‘Naga Solidarity Walk a necessary peaceful intervention’, say organisers

Dimapur, July 29 (EMN): The organisers of ‘Naga Solidarity Walk’ on the theme ‘One People, One Destiny’ declared that the two-day event, which commenced in Kohima and concluded in Tahamzan (Senapati) on Friday, was a necessary peaceful intervention in support of the Naga people’s right to live together in their ancestral homeland.

“We believe time has come, yet again, to insist on an immediate peaceful resolution of the Indo-Naga political problem, which must include a constitutional structure and timetable for recognition and implementation of the Peoplehood of the Nagas in a self-determined governance system in an undivided ancestral homeland comprising all the Naga territories,” read a public statement from the organisers.

It stated that the Naga People have repeatedly declared and defended their right to freedom and self-determination in their ancestral lands in battle and in writing against the British colonial occupation going back to the 1870s and the Simon Commission in 1929.

It also said that despite the expressed Naga declaration of freedom from colonial rule in 1947, postcolonial India and Burma (now Myanmar) continue to impose colonial rule over Naga lands and Naga people till date.

As a result of the gross violation of “our human and indigenous peoples’ rights, the Naga Homeland lies divided in four states in India and a province in Myanmar,” the public statement read.

It also reminded of the thousands of Naga patriots who sacrificed their lives in the seven-decade long struggle for political self-determination against the continuing colonial control of their lands and lives, especially by Indian military forces going back to the 1950s.

It further stated that the Indian military forces are still operating in Naga homeland under protection of extra-judicial laws like DAA and AFSPA, and under which “innocent civilians have been and continue to be regularly harassed, imprisoned, and mass murdered, and generations of their families have suffered and experienced irreparable loss, harm, and disadvantage.”

“The Walk from Kohima to Tahamzan (Senapati) we just completed is a hopeful physical enactment of a journey toward Naga Unity across the artificial barriers and boundaries put in our way by the powers that be. And we want to make public what we mean by this Walk and what we stand for going forward,” the statement read.