United Naga Council opposes claims made by Kuki-Zo community in Manipur

DIMAPUR — The United Naga Council (UNC) has expressed opposition to claims made by the Kuki-Zo community in several of its statements and memoranda, especially on matter related to “the land”, terming it as “fabricated” and “tantamount to distortion of Naga history and insult to the Naga people”.

In a press statement, the UNC said the claims made by the Kuki-Zo people in their memorandum pose a “big threat to the very existence and inalienable rights of the Nagas particularly in the state of Manipur”.

With regard to land, it said the Nagas’ opposition to the creation of new districts in 2016 still stands and is unresolved.

Maintaining that carving out districts from Senapati and Chandel districts are “handiworks of the Congress government’s appeasement policy carried out in the name of administrative convenience”, the UNC said it is against the demand for a separate administration which incorporates the so-called new two districts and that the Kuki-Zo people’s representation to the GoI and other bodies “is on false territorial foundation”.

It also slammed the ‘Outer Manipur’ area mentioned in the memorandum for the creation of Kuki state, saying that “such wild venture will lead the Kukis to nowhere today and in future”.

The UNC denounced the attempt to call the “Kuki Rebellion of 1917-1919 as Anglo-Kuki War to legitimize their imagined Kuki homeland within Naga ancestral homeland”, terming it as a “savage episode” of rebellion with the colonial power and not a war.

It also raised alarms over illegal immigrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh “flooding” Manipur, citing establishment of new villages at a rapid pace and ‘columns of illegal camps being built at an alarming rate near the town of Moreh and its surrounding areas’.

On the demand of the of Kuki-Zo community for creation of the posts of Chief Secretary, DGP and others, the UNC said it is not with the Kukis over the land issue.

“Moreover, it is completely uncanny and unfortunate on the part of the Kuki-Zo peoples to have clubbed Chandel district along with the so called Tengnoupal district together with Churachandpur district as their land,” it said, adding that stone megaliths, menhirs found in different parts of Churachandpur speak of the precedence of the Nagas, especially the Zeliagrongs and the Anals and Lamkangs in Pherzawl areas.

It also sought to know why the Kukis incorporated nine names of Naga tribes in Chandel district in its constitution as its tribes.

“The Nagas will not remain mute over the issue. Having said all these, the Nagas believe that nothing in this regard is too late to set the wrong to right,” read the statement.

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