It was late in the evening when T. Chongmei, a 32-year-old small-time mining contractor in Oting village in Nagaland’s Mon district, went in search of his missing relatives. It was December 4, and news had spread of civilians being killed in an Army operation gone horribly wrong. Chongmei had walked barely five kilometres when he got caught in a clash between soldiers and protesting civilians. Shot in the foot, he fell to the ground. And the rest of the evening became a throbbing blur.
Thirteen civilians were killed that day. The reason: commandos of the Army’s 21 Para Special Forces had waited in ambush for militants belonging to a banned faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang). They apparently mistook for militants a group of eight miners returning from work. According to the Army, the vehicle carrying the miners was signalled to stop, but it “tried to flee”. Six miners died after soldiers opened fire. More lives, including a soldier’s, were lost in the violent protests after the botched operation.
Chongmei is being treated at the district hospital in Mon. He is mourning the death of his friend Hokup Konyak, whose wedding he had attended a few days before. He said some of the injured people might never be able to work and support their families. “I earn around Rs400 a day working in the fields,” Chongmei said. “We are not like farmers in north or south India, where they grow crops throughout the year. We get work for 3-4 months, and live in uncertainty after that.”
The incident has put renewed focus on the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which gives security personnel special powers to maintain public order in “disturbed areas”. “Someone must tell the government that Naga people are Indians, too,” said Wanthon, a relative of Hokup. “Instead of safeguarding us, we are being killed like flies.”
Wanthon said the victims were not fleeing. “It is wrong to say that,” he said. “Why are all the bullet injuries not on their backs?”
The Mon massacre has put the BJP in a quandary. Before it came to power at the Centre in 2014, the party had talked about the possibility of removing AFSPA. For the past seven years, though, the Union government has been pressing ahead with the law. The Mon incident has prompted states like Manipur and Meghalaya, where the BJP is a partner in ruling coalitions, to decry AFSPA publicly. Apparently, the Union cabinet would now have to decide whether to remove AFSPA in certain areas in Nagaland and other parts of the northeast.
A senior government official told THE WEEK that Naga interlocutor A.K. Mishra had been holding talks with the Isak-Muivah faction of the NSCN(IM) and various other political groups. The aim was apparently to give a final shape to the ongoing peace talks by the end of the year. “There was a view that the delayed Naga peace settlement should take final shape by December 25 as a Christmas gift to the Naga people,” said the official.
But with the furore over civilian deaths, Naga insurgent groups and political outfits have put withdrawal of the armed forces from Nagaland as a precondition for peace. The working committee of the umbrella body Naga National Political Groups said “military atrocities” were driving the Nagas further away from Delhi. “The destructive military tactics have belittled the political commitment of the Indian prime minister and home minister,” it said.
AFSPA, which came into effect in 1958, has long been a problematic law. Although it is the prerogative of the Union ministry to decide whether to declare a region as “disturbed”, the deployment of armed forces in such disturbed areas automatically brings AFSPA into effect. The risk of developing catch-22 situations is why successive Union governments have been reluctant to either curtail the provisions of the existing law or extend its scope by deploying the Army in troubled hinterlands. With the Nagaland tragedy, the ministry is now caught between a rock and a hard place—the security establishment is firmly against lifting AFSPA, even as sticking to it appears politically unfeasible.
The ministry will have to take a decision by December 30, because AFSPA was extended for the whole of Nagaland for six months on June 30. “A middle-way approach may be adopted in consultation with the defence ministry, as the demands are rising for its review,” said an official.
The killing of Naga civilians has also brought back bad memories. AFSPA has long been associated with many cases of fake encounters, executions with impunity, disappearances in custody and human rights violations. Some of the cases still remain unresolved and the perpetrators unpunished.
The security establishment, however, insists that AFSPA is necessary to maintain peace in insurgency-affected areas. “The insurgents are looking for a chance to discredit the security forces and stir up trouble once again,” said an officer.
D.K. Pathak, former chief of the ceasefire monitoring group in Nagaland, said the people and security forces needed to work together more closely against terror groups. “The peace process,” he said, “must continue.”