Dimapur, December 12 (MExN): The Naga International Support Center (NISC) has accused the Government of India (GoI) of using double standards in the Indo-Naga peace talks. The Human Rights organisation based in Amsterdam stated in a press release that, “it is not the first time that the Government of India talks peace on the negotiating table while undermining these talks for peace elsewhere.” The group questioned the sincerity of the Indian Government and wondered how people of India could trust leaders “…who do not make its policies public but continues to wage war and spends tremendous amounts of public money to subjugate peoples who have every right to pursue their right to the internationally acclaimed right to self determination.”
The NISC also charged the Prime Minister of putting “a bomb in the 14 years of Indo-Naga peace talks.” It questioned why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Manipur on December 4, 2011, guaranteed the integrity of the state of Manipur knowing well that it was against the reunification of Naga areas. “The Government of India acknowledges the unique history and situation of the Naga people… knows that the Nagas, though living in tribes and separated through mountains and valleys, are one in spirit where it concerns their nation. India has a long history with the Nagas where this tenacious spirit is concerned. India knows that Nagas do not give up their right to self determination, but fight for it with determination,” the group stated.
The NISC has urged the Indian Government to “defuse the bomb which has been placed to undermine the peace talks and to solve the long standing conflict by talking genuinely and with sincerity.” It also told the Indian Government to “befriend the Nagas and other Indigenous Peoples so a future relationship between the two nations can be intimate and fruitful, yet independent; and to make its policies on the Northeast in general and on the Indo-Naga conflict in particular public, so democratic accountability to the public will take root.” Furthermore, it told that the Indian Government “publish both human losses of the Armed Forces of India as well as the human losses inflicted on the Nagas and to release all political prisoners who have not committed terrorist crimes but fought for the right to self determination.”
The NISC has also appealed to the Indian media: journalists, editors, TV producers, filmmakers, writers to “do a little research on the cost of the Indo-Naga war related to approximately 60 years with an average of 2,00,000 men and women still stationed in Naga areas, to asses the daily operations like cost of camps and their maintenance, transport, fuel, equipment, weapons.”
