Latest news with #Manipur
Al Jazeera
4 days ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
‘Everyone feels unsafe': Border panic as Indian forces kill Myanmar rebels
Flies hovered over the blackened and swollen bodies of men and boys, lying side-by-side on a piece of tarpaulin, in blood-soaked combat fatigues, amid preparations for a rushed cremation in the Tamu district of Myanmar's Sagaing region, bordering India. Quickly arranged wooden logs formed the base of the mass pyre, with several worn-out rubber tyres burning alongside to sustain the fire, the orange and green wreaths just out of reach of the flames. Among the 10 members of the Pa Ka Pha (PKP), part of the larger People's Defence Forces (PDF), killed by the Indian Army on May 14, three were teenagers. The PKP comes under the command of the National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar's government-in-exile, comprising lawmakers removed in the 2021 coup, including legislators from Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party. It mostly assists the PDF – a network of civilian militia groups against the military government – which serves, in effect, as the NUG's army. The Indian Army said that on May 14, a battalion of the country's Assam Rifles (AR) paramilitary force patrolling a border post in the northeast Indian state of Manipur, killed 10 men armed with 'war-like stores' who were 'suspected to be involved in cross-border insurgent activities'. The battalion, the Indian Army said, was 'acting on specific intelligence'. The Indian soldiers were stationed at the border in Chandel, a district contiguous with Tamu on the Myanmar side of the frontier. Manipur has been torn by a civil war between ethnic groups for the past two years, and Indian authorities have often accused migrants from Myanmar of stoking those tensions. However, disputing the Indian version of the May 14 events, the exiled NUG said its cadres were 'not killed in an armed encounter within Indian territory'. Instead, it said in a statement, they were 'captured, tortured and summarily executed by' Indian Army personnel. For nearly five years since the coup, political analysts and conflict observers say that resistance groups operating in Myanmar, along the 1,600km-long (994 miles) border with India, have shared an understanding with Indian forces, under which both sides effectively minded their own business. That has now changed with the killings in Tamu, sending shockwaves through the exiled NUG, dozens of rebel armed groups and thousands of refugees who fled the war in Myanmar to find shelter in northeastern Indian states. They now fear a spillover along the wider frontier. 'Fighters are in panic, but the refugees are more worried – they all feel unsafe now,' said Thida*, who works with the Tamu Pa Ah Pha, or the People's Administration Team, and organised the rebels' funeral on May 16. She requested to be identified by a pseudonym. Meanwhile, New Delhi has moved over the past year to fence the international border with Myanmar, dividing transnational ethnic communities who have enjoyed open-border movement for generations, before India and Myanmar gained freedom from British rule in the late 1940s. 'We felt safe [with India in our neighbourhood],' said Thida. 'But after this incident, we have become very worried, you know, that similar things may follow up from the Indian forces.' 'This never happened in four years [since the armed uprising against the coup], but now, it has happened,' she told Al Jazeera. 'So, once there is a first time, there could be a second or a third time, too. That is the biggest worry.' On May 12, the 10 cadres of the PKP arrived at their newly established camp in Tamu after their earlier position was exposed to the Myanmar military. A senior NUG official and two locals based in Tamu independently told Al Jazeera that they had alerted the Indian Army of their presence in advance. 'The AR personnel visited the new campsite [on May 12],' claimed Thida. 'They were informed of our every step.' What followed over the next four days could not be verified independently, with conflicting versions emerging from Indian officials and the NUG. There are also contradictions in the narratives put out by Indian officials. On May 14, the Indian Army's eastern command claimed that its troops acted on 'intelligence', but 'were fired upon by suspected cadres', and killed 10 cadres in a gunfight in the New Samtal area of the Chandel district. Two days later, on May 16, a spokesperson for India's Ministry of Defence said that 'a patrol of Assam Rifles' was fired upon. In retaliation, they killed '10 individuals, wearing camouflage fatigues', and recovered seven AK-47 rifles as well as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Five days later, on May 21, the Defence Ministry identified the killed men as cadres of the PKP. The ministry spokesperson further noted that 'a patrol out to sanitise the area, where fence construction is under way along the [border], came under intense automatic fire', with the intent 'to cause severe harm to construction workers or troops of Assam Rifles to deter the fencing work'. Speaking with Al Jazeera, a retired Indian government official, who has advised New Delhi on its Myanmar policy for a decade, pointed out the dissonance in the Indian versions: Did Indian soldiers respond proactively to intelligence alerts, or were they reacting to an attack from the rebels from Myanmar? 'It is difficult to make sense of these killings. This is something that has happened against the run of play,' the retired official, who requested anonymity to speak, said. The contradictions, he said, suggested that 'a mistake happened, perhaps in the fog of war'. 'It cannot be both a proactive operation and retaliation.' Al Jazeera requested comments from the Indian Army on questions around the operation, first on May 26, and then again on May 30, but has yet to receive a response. Thura, an officer with the PDF in Sagaing, the northwest Myanmar region where Tamu is too, said, 'The [PKP cadres] are not combat trained, or even armed enough to imagine taking on a professional army'. When they were informed by the Indian Army of the deaths on May 16, local Tamu authorities rushed to the Indian side. 'Assam Rifles had already prepared a docket of documents,' said a Tamu official, who was coordinating the bodies' handover, and requested anonymity. 'We were forced to sign the false documents, or they threatened not to give the corpses of martyrs.' Al Jazeera has reviewed three documents from the docket, which imply consent to the border fencing and underline that the PDF cadres were killed in a gunfight in Indian territory. Thida, from the Tamu's People's Administration Team, and NUG officials, told Al Jazeera that they have repeatedly asked Indian officials to reconsider the border fencing. 'For the last month, we have been requesting the Indian Army to speak with our ministry [referring to the exiled NUG] and have a meeting. Until then, stop the border fencing process,' she said. Bewildered by the killings, Thida said, 'It is easy to take advantage while our country is in such a crisis. And, to be honest, we cannot do anything about it. We are the rebels in our own country — how can we pick fights with the large Indian Army?' Above all, Thida said she was heartbroken. 'The state of corpses was horrific. Insects were growing inside the body,' she recalled. 'If nothing, Indian forces should have respect for our dead.' Angshuman Choudhury, a researcher focused on Myanmar and northeast India, said that conflict observers 'are befuddled by these killings in Tamu'. 'It is counterintuitive and should not have happened by any measure,' he said. The main point of dispute, the border fencing, is an age-old issue, noted Choudhary. 'It has always caused friction along the border. And very violent fiction in the sense of intense territorial misunderstandings from groups on either side,' he said. When New Delhi first moved last year to end the free movement regime, which allows cross-border movement to inhabitants, Indigenous communities across India's northeastern states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh were left stunned. Members of these communities live on both sides of the border with Myanmar – and have for centuries. Political analysts and academics note that the border communities on either side reconciled with the idea of India and Myanmar because of the freedom to travel back and forth. Erecting physical infrastructure triggers a kind of anxiety in these transnational communities that demarcation on maps does not, argued Choudhary. 'By fencing, India is creating a completely new form of anxieties that did not even exist in the 1940s, the immediate post-colonial period,' Choudhary said. 'It is going to create absolutely unnecessary forms of instability, ugliness, and widen the existing fault lines.' Last year, the Indian home minister, Amit Shah, said that border fencing would ensure India's 'internal security' and 'maintain the demographic structure' of the regions bordering Myanmar, in a move widely seen as a response to the conflict in Manipur. Since May 2023, ongoing ethnic violence between the Meitei majority and the Kuki and Naga minority communities has killed more than 250 people and displaced thousands. The state administration has faced allegations of exacerbating the unrest to strengthen its support among the Meitei population, which the government has denied. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and the Manipur state government, also under the BJP, have blamed the crisis in Manipur in part on undocumented migrants from Myanmar, whom they accuse of deepening ethnic tensions. Now, with the killings in Tamu, Choudhary said that Indian security forces had a new frontier of discontent, along a border where numerous armed groups opposed to Myanmar's ruling military have operated — until now, in relative peace with Indian troops. The deaths, he said, could change the rules of engagement between Indian forces and those groups. 'Remember, other rebel groups [in Myanmar] are also watching this closely,' he said. 'These issues can spiral quickly.'
Time of India
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Stir against 'Manipur' being erased from bus turns violent
IMPHAL: Five protesters were hospitalised Sunday after scuffling with security forces near Raj Bhavan in Imphal as the public agitation demanding an apology from governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla over "Manipur" being scraped off the windshield of a state transport corporation bus on May 20 lapsed into violent unrest. Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters converging on the historic Kangla Gate, around 150 metres from the Raj Bhavan gates, when they refused to retreat. The influential Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), which spearheaded the protest, had given the governor 48 hours to publicly apologise for what it said was an insult to the state and its people. "The governor continues to disregard the sentiments of the people by his silence. He and his administration have tarnished the state's historical and cultural legacy... The inquiry commission set up by the govt to probe what happened (at Gwaltabi) is not enough as it does not mention anything about penalising those who were involved," a protester said. A Manipur state transport bus ferrying journalists to Shirui Lily Festival in Ukhrul district was allegedly stopped at Gwaltabi checkpoint and ordered to remove "Manipur" from the windshield. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like The Killer New Toyota 4Runner Is Utter Perfection (Take A Look) MorninJoy Undo Amid outrage, the home department set up a two-member inquiry committee to "examine facts and circumstances involving security personnel and the Manipur state transport bus". A COCOMI delegation is scheduled to travel to New Delhi to meet MHA officials on Tuesday to push for completion of "pending political and security processes" necessitated by the ethnic crisis. COCOMI condemned the use of "mock bombs and tear gas on non-violent protesters, particularly women, during Sunday's demonstration". It said, "The deployment of such aggressive crowd-control measures against unarmed civilians, many of whom were mothers and elderly women, is unbecoming of a democratic and sensitive administration."
Hindustan Times
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Meitei org's strike call over removal of ‘Manipur' from bus paralyses Imphal
Businesses, educational institutions, and markets were shut and public transport remained off the roads in Imphal on Thursday in response to a 48-hour strike call against a directive for the removal of 'Manipur' from a state transport bus. Kuldiep Singh, who was named the state's security adviser as part of efforts to tackle the protracted ethnic violence in Manipur, defended the directive. He said it was a precautionary measure to avoid incidents like the one in Kangpokpi, where suspected Kuki-Zo militants attacked a bus. The ethnic violence in the state has since May 2023 claimed at least 260 lives and displaced around 60,000. It has forced Meiteis and Kukis to withdraw to their strongholds. The Meiteis, mostly Hindu, live largely in the plains of Imphal valley, and the Kukis, predominantly Christian, in the hills. Fortified buffer zones separate the Meitei and Kuki-Zo areas. On Wednesday, the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), a Meitei organisation, called for the bandh against the bus directive. It demanded the governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla's apology within 48 hours and called for Kuldiep Singh, chief secretary P K Singh, and police chief Rajiv Singh's resignations. The World Meitei Council, another body of the state's dominant community, endorsed COCOMI's stand and criticised what it described as the Manipur government's senseless decision under the president's rule. 'Would the government of India accept it if any power in the world asked to hide the name 'India' or the national flag in any national or international forum?' it asked. 'The tender an unconditional apology...' Protesters blocked roads in Imphal and its outskirts using logs and burning tyres. Imphal's main markets, Paona, Thangal, and Khwairamband Ima, were deserted on Thursday. An Imphal resident called the directive to remove 'Manipur' from the bus highly condemnable. 'This is a serious issue and could escalate if necessary action is not taken in time.' The state has been under the president's rule since February, when N Biren Singh resigned as the chief minister, days after the Supreme Court directed a central forensics lab to probe leaked audio tapes allegedly featuring him purportedly saying the ethnic violence was instigated at his behest.
India Gazette
20-05-2025
- Sport
- India Gazette
Punjab seal Swami Vivekananda Men's U20 NFC quarter-finals spot
Narainpur (Chhattisgarh)[India], May 20 (ANI): Punjab qualified for the quarter-finals of the Swami Vivekananda Men's U20 NFC after defeating Ladakh 8-1 in their Group C match at the Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama Ground on Monday, May 19, 2025. Manipur defeated Sikkim 6-1 in the other match of the day, according to the official website of the All India Football Federation (AIFF). Needing three points to secure the top spot and a place in the quarter-finals, Punjab went on to complete a demolition job over Ladakh, after the latter had the lead, albeit for a brief period, early on in the game. Punjab led 3-1 at half-time. Imran Ali's eighth-minute goal for Ladakh was cancelled out just about 60 seconds later by Punjab's Gaurav Singh, who smashed in a rebound. Harmandeep Singh, in the 25th minute, poked a bouncing ball over the Ladakh goalkeeper's head to help Punjab put one foot in the knockout rounds. Gurmeet Singh doubled the lead in the 43rd minute, when he skipped past the keeper and slid it into the goal. Punjab were well and truly in the driver's seat, and they continued their dominance in the second half. Arun Kumar Chandla struck two in close proximity in the 68th and 69th minutes, before Damandeep Kumar netted the sixth in the 79th. Chandla completed his hat-trick in the 85th, and Arshvir Singh added the final nail in the coffin in injury time (90+2'). Punjab thus finished top of Group C with nine points. While Manipur also has the same number of points as them, the latter suffered a 0-1 defeat at the hands of the northern state, which remains ahead by virtue of a superior head-to-head record. Manipur completed a 6-1 drubbing of Sikkim in the second match of the day, though their fate was already decided before kick-off. They led 2-0 at half-time. Konthoujam Lemba Singh (8', 10', 74') and Md Abash (72' p, 85', 90+4') scored a hat-trick each for Manipur, while Ragpay Lepcha (48' p), who converted a penalty at the start of the second half, was the only scorer for Sikkim. (ANI)
India Today
12-05-2025
- General
- India Today
Manipur Class 10 Result 2025 declared at manresults.nic.in: Direct link to check
The Manipur HSLC Result 2025 has been officially declared. The Board of Secondary Education, Manipur (BSEM) released the Manipur Class 10 results today, May 10, on its official website –- around 3 who appeared for the Class 10 exams can now check their Manipur Board Class 10 result by entering their roll number 37,000 students were waiting eagerly for the Manipur 10th result link to go live. The results were announced through a press conference, followed soon by the activation of the direct result link on the TO CHECK BSEM 10TH RESULT 2025 ONLINE To check your Manipur Board HSLC result, here's what you need to do:Go to on the link that says 'Manipur HSLC Result 2025'Enter your roll number as mentioned in your admit cardClick 'Submit'Your Class 10 result will show up on the screenDownload or print the result for future useDirect link to check Manipur HSLC result 2025WHAT YOUR MANIPUR HSLC 2025 MARKSHEET WILL SHOWThe BSEM 10th Result 2025 will have the following details:Student's name, roll number, and date of birthSubject-wise marks and total marksFinal result status (Pass/Fail)Make sure to keep your Manipur HSLC Admit Card 2025 handy while checking the result. In case of any website delays, wait for a few minutes and try again.
