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Central Executive Council members of NEFIP during a press conference in Kohima on Thursday. [/caption]
Our Correspondent
Kohima, Sep. 26 (EMN): To protest the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), the North East Forum for Indigenous People (NEFIP) has resolved to launch a campaign across the Northeast region—starting with a public protest on October 3.
This was announced at a press conference called by the Central Executive Council (CEC) members of NEFIP on Thursday in Kohima.
According to the CEC members, the protest will be ‘democratic’ and daily agitation will be organised in the NE states.
“We will give out a white-paper on CAB to NE people explaining how it is a threat and how it will affect the people. We will try to translate the white paper into different languages so that it will reach the different parts of NE region,” they added.
The members maintained that the intention of the government of India was to ‘transfer a huge population who does not have any socio-economic and cultural affinities with the indigenous people of the region.’
This, they stated, ‘will affect our way of life in every aspect and it is more like they are invading us without bloodshed.’
An interim NEFIP body was formed on April 3 at Imphal in Manipur to oppose the CAB. Following a series of interactions and meetings at Guwahati, Shillong and Aizawl, and permanent body was constituted; the first CEC meeting was held in Kohima on September 25.
The NEFIP consists of Assam’s League of Aborigines Rights Movement (Alarm), United Arunachal Indigenous People’s Forum (UAIPF), Confederation of Meghalaya Social Organisations (Comso), Manipur People against Citizenship Amendment Bill-2016 (Manpac), Mizo Students’ Union (MSU), Joint Committee for Prevention of Illegal Immigrants (JCPI) in Nagaland and Twipra Social Organisations’ Immigrants (Twipra-SOS).