Against the backdrop of recent arrest of the wife of its top functionary and other cadre-members besides several state government officials accused of terror funding, NSCN (K) through its MIP has accused the National Investigating Agency (NIA) of “perpetrating terrorism in Nagaland” and warned that it would be “forced to ask every Indian people to leave Naga country” if NIA continued with its policy.
Stating this in a press note, MIP said NSCN (K) had been maintaining maximum restraint regardless of the endless provocations of NIA, meant to force it to retaliate by committing terrorist activities
Those which NSCN (K) has threatened to target included traders, business men or government servicemen etc as agents, collaborators and sympathizers of NIA, who it said “must be evicted from Nagaland or face the same fate which the innocent Nagas are suffering in the hands of NIA and other inimical forces of India covertly or overtly operating in Naga country.
MIP further alleged that “NSCN workers are harassed, tortured, homes raided and money and properties stolen and damaged by Indian forces especially by the NIA.”
It also alleged that the government of India had empowered NIA “with un-paralleled extra-constitutional and extra-judicial excessive terrorizing powers to harass, arrest, torture and imprison the Nagas far beyond the legal limits.”
MIP reiterated that the Naga struggle for freedom was not anachronism requiring resuscitation but a live and continuous progression of the people’s aspiration as a whole which “cannot be stamped out through Indian government terrorism in an overnight.”
MIP recounted that use of “absolute terror during the first phase of repression from 1955-1975 by the India armed forces passed unnoticed in the absence of the international community or United Nation’s intervention due because of complete censorship of international press and media coverage and partly due to physical and topographical isolation of Nagaland and the Naga people from the rest of the world.”
MIP also alleged that “most cases of genocides, mass murder, mass execution, mass concentration camps, mass rape, tortures etc. still remained unreported and unverified.”
“The destruction of wealth, properties and assets of the Nagas and complete destruction of more than 800 Naga villages through arson by Indian Army still is etched deeply in the collective memories of the Naga people,” MIP said, adding “no eulogy is deemed fitting enough to portray the terror and inhumanity the Nagas suffered…”
It further said that no amount of compensation could ever recuperate the vilest crimes of insanity the Nagas had been forced to undergo just because Nagas wanted to remain a Naga. “All these sufferings only reinforces our collective aspiration as a people and nation to further strive and sacrifice to reclaim our birthrights…,” MIP added.
Despite waging undeclared war against the Nagas, MIP said the government of India and top army generals “candidly acknowledged the military failure and harangued for political solution because they realized the futility of using sheer terrorism and violence, instead, opined for resolution of the conflict through political dialogue.”
It said “some top Indian commanders even went to the extent of honoring the bravery of the Naga Army and stated that Nagas never used terror or terrorist tactic against them regardless of the uninhibited use of terror by Indian forces.”
However, as the world has been watching, MIP said “GoI can no longer replicate the past usage of decades of indiscriminate terrorism against the Nagas and therefore the GoI in order to justify the re-introduction of the usage of terrorism against the Nagas had branded NSCN/GPRN as terrorist organization and has re-enforced AFSPA, Terrorist Act, POTA etc in the Naga country.”
MIP said that the Naga army, even in the face of daily terrorism by the government forces, “had only been resisting in self defense and never had resorted to terror methods even in an instance against terror spewing Indian Armed Forces.”
It also said that the Naga army and NSCN had never ventured out beyond the India occupied Naga territory to attack Indian forces or had caused harm to any Indian citizen within and without or caused damage or destruction of vital installations or properties and assets belonging to Government of India nowhere within or outside.
MIP said it had all along been fighting “self-defensively solely against the India Armed Forces forceful militarization and invasion of Naga country and there had never been a single incident where non-combatant Indian citizen had been harmed by Naga Army.”
On the contrary, MIP alleged that the “Indian Forces even in the recent years from 2015-17, several innocent school students and women have been killed and injured. Many innocent civilian Naga men having no connection at all with NSCN have been killed, injured, arrested, tortured and imprisoned.”