Nagaland Gaon Bura Federation (NGBF) has said that there is a tendency within NSCN (I-M) leadership to brand Naga leaders, tribes, organisations and other civil society groups as “anti Nagas and traitors” for not towing their political ideology which it said was a “mockery of Nagaland for Christ.”
NGBF president Shalem Konyak, general secretary Shikuto Zalipu and media secretary Akhu Naga termed such statements from NSCN (I-M) as contradictory to their frequent fasting programmes and prayer requests seeking cooperation from Nagas. NGBF said God-fearing leaders should not insist that their words and actions were final in the Naga context.
It also reasserted that people’s voices and will are final and declared that NGBF is opposed to dictates that stifled people’s sentiment. NGBF said Nagas did not oppose British occupation and Indian occupation only to finally be treated like “expendable humans at the hands of fellow Nagas.”
NGBF also said that issuing statements such as “… any organization falling in line with RN Ravi is anti Naga …” summed up the inconsistencies in the last 23 years of political talks between Government of India and NSCN (I-M).
Recalling the killings post the Shillong Accord of 1975 and the split in NSCN in 1988 in which politicians, bureaucrats and civil society leaders were targeted, besides the fratricidal killings, NGBF pointed out that the wiping out of a generation of young local entrepreneurs was still very fresh in the memory of “our people”.