The Human Shield

A story of mothers who stand in between death and their sons in armed-conflict-torn Manipur in India

In the north-eastern extreme of India, lodged in between high mountains lies a valley where my native state of Manipur rests. If I were to represent the women of Manipur subjugated by the fear that arises out of three decades of armed conflict, bloodshed, mayhem and a crawling economy, I would first tell you of the memory I carry of people who were killed by the army, paramilitary or by any out of the conglomerate of 26 insurgent groups operating in the valley. I would have to be consoled out of my cries remembering the heinous crimes against women in this era of mass violence that lasted longer than our perseverance and human rights. The women in this distant state of India have been in the receiving end in every possible way. But this is not what I am going to be telling you about today.

One night

The year was 1994. I was an adolescent living in a joint family. It was 2 am and the only sound audible was of army boots, many pairs marching around the house till there were armed soldiers at our door. Fists thumped on the wooden front door till it was opened without knowing that the gunmen would stream in to push into every corner of the house with no time for reflection and to react. The women folk met the soldiers face to face when they entered the sleeping area. I woke up to the hushed tones and the glare of the torchlight .Instructed to go out of the house we raised our hands over our heads and exited out of the house to stand in two separate lines in the courtyard -one for the men, the other for the women and were subjected to interrogation one-by one.

The number of heavily armed and veiled soldiers of the paramilitary battalion outnumbered the total strength of my family members. The language they spoke was hardly understood by us and ours was foreign to them. They were apparently looking for someone and they wanted us to admit we knew something about it. Only that we didn’t know a thing.

The men and the women are in danger alike in such a situation known as ‘combing operation.’ The men fear being suspected to be a militant and their helplessness in proving their innocence coupled with the extra-ordinary power the army personnel reserve in this incident. The women fear being mere spectators of their men being suspected and their own helplessness in protecting the fathers, husbands and the sons. The women are also most likely to get gang raped by the troops as it has been reported from many parts of remote Manipur.

The fear among my people is a fear that comes from not wanting to die a meaningless death, of ‘them returning’, of them finding something in the house the next time around, of being suspected when innocent, of being not heard, of dying in front of your family while the biggest fear remains that of not being able to stop it from happening to your loved ones in front of your eyes.

But in this fear arises a unique phenomenon ,the emergence of fearless women from my community who form the barrier between their loved ones and the bullet- the human shield of my story, the ‘Meira paibis’. Literally meaning ‘women with flaming torches- the meira paibi is the largest grassroots civil society movement fighting the atrocities and human right violations by the state in Manipur. Meira paibis have faced the military might and aggression with nothing more than their will and unity.

A human shield

It is the sound of a stone being banged against an electric pole in the locality that is picked up and transmitted between localities to bring out the women of Manipur from their households at any hour of the day or night. These women, both young and old, transform into a formidable force when there is a call of distress. The woman in her house has just heard the secret code, the stone striking the electric pole, she pushes the traditional wraparound/sarong/ ‘phanek’ a little lower, fastens the ‘khwang chet’ cloth as a belt around her waist and wraps the traditional ‘phi’ or stole around her. A strip of cloth forms her turban. She grabs her ‘meira’(torch), sets it aflame and sets out of her courtyard to join the stream of other women and the torches that lighten the darkness engulfing the community and together they become a force against the violations at the hands of the army and the paramilitary.

Just what went wrong

In the tug- of -war between the army/paramilitary and the militants, between the friction of two differing points of view held by the state and the revolution,it is almost as if a generation of our men have been wiped out. The existence of a law like the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) which was meant to allow men in uniform and troops to operate in extreme hostile environment and be able to control the upsurge of insurgency in the area, also gave way to its misuse and birth to mass violence and termination of rights of the common man.

The act allowed the army and paramilitary to kill or arrest without warrant based on suspicion alone and did not allow the provision of litigation on the event of custodial deaths. This legal framework charted out to tackle the extremely complicated dynamics of militancy in Manipur, fanned an increase in ‘fake encounters’, custodial deaths, rape of young girls and women and their subsequent murder to silence accusations. Abuse of AFSPA occurred owing to the unaccountability the army/paramilitary troops enjoyed under it during operations.

What was meant in the larger national interest to control insurgency led to the creation of a Frankenstein which refused to be controlled. The women of Manipur bore it. Each case was met with the same loud resistance by them, a unified outcry and struggle for justice. The women of Manipur did not slacken as the number of girls and women who met an unfortunate end, increased.

The scene

The revolution demands an independent country status to Manipur arguing that Manipur was never a part of India and was an independent kingdom, forcibly and treacherously annexed to India on false promises and real pressure. The state used the might of the army and the paramilitary to silence the revolution. The combat power between the two opponents is unworthy of even discussion but the insurgents used all they had-guerrilla warfare, local support, the ambiguity of assimilation and a cross-border terrorism agenda of the neighboring country China.

The army faced tougher challenges of a different nature, one that arises out of penetrating a population which suspected their motives, did not understand their language, looked different with an evident cultural gap, a bridge who no one has tried to build. And in this environment of differing interests, culture, religion and suspicion arises a situation that gives birth to violence, massacre, confusion of identity, absence of mercy, rejection of pleas for help and dismissal, to bloodshed, rape and other crimes.

The attacks led by the insurgents have been varied in nature. Armed militants have attacked army posts and police stations, laid bomb traps for army/paramilitary convoys and VIPs, staged state- wide ‘bandhs’ or curfews, paralysing normal life and brought conflict right onto our streets in ‘encounters’ that shift from one street to another as the two involved parties chase each other. IED blasts in public places, mass killing and blood –shed, bloody encounters in the dead of the night are events in the region children of Manipur have grown up seeing.

Militants have a fund-raising drive that majority would rather call it ‘extortion’. Under the threat of life, people part with huge sums of money militant groups demand from them. The demand letter comes on the official letterhead of the militant group which issues the demand and bears clearly the amount of money.

The army leads combing operations on receiving intelligence reports and work on clear orders to nab any person it is convinced is a militant or instrumental to the movement. On ground, such an exercise always leads to an encounter resulting in casualties on both sides. The army maintains its stance that it is not their objective to eliminate identified militants if they surrender and work under rules of not firing if the opponent is injured or wants to surrender.

The deflection in the plan comes when the intelligence reports are incorrect or the personnel in these operations do not respect other’s rights. However, there is another angle to it as one senior army officer says,” When our troops are led into such operations they are not told to kill the militants. We want them to surrender. But in an unnatural and extremely volatile event like this, we are met with very hostile attack and the army is trained to overcome that. It is one man against the other then.”

This has brought fear into the lives of the common man because anybody could be suspected, picked up or summoned. The frisking and interrogation is not an ordinary exercise in this situation because you must remember the army reserves sole power with very little scope for protection of human rights for the ones who are interrogated.

An impervious shield

The movement of the ‘meitei’ women from Manipuri began in 1970s as a drive against social evils like alcoholism and drug addiction which had the youth in its grip. The women were convinced that the community development would not take place unless these were curbed and took onto themselves the task of controlling it in their localities. The women would walk in groups at night, impose fines on men they would find drunk, and burn stocks of alcohol. Liquor was eventually banned in the state.

In the year 1980, the entire state was brought under the AFSPA to counter insurgency. As young men were often arrested, tortured or killed, the women took to the streets to stop the atrocities and demanding justice. Night after night, they patrolled the streets to prevent search operations by security forces. These women became a shield against violence and killings.

A new day

If reports from top police and army officials are to be believed the movement is near over. We have not had the opportunity to get the second side of the story but if the new day is about to come, the daughters and mothers of Manipur, the ‘ Meira paibis’ should have a major stake in the peace that will come into our homes and localities for the role they played as the ‘human barrier’.

The women of Manipur should lead movements in the state, the movement of nation building, brick-by-brick.And in their hands I place faith and I seek hope in their leadership, one that rests on their experience of having lead our people through the traumatic years of fear and violence.

By
Urmila Chanam
Journalist
World Pulse & Women International Perspective