Dimapur, July 27 (EMN): The Global Naga Forum (GNF) has issued a statement clarifying misconceptions around it as well as confusions on the Naga Solidarity Walk on the theme “One People, One Destiny”, which is set to flag off from Lerie in Kohima on July 28 and converge at Senapati on July 29.
The Media Cell of the Solidarity Walk Team maintained in its update that the “GNF consists of like-minded people from all walks of life and from different parts of the world who came together with the sole purpose and vision of telling the Naga Story to the world and to facilitate the journey of our people in the struggle for human and indigenous rights”.
The forum neither owes loyalty to any political party nor is a mouthpiece of any organization, adding that the proposed Solidarity Walk is organised solely to break the artificial barriers separating Nagas. “GNF has no ulterior motives; it doesn’t wish to discredit any organisation whatsoever,” it clarified.
While appealing to every right-thinking Naga, irrespective of tribe affiliations, to participate in the Solidarity Walk from Kohima to Senapati, the GNF said that it is “the first leg of the Unity Journey and shall continue in other parts of Naga Homeland in due course of time”.
It also informed the Solidarity Walk is jointly coordinated by various civil society organisations and student bodies from different parts of the Naga-inhabited areas and beyond, and requested individuals and churches to pray for its success.
“The Global Naga Forum members are conscientious Naga citizens who believe in the peoplehood of the Nagas and who refuse to keep silent at this critical moment in the long history of our struggle for the human and indigenous right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. We defy the arbitrary and artificial boundaries of colonial rule that divided and fragmented the Naga family and which continue to this day in 2022 under India and Myanmar,” read the update.
“We see an urgent need for a Naga Solidarity Walk to heal our spirits, to reassert our common destiny as one people, and to bridge the gaps amongst Nagas. The Naga Family is cracking and crumbling from stress put on us from outside and from within. Separated from one another, the Family will cease to exist. We are interlinked. Our destiny is one,” it added.
The forum went on to state that “time has come to walk together as one people, despite our differences and past offenses. The past unavoidably lives in us, it is true, but the present is alive and wants to create a better future for us. That future beckons us to forgiveness and grace for one another. This critical choice is for each person and group to make.”