Army called in to restore calm in Karbi Anglong
Guwahati/Karbi
Anglong: The Assam Government has decided to call in the
army to restore peace and calm in the strife torn district
of Karbi Anglong after shoot-at-sight orders and a curfew
failed to contain ethnic violence there. So far, over 70 persons
been killed and close to 200 houses torched in the remote
district, forcing residents of the area to leave for safer
havens. Unified Command Structure administative head and chief
secretary S Kabilan, operational commander and 4 Corps G-o-C
Lt Gen H S Lidder and DGP P V Sumant took the decision to
deploy troops after recommending the same to Assam Chief Minister
Tarun Gogoi. The army, paramilitary forces and police are
already patrolling the violence-affected area. According to
official sources, 5000 Dimasas have fled the relief camps
in Karbi Anglong to neighbouring Nagaon and North Cachar Hills
districts where they are in majority while 1000 Karbis had
taken shelter in and around the district headquarter town
of Diphu.
Violence
involving the Karbi and Dimasa tribes in the district has
going on intermittently for the past three weeks. The genesis
of the violence can be traced to a grenade explosion on September
24 at village Parokhowa, near the adjoining eastern Assam
district town of Nagaon, in which eight persons were injured.
It was a random attack near a market, and not directed at
a particular community. Two days later, bodies of three Dimasa
auto rickshaw drivers were found near the town of Manza in
Karbi Anglong district, some 320 kilometres east of Assam's
main city of Guwahati. The revenge killings have been going
on since then, and if reports from the remote Assamese district
are to be gone by, then, 200 homes of the Karbi people have
been set ablaze. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogo visited the
violence-torn district last week and squarely blamed the United
People's Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) and the Dima Halim Daogah
(DHD), of 'violating cease-fire ground rules'. On Tuesday,
he met their representatives to discuss ways to bring a volatile
situation under control. Gogoi warned that the state government
would be left with no option but to take stern action against
these two groups if they did not call a halt to their militant
activities.
The UPDS is a rag-tag rebel group fighting for an independent
homeland for the Karbi tribe and the DHD is an outlawed militant
outfit waging a bush war for carving out a separate Dimasa
land. The two groups are operating ceasefires with New Delhi
- the UPDS involved in a truce since 2002 and the DHD entering
into a ceasefire a year later in 2003. The cease-fires observed
by the two groups have become a complete mockery with militants
roaming around with automatic weapons.In a district sandwiched
between Meghalaya and Nagaland, Karbis are the dominant tribe
and account for about 40 per cent of the total 812,320 population.
The Dimasas account for about 15 percent with at least half-a-dozen
other ethnic groups like the Kukis, Khasis and the Hmars cohabiting
together in Karbi Anglong alongside a sizeable non-tribal
population. There are many reasons for the violence escalating
in recent weeks. Murky tribal politics at the local level
was one of the plausible causes for tempers running high.
Politicians from the ruling Congress party in Assam and the
opposition parties like the BJP, the CPI (ML), and the Asom
Gana Parishad (AGP) were in one way or the other responsible
for the mayhem by instigating either the UPDS or the DHD to
carry out a show of strength.
This
assumes significance as the state Assembly polls are due early
next year and like in any other northeastern states, militants
often help win candidates from their respective communities.
There are, however, just four Assembly seats in the district
and in the past many elections it was always the Karbi candidates
that won the polls - many believes the DHD was trying to prepare
the ground from now on by trying to make a Dimasa candidate
win the elections. The two rebel groups want their areas of
influence to be dominated by their own community members as
any incentives or concessions granted by the government in
the near future could be exclusively shared among the respective
communities instead of sharing the dollops with their rival
members. This is being seen as another reason for the ethnic
violence.