
emerge and then splinter into multiple factions.
We also believe that the police force in
Karbi Anglong should show greater sensitivity to the demands made by civil
society leaders for protection and security, when they have reason to apprehend
a breach of the peace. In the recent incidents, we have been told that civil
society organisations from both sides made a number of representations to the
civil and police administration in the district, yet found them mostly unresponsive.
We have found that well-meaning mediation
between the warring groups by civil society organisations based in the area has
often been undermined by the intrusion of wider political interests. This
manner of intervention from the state and national-level groups is generally
motivated by resource exploitation interests. We believe that involvement of
state and national-level interests should be premised on the decree that they
will do no harm. Only by giving local groups the autonomy and the space to
negotiate their differences and determine the resource use pattern that would
best serve their collective interests, would the wider peace be ensured.
In terms of immediate action, we urge the Assam
We found from our visit to one of the camps
for the displaced that pregnant women were in need of specialised medical care.
There was in fact, a particular need to assess the needs of women and children
in the camp and to provide among other things, for special treatment for the
injured and the disabled. Trauma counselling, confidence building and
reconciliation procedures needed to be conducted in the camps, preferably on
the initiative of civil society organisations from both the communities.
We found that because of the geographic
remoteness of Karbi Anglong from the national capital and other metropolitan
centres, the crisis of internal displacement – which is little less than a
gross violation of the rights to equal citizenship, life and liberty -- had not
drawn the kind of concern it should have. We have in accordance with this
finding, urged that all relevant bodies with advisory and statutory authority
in related matters, such as the National Human Rights Commission, the National
Commission for Women, the National Commission for the Protection of Child
Rights and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, conduct their own
inquiries to arrive at the causes that triggered the violence and the best
means of ensuring there is no recurrence.
We found that some of the killings showed
cruel intent and premeditation. These need to be referred to local and
state-level human rights watchdogs for investigation in accordance with
applicable national and international standards and then taken up for
appropriate sanction in accordance with criminal law.
Narration
of facts
The recent spurt of ethnic violence in
Karbi Anglong followed a certain pattern. When speaking to civil society
leaders from affected communities, this team found a certain degree of agreement
on the facts, though not so on matters of agency. On the Rengma Naga side,
there is a belief that the Karbi Peoples’ Liberation Tigers (KPLT) an
organisation ostensibly committed to the creation of a separate state for the
people of the Karbi community, has been the principal agency of violence. This
belief stems from a number of events in recent months and we have been able in
the course of our inquiries to uncover some of these.
Civil society leaders
among the Karbi people though, are not convinced that this militant group is
for real. Even if they claim to be fighting for a demand that has long been on
the agenda of the leaders of Karbi civil and political society, they are not
seen to be advancing the cause with their acts of violence. Karbi civil society
is convinced that both the Rengma Naga community and they have become unwitting
tools of an agenda being executed by a “third force”. They believe that the
militant armed group that has in recent months sprung up on the other side, the
Rengma Nagma Hill Protection Force (RNHPF), is similarly, a new creation that
serves an agenda of this putative “third force”.
On 13 December two young Karbi men appeared
in Khirang village in Silonijan tehsil and from just outside the traditional gateway
found in most such habitations, began shouting all manner of abuse at the
residents for allegedly sheltering members of the RNHPF. As the Rengma civil
society organisations tell it, they were perhaps in a state of inebriation. A
group from the Rengma village then went in search of the two boys and found
them in their native village. They impressed upon the Karbi elders of the
village that the two miscreants should be held to account for their
transgression of the code of civility. The Karbi elders evidently in a
conciliatory mood, wrote out a letter of apology.
The following day, in this narration, the
two young Karbi men involved in the incident returned to Khirang with the
apparent intention to apologise in person for their misconduct. They were
however, taken captive by the villagers and roughed up. Under this mistreatment
which Rengma civil society actors say could have verged on torture, they
admitted that the KPLT may have been behind the October disappearance of a
prominent youth leader, Nzankhen Rengma. This revelation was followed by still
more severe mistreatment of the two youths.
Rengma civil society leaders concede that
the methods used in extracting this confession may not have been appropriate,
and that it may have been a wiser course to report the entire matter to the
local authorities. Since the investigation into the disappearance of Nzankhen
Rengma had stalled, the information gathered from the two youth seized in
Khirang village may have suggested possible leads in tracing the disappeared
person, now believed dead. Alongside, Rengma civil society organisations (CSO’s)
also insist that there was a major double standard in the public reaction to
the incident. While the roughing up of the two youths occasioned much public
outrage, including in the local press, the disappearance of a young man of
their community earlier and his possible killing, passed without a murmur.
Community elders from both sides saw the
possibility of an uncontrollable tit-for-tat developing from these events and
called a peace conference on 17 December at which all major CSOs from the
Rengma and Karbi side were represented. As reported in the agreed account, the
meeting “resolved that any individual or group involved in anti-social
activities would be fully held responsible by their own tribe”. The meeting
also asked that police outposts be set up at points where the possibility of
trouble was identified.
In the event, the appeal for calm went unheeded.
On 18 December, a pastor of the Rengma community was assaulted – beaten with
rifle butts -- by suspected KPLT militants as he returned from a funeral
service for his son-in-law. According to an account rendered by the Rengma
CSO’s, the attackers had an ample supply of firearms and other lethal weaponry
on display as they attacked the hapless pastor.
The following day, Nanthi Rengma, a
resident of Panjan Lethe village was assaulted and dragged away from his fish
farm, which was then vandalised. All the live fish from the farm were stolen
and the bunds were broken, draining out all its water. On 21 December, a group of Rengma villagers
on their way to attend a peace meeting convened on the initiative of the local
unit of the Congress party was intercepted and turned back, allegedly by KPLT
militants. The militants reportedly fired blank shells and used dire threats to
turn the peace contingent back. The next day, three Rengma youth were assaulted
very badly in the vicinity of Teron village, a Karbi habitation.
On the other side of the current communal
divide in Karbi Anglong, we have an account that is convergent in terms of
identifying the key incidents that tended to deepen embitterment. But the Karbi
account reverses the burden of blame. It speaks of two young men who after a
day of hard work, ventured into the vicinity of a .Rengma village on December
13, to partake of a paan, but
suffered the trauma of being taken captive and mercilessly thrashed. Their
offence had ostensibly only been to identify some fifteen alien elements
hanging about the Khirang village, all heavily armed and to warn that they
would raise the alarm since the explicit understanding between Karbi and Rengma
community leaders was that armed groups would not be allowed the run of
villages where peace-loving people from both sides lived.
Following this incident, in the Karbi
narration, there was a meeting of community elders, who drafted a letter making
the case for conciliation. On December 15, a small delegation that went to
Khirang village to deliver the epistle was again beaten up and left badly
bruised in body and spirit. According to subsequent testimony by a Karbi
political group, published in the Nagaland
Post on 8
January 2014 , the assailants on that
occasion “spoke fluent Assamese” and had masked their faces.
In terms of the subsequent events, there is
no serious divergence between Karbi and Rengma accounts. But as in every such
incident of collective violence, the narration of the original cause that lit
the first sparks is considered on both sides to be very important.
The
attempt at conciliation
Even with all these differences in
perception, there was a sufficient identity of interests between the two
communities for leaders from both Rengma and Karbi sides to jointly appear
before the Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Karbi Anglong district, demanding
administrative measures to cool the violent eruption of tempers. “The Karbis
and the Rengmas have been living together since many generations and they enjoy
cordial relations”, said the memorandum submitted to DC P.K. Burgohain on 24
December. Residents of the Chowkihola area, the petitioners said, had “come to
know that some unknown people are trying to foment trouble among the two peace
loving tribes”. This “unknown force”, the petition claimed, was “trying to
create another ethnic strife in the region”. “Witnesses from both the Rengma
and Karbi villages have reported that some unknown masked men have been
unleashing terror among the villagers and trying to put the blame on either the
Rengmas or the Karbis each time”.
CSO leaders from both sides during meetings
with this team, spoke of the DC being fairly responsive to their requests. He
was also reportedly, prompt in referring the matter to the Superintendent of
Police (SP). The response of the local police though, did not seem to inspire
great confidence among either side.
An example brought to the attention of this
team involved the “gaonburha” (or
village headman) of Barlanshu who went to the Chowkihola on 23 December, to
register a complaint that at 4 p.m. the previous day, a group of armed Karbi
youth had arrived at their village and physically abused three among the
residents. The victims of the abuse, who also accompanied the gaonburha were also threatened to not
speak about the incident since in the event that any investigation was
launched, they would be held responsible by the armed militants. The village
headman though aware of the threat, nonetheless took it as his responsibility
to bring the matter to the attention of the local police.
The three victims of physical abuse were
then directed to undergo a medical check and to file the results with the
police station. The gaonburha was
asked to take responsibility to ensure that all necessary information was made
available. This team has seen a copy of the diary entry made at Chowkihola
police station on the occasion and has also been briefed on the numerous alarms
that were sounded by the villagers about the possibility of an attack by
militant groups.
The police they allege, failed to post the
required number of personnel at the places where a threat existed. This team
learnt from the local authorities that the police force lacked the four-wheel
drive vehicles that were required to reach the affected villages. So once they
were apprised about the threat, they set about requisitioning the vehicles
through the prescribed procedure, which required the police station head to
write to the SP, who in turn would write to the DC. The DC would then grant the
authority following which the SP would write to the head of traffic police. Orders
were to be issued by the head of traffic police for requisitioning the required
number of private vehicles with the four-wheel drive feature. The process was
delayed till well after the trouble broke out, and of almost twenty-five trucks
requisitioned, only eleven had the four wheel drive feature in working
condition.
These trucks had other engine problems and
were seen parked in the Chowkihola police station gathering dust. Inmates of the shelters for displaced
people, informed this team that it is
normal practice for them to transport their orange harvest out of remote
orchards by mini-trucks. Though the roads need to be repaired after every
orange harvest, most villages where violence occurred are accessible through
this mode of transport. This team believes that the police alibi that they
lacked necessary means of transport to address the security needs of the
threatened villages, may be an evasion of responsibility.
Incidents
of December 27
Mutual suspicion was growing and in these
troubled circumstances, random and opportunistic attacks were transformed into
organised violence. This team interviewed several inmates of the displaced
persons’ shelter at Borpathar High School
One among the
male residents of the village, seventy-years old, prepared to meet the
challenge by joining the gathering in the headman’s home. But as they sat
there, they found that a number of attacks were already occurring – at around 5
a.m. on December 27 – targeting residences near the village gateway. Among the
first houses attacked was this septuagenarian’s, but since he was mobilising to
defend the village at the headman’s premises, he escaped the assault which his
wife fell first victim of. According to victim-survivors that this team met, the
armed men who marched into the village were followed by identifiable residents
from a neighbouring Karbi village. There was no compassion on display there, as
they sang “praise the lord” to the arson of the Rengma habitations, burnt the
betel nut trees within the homestead and pillaged the orange orchards that were
the main source of the villagers’ sustenance. The attackers then moved on to a number of
other villages, creating equal havoc.
In Renongaon in the Chowkihola Police
Station area, residents who happened to be just outside the village boundary
say that they saw flames leaping up as their huts were set on fire by the
raiders. Seeing a nearby camp of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), they
sought to alert the personnel on duty to the danger, seeking their intervention.
But the security picket refused to move. They reportedly had all the
communications equipment required to receive specific orders, but chose not to
act. Most of those who came to the relief camp
said that the tea garden workers student union leaders (adivasis) helped them
to come to the safety of the camps.
Revenge
attacks
While learning about these planned attacks,
this FFT also explicitly condemns the killing of nine youth, whose bodies were
discovered in highly decomposed state in Dimapur district in Nagaland. The incident
is yet to be traced to its sources, but is believed to be a revenge action by
the armed group that goes by the name of the Rengma Naga Hill Protection Force
(RNHPF). The only identified victim of this killing at the time that this FFT
was in the field, was of a youth leader of the Karbi tribe. All other bodies
remained unidentified, though the overwhelming belief was that they were all of
the Karbi community.
Distrust
builds up
In the days that followed, one among the
bodies discovered was identified as a youth leader of the Karbi community, who
happened to be in Dimapur district of Nagaland, probably on a personal errand.
The other bodies remain to be identified, though they are believed to be of
casual workers from the Karbi community. Again, these were just innocent
individuals who chanced to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Assam
Rengma Naga sensitivities were also piqued
by the response of the judiciary. The community believes that the number of
their people killed in the December 26 attacks should merit the same attention
as the nine who were killed in seeming vengeance. But the nine victims who may
be from the Karbi community have seemingly received greater attention,
including in terms of a judicial directive asking that the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) be tasked with pursuing the matter. At the same time, the
Rengma villages that have been ransacked, have had no such ministrations from
the central government authorities.
And
the authorities do nothing to remedy the situation
These are issues that need to be resolved
within the terms of the autonomous district administration that the Karbi Anglong
district has been privileged with since 1952. Within the terms of the autonomy
that the district has enjoyed, there have been a number of other movements that
have emerged, often in collision with each other. The Karbi community has been
seeking a further degree of autonomy within Assam
Rengma Nagas believe that the demand for
full statehood is a narrow demand of the Karbi community, which they are being
emboldened to pursue by the initial constitutional concession they managed to
extract, of getting a district named after them, almost as an ethnic homeland.
The Rengma community insists that they have a stake in the territory within
Karbi Anglong and have counterposed their own demand of a district within Assam
For a while, it seemed that the Rengma
demand for greater latitude within the Karbi Anglong Autonomous District Council,
would be fulfilled through a cooperative arrangement between the two
communities. That has not quite happened. And in that vacuum of several unmet
demands, which exists within the larger context of the negotiation that seems
to go nowhere, between the NSCN and the Indian government, there have been
various disorders developing. At one time, the Karbi community leadership
showed an inclination to accommodate other tribal groups such as the Rengma,
the Santal Adivasi, Chakma and others, within the Karbi Anglong Autonomous District
Council. That ecumenical spirit now seems to have vanished, leading to a
hardening of the demands from other tribal communities within Karbi Anglong,
for their own autonomous spaces.
Nation
state politics may have done a lot to make things worse
Within this matrix of unmet demands and
political aspirations that tend to collide, the state and central authorities
may have played a far from constructive role. From the early-1990s, Karbi
Anglong district has witnessed a number of armed movements cropping up,
ostensibly to pursue the same demands that parliamentary political parties have
been seeking. First there was the Karbi National Volunteers, then the Karbi
National Liberation Front and various others. The KPLT, believed to be the key
player in the current phase of turmoil, supposedly came into existence in the
early years of this decade. Few among the Karbi community seem able to identify
the main players behind this militant group. Responsible CSO leaders from the Karbi
community speak of about fifty elements, supposedly armed cadre of the KPLT,
surrendering to the district authorities in 2013, in a ceremony that remains to
this day, shrouded in secrecy. There is very little known about the identity of
these elements that surrendered, or what their status following that act is.
Local police authorities show little
hesitation in admitting that it is part of the prevailing security doctrine to
use surrendered elements from the various militant groups in fighting the counter-insurgency
battle. In the process, a number of militant organisations could be spawned
that exist entirely on the patronage of the security and intelligence agencies.
The tribal groups that these militants ostensibly fight for, remain completely
unaware of where they came from and who they represent.
Soon after the bodies of the nine Karbi
youth killed in supposed retribution for the attacks on the Rengma villages
were discovered in Dimapur district of Nagaland, all Rengma CSOs issued strong
statements disavowing the deed. Clearly, neither the Rengma nor Karbi
communities had any faith in the principle of an eye for an eye. The RNHPF at
the same time, issued its own statement condemning the heinous mass murder and
disavowing any responsibility. However, the following
day, the RNHPF’s supposed chief, Keyhan Rengma, issued his own clarification –
supposedy based on information received from the head of the militant group’s
“eastern command” – that his group had indeed, carried out the mass killing.
The sequence of events left people from
both sides deeply sceptical, except for those willing to believe the worst
about the other side. The suspicion is strong among both Rengma and Karbi civil
society leaders, that they are becoming playthings in the hands of a manipulative
state apparatus, that in fact, they are being compelled to own up and take
responsibility for the most cynical actions of a security system that cares for
little else than its own sustenance.
Security officials now claim that a further
sequence of surrenders of KPLT cadre is imminent, including of their supposed
leader Rono Rhongpi. If this does materialise, it is to be carried out in the
full light of day, with Karbi CSO’s and other tribal communities also being
involved, and with the future plans involving the surrendered militants being
revealed and held up to a full scrutiny by all stakeholders in maintaining the
peace in Karbi Anglong.
MEMBERS
OF THE FACT-FINDING TEAM
Dr Doma Tshering Bhutia, Human Rights Law Network , Sikkim
Prof.Rosemary Dzuvichu, Nagaland University
Mr Sanjai Sharma, Human Rights Law Network,
Delhi
Mr.Satya Sivaraman, Freelance
Journalist Human Rights Campaigner, Delhi
Mr.Sukumar Muralidharan, Freelance
Journalist, Delhi
See also:
