in-strife-torn-manipur-youngsters-take-up-arms-to-protect-villagers

Every day in shifts, morning and night, a group of armed youngsters patrol roads around Manipur’s Koutruk village. Their objective: Keep residents safe from the warring factions of Meitei and Kuki, two communities that have been in conflict since last year.

 

These youngsters, mostly in their late 20s and early 30s, identify themselves as volunteers and say they have taken up the responsibility to keep their own safe as security forces “could not do enough to protect us”.

 

Kotruk in the Imphal Valley is one of the many villages in the state that is “protected” by such groups which identify themselves as “Village Volunteers”, “Village Volunteer Force”, “Village Defence Force” and “Village Protection Force”.

 

These groups, officials say, are not associated with any security agency or the armed forces. Trained in basic combat tactics, the village forces have vowed to keep their areas safe from the ethnic violence that has left many dead, injured and displaced.

 

Their presence in villages in the valley and Churachandpur in the hills cannot be missed. They are in uniform and can be spotted manning bunkers made of sandbags or patrolling with weapons, including sticks, batons and rifles— some country-made, and some stolen or smuggled.

 

“Clearly our (security) forces could not do enough to protect us. Now, we know that they cannot be trusted with the task of ensuring our safety. So, we had to do it ourself and we decided to take up the task according to our calibre and capacity... we were forced to take matters into our own hands,” a village volunteer told the media on the condition of anonymity.

 

Areas in the hills and the valley have been marked following the ethnic violence— some local describe it as “new borders”. And, keeping a vigil on these borders are these volunteers, who screen passing vehicles and occasionally frisk people to prevent “unwanted intrusions”.

 

Kukis and Meities cannot travel between the hills and the valley.

 

Others such as Nagas and Muslims can move between the regions provided they pass certain checks. They are given an escort from the border checkpoints.

 

The region remains on the edge with even a small incident such as sporadic clashes between volunteer groups capable of tipping it over. More so as security agencies are yet to recover all the firearms looted during the violence last year that left 200 dead and displaced 60,000 people.