Bangkok, Jun 16 : A group of NGOs has called for greater transparency on plans
for India’s $214m transport project to link Myanmar’s port of Sittwe
with the landlocked Indian state of Mizoram.
The development, involving port reconstruction, dredging of the Kaladan
River, and a new 130 km long road, is going on without any consultation
with affected communities in Arakan and Chin states, the Kaladan
Movement alleged in a statement.
The Indian industrial conglomerate Essar is overseeing the project and
is currently reconstructing Sittwe port to handle large ships and
renovating Paletwa town port facilities.
“The highway component of the Kaladan Project is to be built by an as
yet unnamed Burmese construction company, and the exact route of the
highway or timeframe for its construction has never been publicly
announced,” said the group of NGOs.
The entire project is scheduled to be completed in 2016.
Aizawl, Jun 16 : Mizoram's lone Rajya Sabha member Lalhming Liana of the
opposition Mizo National Front (MNF) on Friday denied allegations that
he filed fraudulent leave travel concession (LTC) claims with the
government.
Liana, who was reportedly under the CBI scanner in the LTC
scam, said he did not make any such claim.
"I did not know we
have LTC facilitie," the two-time Rajya Sabha MP, whose term expires on
July 18, said.
He added that he knew he was entitled to a certain amount
of free travel annually. He also said he did not know one had to
actually travel to file an LTC claim.
Agartala, Jun 16 : Three traders and their driver were kidnapped by tribal guerrillas from Mizoram, police said here today.
“Five businessmen from northern Tripura went to adjoining western Mizoram on Saturday in connection with their trade. Armed militants waylaid their vehicle and kidnapped three traders and the driver of the car,” a Tripura police spokesman told reporters.
Two traders managed to escape when the members of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) stopped the vehicle in western Mizoram’s Faileng village, 20 km from the Tripura-Mizoram border.
Tripura Police have asked their Mizoram counterparts to rescue the hostages. The Border Security Force (BSF) has also been alerted to nab the militants if they tried to cross the India-Bangladesh border.
The NLFT militants in separate incidents had abducted three Tripura businessmen and a telecommunication professional from the same area in Mizoram last year. However, the captives were freed after a few months following payment of ransom money.
After the erection of fencing and strengthening the security along the India-Bangladesh boundary with Tripura, the NLFT extremists use Mizoram to cross the border.
The NLFT guerrillas, with their base in Bangladesh, have been kidnapping people in Tripura and Mizoram to collect ransom.
Mizoram has unfenced and porous international border of 404 km with Myanmar and 318 km with Bangladesh.
Tripura also shares 856-km-long border with Bangladesh and some parts of the border areas are still unfenced.
Dzükou Tribal Kitchen, which serves Naga food, has
reopened in Delhi. The decor is the same and, thankfully, so is the
food, says Amrita Madhukalya
For those of you lamenting the demise of the
charming little Naga eatery that shut its doors late last year at
Delhi's Hauz Khas Village, Dzükou Tribal Kitchen is back. Housed in a
back alley of the tony neighbourhood, Dzükou had, arguably, the best
view. If you've ever relished their delectable Naga pork ribs, sighing
at the glorious sight of the sun going down on the Hauz-I-Alai while
birds hurried by to their nests, you'd agree.
Just so that you don't buy into a misreading: Dzükou is now no
longer at Hauz Khas Village. It has moved a few doors away to the Hauz
Khas Main market, which along with the neighbouring Safdarjung
Development Area (SDA) community market, has been the biggest
beneficiaries of the exodus of good eating joints from Hauz Khas
Village.
Adding its bit to the ever-growing universe of exotic cuisine in the
capital, Dzükou, in its new avatar, is spacious (it boasts of parking
space). But, once inside, you realise nothing much has changed. There is
the same mural of three Naga tea garden girls, and almost the same
menu. (Thank god for their pork ribs!)
The decor has changed a bit: interior designer Mukul Sood was roped
in to do up the place. The result is a very traditional Naga ambience,
with contemporary, minimalist chic. There is a six-seater and five
eight-seaters, with the provision for Naga shawl blinds to accommodate
more guests. There is a small fountain, where water spews from burnished
bamboo, and the ceiling is dhokuwa, sourced from Assam, a traditional
bamboo weave used as fences in village homes. The façade of a Naga hut
stands in one corner of the room to serve as a bar that is still to open
– the liquor licence is due soon. And there's a space for buffets,
which owner Karen Yopthomi informs me, will also start shortly.
The menu is currently the old Naga menu, and there are plans to
incorporate five dishes each from cuisines of all northeastern states.
We started with the smoked buff salad (Rs279), and the best-selling
Naga pork ribs (Rs349). As with most northeastern food, the meat has
just the right amount of chewiness and is smoked to perfection. The buff
salad is a wee bit hot, and comes with fresh greens like yam leaves,
Naga spring onions and fresh bamboo shoot. We were delighted that the
succulent and crispy pork ribs had not changed at all and was in top
form.
To wash down the starters, we called for the famed fruit beer
(Rs149) next. It tasted better and headier than the pale beers one finds
in Dilli Haat or in the eateries in North Campus, but we must warn you
that it was really sweet.
For the main course, we ordered smoked buff curry (Rs319), chicken
with fresh bamboo shoot (Rs319, there are alternatives of chicken and of
dry bamboo shoot), a side dish of rosep aon (dry, Rs169) and pork
anishi, a paste made of smoked yam leaves (Rs319). The smoked buff curry
is not for the faint-hearted, there are generous dollops of raja
mircha, known as the hottest chilli in the world, and fresh greens. The
chicken with fresh bamboo shoot was full of flavour, and again, a bit
hot. The rosep yon is an assortment of greens like bitter gourd, fresh
bamboo shoot, yam leaves, Naga spring onions, Naga beans, etc. Our
favourite amongst these was pork anishi — the smoked yam and the smoked
pork has a character of its own, and you will most possibly reach out to
more than one serving.
The mains also consisted of steamed rice (Rs99) and an assortment of
chutneys — a smoked chilli-tomato-onion paste, raja mircha chutney with
dry fish and raja mircha chutney with shredded beef (Rs129 each). It
will need a warrior to survive the chilli-tomato-onion paste, but the
raja mircha chutneys came with their own flavours. We strongly recommend
the one with that came peppered with slivers of crispy roast beef.
Dzükou will also host musicians from the northeast, who will come
and perform at the tiny platform.
The Tatseo Sisters performed last
week, and Alobo Naga might perform in the coming few weeks.
Karen, who takes special care of the food cooked in the kitchen,
sources her ingredients all the way from Nagaland. The smoked meats, the
yam leaves, the axhone, the dry mushrooms, the Naga spring onions and
the raja mirchi — all come to the capital on a train. And, I guess,
that's what makes Dzükou's food so authentic and straight out of the
lush valley in Nagaland. And oh, did we tell you that Naga food does not
use any oil to cook us this storm?
Bangalore, Jun 16 : People belonging to North-East regions residing in Bangalore and
other cities of Karnataka attended a meeting and interacted with
committee members, former MP and member of the committee H T Sangliana.
Sangliana said during the interaction job-related and security
related issues surfaced. "The participants raised concern over violation
of minimum wage rules, negligence of the police to address their
problems, among others," he said.
Addressing the security-related problem, Sangliana said the
committee will ask Karnataka government to make arrangements at police
station level to promptly tackle North-East related cases because the
police are unhelpful.
"They are not registering cases promptly and protecting the
accused despite their complaints against them in clear terms," he said.
The issues that surfaced in a meeting with the panel members was that of security related problems.
Sangliana said the committee will ask the government to establish a
helpline and institute North-East-related cells at the police station
level and at the police headquarters to curb cases going unnoticed and
unheard.
"The panel will urge the government to designate senior-level
police officers to handle all such cases and if necessary request for
special prosecuting agency for giving free legal aid for northeast
people," Sangliana said.
Sangliana said "there was a need for better relations between
employers and employees in the context of approximately three lakh
northeast people living in here."
M P Bezbarua, who is heading the panel, did not attend the meeting.
An interaction with the world’s longest hunger striker
It
was a meeting, an interaction with not a celebrity, neither any famous
educationist, nor a politician, but for me, it was more than that. It
was an interaction wherein I found that she is not an educationist, but
is a subject of research papers and that her life itself is a source of
learning. I found that she is not a politician, but her fight was such
that it became one of the very important political movements. I found
that she is not a celebrity but people were fascinated with her, media
wanted to click her and the police surrounded her. Afterall, it was the
case of World’s longest hunger striker who has been on a hunger-strike
since last 14 years in the Manipur state of India with the demand to
repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act or AFSPA.
AFSPA is a special act that empowers the
armed forces of India with an extraordinary power when they operate in a
conflict area where AFSPA is imposed. These extraordinary powers
include the right to shoot, torture on mere suspicion and arrest without
warrant. The forces are also empowered with legal impunity. No offence
can be registered without any prior approval of central government. This
act has led to extra-judicial killings, rapes, kidnapping, torture and
fake encounters by security forces but not a single permission was ever
given by the Government of India to prosecute any army personals.
In protest against the havoc created by
AFSPA, in 2000, Irom Chanu Sharmila decided to sit on a hunger-strike
against AFSPA for a day in the hope that the Government that will listen
to her. Today, she is in her 14th year of hunger-strike. Yet, her faith
has remained unshaken. She is hopeful that the Government will listen
to her. As her supporter, I have not only admired her but have been
deeply amazed and inspired by her relentless faith and determination.
Even after 14 years of awaiting justice, even with health problems, she
remains strong and determined. It has always been a mystery to me and it
was this one thing that I took with me when I got the privilege to
interact with her.
Throughout the interaction, she had a
smiling face. She resonated positivity and calmness. She was soft-spoken
but her determination was powerful even in her words.
She had started her talk with the story
of King Ashoka who as a warrior had fought many kings but had became
tearful and sensitive after the Kalinga war which had claimed thousands
of lives. He had become so moved that he had renounced war and had
started working for peace. She hoped that the Government may also become
like Ashoka. She expressed her hope that the Government will also
realize. They will improve themselves. They will understand that
war/violence is never the solution.
Since her demand to repeal of AFSPA is
shown as confined to Manipur, I inquired about it and she said that
AFSPA is an inhuman law and it does not deserve to be in any region. On
my question that what will you do if the government will be agreed to
lift it from Manipur but not from J&K. She remarked (with smile),
“Let them lift from Manipur first and then they must do it from all
other states including Jammu and Kashmir”.
On asking that what keeps her going? What
has motivated her to have continued their struggle for so long? She
smiled and replied, “conscience”. Her conscience doesn’t allow her to
see this injustice. She refuted the claim that she is committing
suicide. She remarked that she loves life.
I was moved by her simplicity. She is a
simple person and in that simplicity, lies her strength. She has been
awaiting justice even though she was never a direct victim. She was not a
political activist yet she decided to devote her life for justice. She
was not doing it for any reason, any political motive but for humanity.
She decided to fight because she wanted that everyone should have the
right to justice. Everyone should possess the same rights. She is an
ordinary citizen, she said, but with a conscience.
Ravi Nitesh is a Petroleum Engineer, Founder- Mission Bhartiyam, Core Member- Save Sharmila Solidarity Campaign
follow on twitter: www.twitter.com/ravinitesh Blog: www.ravinitesh.blogspot.com
An ethnic Naga headhunter in the remote village of Cheme Khuk in Burma’s far north. (Photo: Andrzej Muszynski)
Kachin State/Sagaing Division, northern Burma — In the remote village
of Cheme Khuk in Burma’s far north, I am talking to a man who must be
one of the last ethnic Naga chief headhunters still alive today. Now in
his 80s, he recalls an episode from the last great war, when he was a
boy.
“I was in the jungle with my father and brothers,” the old chief
says. “Suddenly, we saw a white man with short black hair. My father
whispered, ‘It’s a beast, it’ll hurt us.’ We tied him up and he shouted.
We carried him to the village.
“All we found in his bag was a single book. There was no gun. Then my
father said, ‘He can’t do us any harm.’ We fed him. He got his strength
back. We gave him some rice for the road and seven bells to pay for
food along the way. He wanted to cook the rice in them. We explained
that he shouldn’t do that.
“We escorted him to the border of our land and he vanished into the
jungle, in the direction of India. We saved his life, and he was very
grateful to us.”
Many more incidents of this kind occurred during World War II in the
Patkai Hills on the border between Burma and India, inhabited to this
day by the Naga people. One of the most extraordinary but little known
campaigns of the war was conducted in the air over that territory. Burma
was being fought over by the Allied powers and the Japanese, who had
rapidly moved northward after taking Rangoon, pushing the British out to
India.
Finally the counterattack went ahead, and the sky was cut across by
British and American planes. The pilots performed incredible feats,
landing on swampy ground in the middle of the jungle or daring to fly
“the Hump,” one of the most dangerous flight paths over the Burmese
Himalayas to China. Many of them crashed into the mountains. Wreckage is
still lying in remote corners of the jungle, where Naga hunters
sometimes find it. I heard they have even come across pilots’
skeletons, still in the cockpit.
If the Japanese had crossed the Naga Hills and conquered India, and
if the Germans hadn’t been defeated at Stalingrad, Asia would have been
taken over by the Axis powers. But thanks to men like the pilot who was
saved by the Naga boy and his father, Burma was liberated from Japanese
invaders.
Who was the pilot? Did he survive? What book was he reading? I’m still looking for him.
Search Through Nagaland
I had never seen such a wild place, neither in Africa nor in the
Amazon, before traveling to the Patkai Hills, which are hundreds of
kilometers of dense, majestic jungle that climb skyward up steep slopes.
Here and there in the forest shadow hide Naga villages, lost in time.
I was traveling from Myitkyina, the state capital of Kachin State,
with a government guide and permits that included a precise plan of my
route. In the Kachin town of Shinbwayang, we rented off-road motorbikes
and set off on a crazy ride across the mountains, driving along the
legendary Ledo Road in a quest to find one of the last of the living
Naga chief headhunters.
This road tells a story of human madness. When the Japanese took
Rangoon, the only source of supplies for the Allies in China was India,
but there were two mountain ranges, the Burmese Himalayas and the Patkai
Hills, standing in the way. People died like flies while building the
road, as it spans an area that is highly malarial. By the time they
finished, the war was over, and today the steel bridges still hang
undisturbed over winding rivers.
The road is now so overgrown with plants that it is essentially a
narrow mule path winding across the lofty mountains. Only a few drivers
from Shinbwayang are prepared to take on this sort of challenge. People
hire them to transport goods all the way to the Indian border at the
Pangsau Pass, which is where I was heading.
Traveling with my guide, I was unsure what I would find. We asked
people where we could find an old Naga shaman, since many old shamans
used to be chief headhunters. I lost hope after someone in a village
told me the last shaman from Pangsau died two years ago.
In every place we stopped, the villagers appeared to have given up
their traditional costumes.
Nobody wore loinclothes with traditional
bells. But their huts appeared to have hardly changed over the years,
with one exception: These days, there are no longer small human skulls
hanging on the outer walls.
Naga chief headhunters were legendary figures, inspiring terror among
neighbouring tribes, travelers, missionaries and soldiers. My guide, a
delegate of the tourism ministry, said the Naga stopped cutting off
heads in the 1960s, when the military regime took control of their
territory and made headhunting punishable by law. Christian missionaries
had earlier campaigned against the practice.
However, I heard another version of the story as well. According to
Shan people from nearby Hukawng Valley who venture into Naga territory
in search of wild elephants, which they domesticate, headhunting is
alive and well. “If you don’t warn them and you take away an elephant
without their consent, they’ll cut off your head,” one Shan person
warned.
From Naymung, in Sagaing Division, my guide and I set off westward
along a new dirt road, which led to the town of Lahe. The government
built the road two years ago, and it still isn’t ready to use: In many
places, it’s like a mountain track. But thanks to its presence, new
technology and western culture are rapidly infiltrating the hill tribes.
Corporations and armed groups have their eyes on the valuable timber
and natural resources here, and the government faces a major task of
protecting this wildlife reserve and the dying local cultures.
Eventually, my guide and I reached another village, Cheme Khuk. My
permits did not allow me to travel there officially, but I managed to
convince some local authorities to let me visit. Nevertheless, they sent
police officers on motorbikes to follow me.
The village, on a valley at the foot of a steep hill, looked utopian.
Rows of huts were surrounded by waves of greenery. Suddenly, however, a
disturbance broke the peace.
“Look over there, a naked man!” my guide yelled. “He saw us and ran into that hut.”
Separately, we saw a group of people coming toward us, walking single
file in a line. They wore caps decorated with animal horns and they
carried weapons. I was dumbstruck, as they stood there in front of us
without saying a word or cracking a smile. They all had lips as black as
coal from a root they chewed nonstop as a stimulant—quite distinct from
the betel nut that is so popular elsewhere in Burma.
“Man, you’ve got incredible luck!” my guide told me. Much to my
surprise, one of the men in line was an old Naga chief headhunter. He
had traveled here with elders from a village deep inside the jungle,
five days away on foot. The half-naked man who had run into the hut was
the oldest Naga of them all.
“They came here to visit their sons and families. They’re spending a few weeks here and then going back again,” my guide said.
That evening we met for a communal supper at the home of the
village’s Naga pastor. We sat around a bonfire, eating chicken and rice
spiced with chilli while drinking green tea. The headhunter said he had
not seen a foreigner since helping to rescue the pilot as a boy, though
he had later visited a village where he saw foreigners on television.
Telling his story, he wore a tiger skin cap adorned with bird
feathers and deer antlers. His nephew had given him the tiger skin. The
world’s biggest so-called tiger conservation area, the Hukawng Valley
Tiger Reserve, sits in Naga territory.
“Today there are fewer and fewer of them. The Lisu tribes hunt them
for trade,” the headhunter told me, referring to another ethnic group.
“The Naga feel a spiritual tie with the tiger,” he added. ‘They
believe tigers understand human speech. In each village there is someone
with a tiger’s soul. Killing a tiger means his death, too.”
But if a particular tiger is attacking people or cattle, the Naga
decide to hunt, often at night. After establishing its position, I was
told, a large group of villagers and hunters encircle the animal,
usually trapping it near a stream where they had earlier set a cage-like
trap.
As they tighten the circle, getting closer and closer, the tiger may
attempt to seek refuge in the cage, and when he does one of the most
skilled hunters attacks. Spears were used in the old days, but guns are
more common today. The man who kills the tiger is rewarded with half its
jaw, while the other half goes to the owner of the cow that had been
eaten by the tiger before its death.
The chief headhunter was also wearing bands of ivory drawn tight over
his muscles. In the past, he said, the Naga also hunted elephants with
heated spears. But only the elders ate the elephant and tiger meat. “The
Naga never hunt for money, or for no reason,” he said.
When I finally built up the courage to ask about hunting human heads, his response made my cheeks flush.
“We fought most of our battles with the Kachin, who occupied our
land,” he said. “To this day, there are heaps of boulders in the jungle
where the biggest battle took place. We cut off as many heads as there
are rocks.”
They set ambushes, he said. “We took knives and machetes into battle,
and brought the cut-off heads back to the village. Then there was a big
celebration.
“In one cauldron we boiled the human heads, and in another an ox for
the feast. We hung the boiled, dried-out heads above the doors and on
the walls of our houses. A captured head brought a Naga glory and
respect.”
As we left the village at dawn, I asked one of the other Naga men
what had become of all those heads from so many villages. Had they been
buried?
“They started taking them away and throwing them into the jungle,” he said.
One day, perhaps somebody will come upon them.
Please contact the writer if you have information about the fate
of the soldier in the headhunter’s story. This article was translated
from Polish to English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Agartala, Jun 16 : Tripura government has once again extended for six months the operation of AFSPA, the anti-terrorism law that gives full powers to the armed forces to take any steps to control terror, an official said here Saturday.
"Top security and civil officials of the state government recently assessed the prevailing law and order situation of the state and decided to extend the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958) for another six months," a home department official told reporters.
He said: "A state-level coordination committee (SLCC) on security affairs led by Chief Secretary S.K. Panda periodically assesses the overall security situation in the state with top officials of the state and central security forces".
The SLCC is overseeing the counter insurgency operation in Tripura, which shares an 856-km border with Bangladesh.
Two separatist outfits - National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) - who operate in the state are also sheltering and availing arms training in the adjoining Bangladesh.
Both outfits have set up bases in Bangladesh and get support from other separatist outfits of the northeast India. They have been demanding secession of Tripura from India.
Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion earlier this month had recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition in Satchhari jungles in the northeastern district of Habiganj, bordering India's western Tripura.
The arms and ammunition, belonging to ATTF, included anti-tank weapons, mortars and AF series rifles.
"Though the four-and-half-decade old terrorism has been tamed in Tripura, the state government is averse to taking any chances for some more time," the official added.
The northeastern state of Tripura has 72 police stations. The AFSPA has been in force in 30 police station areas; it is fully operational in 24 police station areas, and partially operational in six.
In view of the improvement of the situation and the lessening of terrorist activities, the Tripura government in June last year reduced operational areas of the AFSPA to 30 police station areas instead of the 40 earlier. The act was earlier fully operational in 34 police station areas, and partially in six.
The act was first enforced in Tripura in 1997, when terrorism was at its peak in the mountainous state.
The central act provides unlimited powers to security forces to shoot at sight, arrest anybody without a warrant, and carry out searches without obstacles and without any one's consent.
It also insulates the security forces from legal processes for any action undertaken under the act.
Local rights groups and political parties, specially the tribal-based Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT), describe the act as "draconian" and want it repealed.
"Innocent people are victimised by the security forces in the name of anti-insurgency operations," said Nagendra Jamatia, former minister and a senior leader of the INPT, an electoral ally of the opposition Congress.
"Demand for repealing the AFSPA was one of the issues in our movement against the Left Front government," Jamatia said.
Besides Tripura, the AFSPA is also in force in Manipur (excluding the Imphal Municipal Council area), Assam and Nagaland, and in the Tirap and Changlang districts of Arunachal Pradesh.
Human rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila of Manipur has been on an indefinite hunger strike for 14 years, demanding the withdrawal of the act.
