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Christian Groups Aid Tribal People Caught Between Army And Militants

Updated: April 26, 2007 05:00 PM GMT
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Church organizations are helping tribal people forced by an insurgency in eastern India to live in a football-stadium relief camp.

"We cannot return to our villages because (militants) have planted landmines all over," Anthony J. Baite told UCA News. He is one of 642 Kuki tribal members living at the camp in Moreh, a town along India´s border with Myanmar.

Baite, 32, a Catholic catechist and the camp´s relief secretary, says his people have fallen victim to a fight between the Indian army and the United Liberation Front of Manipur, a militant group. For years, the militants have demanded Manipur state´s independence from India.

The militants, mostly Hindus, are Meitei tribal people who occupy the state´s valley region. The mostly Christian Kuki live in the hills.

Before going to the camp, the villagers were living in the border districts of Chandel and Churanchandpur. The militants use the region as their base and cross over to Myanmar when the army steps up operations. They have also planted landmines on the hills to defend themselves against the army.

According to Baite, however, the landmines kill mostly villagers. At least 30 civilians, half of them women and children, died from mine blasts by early April, he said. The dead, he added, were villagers who had been cultivating their land, collecting vegetables, fetching firewood or going off to hunt.

The displaced Kuki also complain that the militants have used them as "human shields" and forced them to carry supplies.

According to people at the camp, villagers protested the abuse by militants and sought the army´s help. Infuriated militants abducted about 400 Kuki from seven border villages and on March 12 forced them to cross into Myanmar, where they were kept in two villages, first at Lallim and later at Samjata.

Baite said the militants, convinced the villagers "learned their lesson," sent them home in the last week of March. But instead of going back to their villages, some escaped to Moreh, a major center for cross-border trade.

Others who returned home eventually also went to the town, afraid of the landmines in their village area. The town is 110 kilometers southeast of the state capital, Imphal, which is 2,445 kilometers east of New Delhi.

At the camp, elders huddled on plastic sheets under a makeshift shed, while women cooked in the open air. Children ran around, some with runny noses and others clutching plates of rice.

Baite said the villagers have asked the federal government for help through the local administration. But initial assistance has come mostly from Church groups. The Kuki Christian Church gave 25 bags of rice. Catholic Archbishop Dominic Lumon of Imphal told UCA News on April 10 that his archdiocese´s social service organization sent another 25 bags as "immediate relief."

Other groups also have pitched in. The Kuki Students Organization (KSO) urged the government to make the hills safe. Until all landmines are cleared, KSO general secretary William Haokip told UCA News on April 9, "we shall not allow (the villagers) to go back and risk their lives and limbs."

Another group is the Hill Tribal Council, whose vice president, John Holkhojam Mate, says his group will support the people until the mines are cleared. The Catholic man told UCA News that the state government has supplied utensils, grains and lentils for the people.

His group has also collected relief materials and 20,000 rupees (US$490) from Church organizations. Despite such help, Mate remains worried, mostly about the future of the displaced children, now reduced to loafing around.

END

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