Mizo Students Demand Public Apology From Indian PM For Bombing Mizoram

Aizawl, Mar 5 : A public apology from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was today demanded by a powerful student body in Mizoram for the bombing of civilian settlements in the state by the Indian Air Force on March 5, 1966.

The bombing took place after the MNF led by the late Laldenga declared independence from India and is observed as 'Zoram Ni' (Mizoram Day) on this day by the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) or Mizo Students Federation.

"The Prime Minister and the Union government must tender a public apology for what the Indian Air Force and the army did to the innocent civilians in Mizoram in 1966, chairman of the North East Students Organisation (NESO), Samujal Bhattacharyya said at a function here.

To know more about the bombing of Mizoram By Indian Air Force here are some articles…

On the afternoon of March 4 1966, a squadron of jet fighters hovered over Aizawl and dropped bombs leaving a number of houses in flames and number of people dead.

The next day, more excessive bombing took place for several hours which left most houses in Dawrpui and Chhingaveng areas of Aizawl in ashes and hundreds were killed.

According to local records, Hunter and Toofani fighters were deployed for the Aizawl bombardment, which became the first and only aerial attack a country had carried out against its own people. In the first wave of attack the planes used machine guns and later on used bombs.

The attack came in three waves, on the second day the attack lasted for about five hours. The fighters came from Tezpur, an IAF air base in Assam. Apart from Aizawl, Tualbung and Hnahlan villages in northeast Mizoram were bombarded.

The great and powerful Indian Government a terror to Pakistan and a threat to China on March 5, 1966 used Jet Fighters, something they had never done against China and Pakistan, bombed it’s own people. Surprisingly, there were no human casualties officially reported in any of the air raid, nor anything mentioned in Indian Air Force official website.There were no lawyers then among Mizos, no human rights activists.

Governed by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 and the Assam Disturbed Areas Act, 1955.

Communication like Telephone, Television and the Internet had not even entered the people’s imagination. On March 9, 1966 where the PM was answering a foreign correspondent, insisted that the air force was “deployed to drop men and supplies.” one of the correspondent stated whether the shells of bombs, which had been dropped in Aijal (Aizawl), be sent to Delhi to ask the Prime Minister, ‘How do you cook this ration?

If these are supplies, please tell us how you cook these things’?” Strongly condemning the use of air force, MLA Hynniewta produced photographs of one unexploded bomb and some fragments of exploded bombs as proof of the Aizawl air attack, which was strongly denied by the Government of India.

Until today there has been no satisfactory answer as to why India used such excessive air force against its own citizens in order to suppress an insurgency.

via Defence Aviation

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizoram#Insurgency
http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/the-pied-piper-of-mizoram
http://www.warbirdsofindia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=190
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2214812/The-Day-Our-Jerusalem-Burned
http://qc.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070306221342AAr4GpJ
http://mutiny.in/2009/04/16/my-tryst-with-tehelka/
http://zoindigenous.blogspot.com/2009/03/india-drops-bombs-to-its-civilian.html