GUWAHATI, April 4 — Several organisations representing the Hmars had been warning a Nastul Pahar – like retaliatory action by the Hmar extremists in case of the failure of the State administration to rein in the marauding Dima Halong Daoga (DHD), the Dimasa militant outfit, which has allegedly been carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in North Cachar Hills District and in parts of Cachar District.
Even on March 31 last, the leaders of the Hmar Supreme House – the Hmar Inpui, the Hmar National Union, the Barak valley Hill Tribes Development Council, the Hmar Students’ Association, Mizoram, the Hmar Students’ Association, Guwahati Branch and even an office bearer of the North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) also warned, in a memorandum to the Chief Minister, that immediate actions to rein in the DHD atrocities on Hmars were needed ‘to avoid retaliatory action from the Hmar community’.
“In spite of various steps being initiated by the Hmar people by way of informing the Government authorities for taking appropriate remedial actions, no tangible step appeared to have been taken. The cries of despair have no impact on the unresponsive local administration so far. These have already brought about immeasurable hardships to those villages who give shelter to their brothers,” said the signatories to the above unemorandum.
Drawing attention of the Chief Minister to the plight of the Hmar people living in the districts of North Cachar Hills and Cachar, caused by the atrocities of the DHD, the signatories of the memorandum alleged that the Dimasa militant outfit was carrying on such atrocities at the behest of their political mentors. The outfit’s ethnic cleansing campaign is directed mainly against the Hmars living in these two districts, the signatories said.
Like the Dimasas, the Hmars are also the indigenous and original inhabitants of these two districts and are recognised as a Scheduled Tribe as per the Indian Constitution. They have co-existed with the Dimasas for few centuries now. But, with the recently formulated theory of self-determination, prompted by the desire to dominate the other smaller tribes, the DHD has been used as an instrument of terror to inflict untold miseries on the smaller tribes like the Hmars, Kukis, Zemei Nagas and the Baites, the signatories said.
In their memorandum, they also complained that four Hmar persons were abducted by the DHD till March 28 last, several Hmar villages looted by the Dimasa militants and 1,542 Hmar persons belonging to NC Hills and Cachar districts and even to the neighbouring States of Manipur and Mizoram, were displaced due to the atrocities perpetrated by the DHD, which has been on a ceasefire with the Government.