Imphal/New Delhi:
Civil buses escorted by security forces resumed trips in districts in Manipur today, which do not want any free movement until the demand of a separate administration outside the state, amid protests by the cookie tribes.
Visual shows mine-resistant vehicles to plow through blockade in Kangpokpi district, 45 km from the state capital Imphal.
Many women from the cookie tribes who tried to block the highway when they charged them by security forces.
The Center announced that after the resignation of Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, there should be no road barrier anywhere in the state coming under the President’s rule.
In Manipur, clashes have been reported from several cookie-cruel areas. Visual protesters shared by the locals throw stones at vehicles, dig the streets, burn tires, and put barricades. Some people threw the explains in the security forces and shouted at them to turn back.
The valley-headed Metei community and more than a dozen different tribes are collectively known as cookies, prominent in some hilly areas of Manipur, fighting on many issues such as land rights and political representation since May 2023. More than 250 have died in violence and around 50,000 have been displaced internally.
Cookie leaders, about two dozen terrorist groups that have signed the suspension (SOO) agreement of operations, and their frontal civic organizations have demanded a separate administration before allowing the Center to move independently to Manipur.
Meitei organizations have questioned why thousands of internal displaced people living in relief camps are threatened with cookie tribes to return home to rebuild their lives, when dialogue can run together.
While the cookie-Zo groups indicated on the ethnic clashes starting in May 2023, for the reason that they increased their demand in a separate administration, or a union area with an assembly, Metei leaders have pointed out decades-old evidences of cookie groups for decades which have been out of Manipur.
On 15 January, in a memorandum by the new Governor of Manipur, the World Cookie-Jo Interactive Council (WKZIC) said the cookie tribes have demanded a state “from 1946-47.”
In the years before May 2023, cookie protests, meetings and educational discussions have mentioned the demand for a separate area out of Manipur.
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