SOMEWHERE NEAR ASSAM-MEGHALAYA BOUNDARY, April 20 – The Garo Hills-based proscribed outfit A’chik National Volunteer Council (ANVC) today ruled out announcing ceasefire at the initial stage of the possible peace-talks with the Government of India (GoI). Talking to this newspaper, the ANVC general secretary Wanding K Marak said, “Like the erstwhile Mizo National Front (MNF), we are not keen to announce a ceasefire at the initial stage of peace-talks with Government of India.”
The ANVC leader said the outfit was eagerly awaiting a positive response from the Government of India for beginning of the peace negotiations soon as a ‘follow-up’ to the preliminary talks they had with the Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director of the GoI at Bangkok early this year.
“We aren’t blood thirsty people and are eagerly looking for peace negotiations with the Government of India to find solutions to all the problems of Garo people who have been exploited and dominated by the Khasi tribe in the present State of Meghalaya,” Marak said. The outfit is grateful to the former MNF leader and the incumbent Chief Minister of Mizoram, Sri Zoramthanga, for playing a key role in facilitating the preliminary talks with GoI representatives in Bangkok earlier this year. The ANVC leaders met Sri Zoramthanga regarding the talks in January this year. “We will be happy to have Sri Zoramthanga as the negotiator during future talks with Government of India,” Marak said.
However, the ANVC leader today declined to inform what transpired in the preliminary round of talks with GoI representatives in Bangkok. However, he was very candid in saying that the outfit would not settle for anything short of a separate Garoland State for Garo tribal people living in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya and in parts of Kamrup and Goalpara districts of Assam. When asked whether a Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) like solution would be acceptable to the ANVC, the leader said, “We believe that sans creation of a separate State for Garos, it will be impossible to pave the way for overall development of Garo people.”
The ANVC leader said that any future talks with GoI should be based on the set of demands submitted by the ANVC to the Government way back in 1999 prior to imposition of the ban on the outfit in early 2000. The ANVC among others submitted the demand for a separate Garoland State along with a map of the proposed State covering over 8,000 square kilometres of Garo-inhabited areas of Meghalaya and neighbouring Assam.
The outfit also submitted some of its demands to the Union Home Minister LK Advani last year through the former Lok Sabha Speaker and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP from Garo Hills, Purno A Sangma. “We met Sri Sangma and his colleague LW Hitler last year. The NCP leader promised to work for facilitating peace talks between ANVC and GoI. However, we want to clarify that we have “no link or nexus” with any political party but are willing to work with any politician keen to uplift the lot of Garo tribe,” the ANVC general secretary said.
The ANVC is very much anguished at the recent ‘misdeeds’ like extortions and kidnappings carried out by the banned NDFB in the Garo Hills areas tarnishing the image of the ANVC. The ANVC general secretary clarified that the outfit had already served ‘quit Garo Hills notice’ to the NDFB. He stated that all the recent abductions and extortions in the Garo Hills areas including the kidnapping of the Customs official Dipak Mahanta and a few coal traders were committed by the NDFB sans the consent of the ANVC which is being now blamed for it.
“We are fed up with the NDFB activities. They have polluted the atmosphere in the Garo Hills. We will see to it that they leave the Garo Hills areas at peace,” Sri Marak said. The ANVC leader admitted that both NDFB and ULFA had been using the Garo Hills areas in Meghalaya as a passage to cross the Indo-Bangla border in that sector to reach their camps in Bangladesh side.
However, the ANVC sounds sympathetic towards the ULFA which, Sri Marak said, has not created any trouble in the Garo Hills areas and is only interested in using the area as a corridor to cross over to Bangladesh. The ANVC leader alleged that the NDFB had floated an outfit called Hajong United Liberation Army (HULA) in the Garo Hills to carry out extortions and kidnappings in that area with the help of gullible local Garo youths.
The Garo insurgent outfit is apprehensive that the NDFB activities in their areas were potent enough to jeopardise the chances of peace negotiations with Government of India. The ANVC leader today admitted to having some camps inside the neighbouring Bangladesh and stated that so far they had not felt any pressure from Bangladeshi authorities to leave that country.