As one of the senior most living national workers, I have decided it is my responsibility to respond to “The Position of the NSCN” which appeared in local papers on December 28, 2015.
The statement said, “Nagas were placed in a very perilous situation when NNC had failed to uphold the national trust by signing the infamous Shillong Accord in 1975”. The charging that NNC had signed the controversial Shillong Accord was wrong and baseless.
Why? Because at that time NNC had only 4 top heads functioning: AZ Phizo, President of NNC in London UK; Imkongmeren, Vice-President of NNC in an Indian prison; Mr. Isak Chishi Swu, Chairman, Executive Council, NNC, and Th. Muivah, General Secretary of NNC, the last two operating in the eastern region of the Naga homeland. None of them signed it.
Mr. Venieyi Rhakho, one of the delegate members who were sent to meet the representative of the Government of India in Shillong, refused to sign the Accord. Those Naga National workers who were in prisons, including me, at the time did not know or sign the Accord. They and those who had retired from active national service had nothing to do with the Accord.
One of the Shillong Accord signatories, Mr. S. Darhü, withdrew himself from the Accord and Transit Camp and lived the rest of his life in his Tungjoy village. Lastly, Mr. Zashei Huire himself disowned the Shillong Accord on May 6, 1996 just before his death.
Then, whose NNC had signed the Shillong Accord of 1975, the NSCN IM are against? NNC had not signed it. It did not fail to uphold the national trust.
Those who signed the Shillong Accord of 1975 in the name of “Underground Organizations” and some few NNC/FGN members who supported the Accord are confined in the Transit Camp in Kohima created by the Accord. [They claim they are original NNC/FGN. But everybody knows who they are.]
The Nagas and their NNC created slowly by their same loving and suffering faced the greatest crisis and challenge as never before. The signatories signed the Shillong Accord because they could not see any other way which the public fully understood. But why have the signatories made NNC to carry the burden or problem they brought with no NNC authorization? And why a few NNC leaders with proper authority at the time decided to use the crisis mistake of the 5 signatories to start their own revolutionary group and blame NNC for “failed to uphold the national trust”? These two questions are now revealing how NNC has been weakened so much.
The Nagas know the facts – only 5 underground organization representatives signed the infamous Shillong Accord. It was a baseless Accord. Why then accuse NNC and the vast majority Nagas who did not sign Shillong Accord of 1975 and they had rejected it from the beginning? What was the real motive and political plan? Because of such disturbing thoughts and conclusions in my mind I am compelled to give this rejoinder of what I really feel.
Careful examination shows that the Shillong Accord in reality it has no legal binding on NNC/FGN because they had not signed it. It was signed in the name of “On behalf of the representatives of underground organizations” as per the Accord document.
Mr. LP Singh, the representative of GoI immediately realised his mistakes and in order to save his face from embarrassing position, gave two weeks time of ultimatum, either to implement or face heavy “operation”.
Thus the FGN was compelled to implement clause 2 of Shillong Accord and left clause 1 and 3 to meet a natural death. The Accord was not a document GoI could defend legally and officially, but a vague document only.
If the NSCN IM are to go on harping that the NNC has failed, they are also responsible to it. For they were also working under the banner of NNC/FGN till 1980. Shillong Accord had divided the undivided NNC/FGN into two, pro and anti- Shillong Accord. The anti side was more or less in the hands of those national workers in Eastern Nagaland. Why you surrendered your rightful NNC/FGN into the hands of those you call “traitors” and defect yourselves into a new and parallel organisation of the NSCN and GPRN? Will you not call others doing such thing is treason by traitors? If you accuse NNC has failed, then it was you who failed the NNC. If you are not part of NNC/FGN but a separate entity then, it is a new history, a new movement. Your NSCN/GPRN was formed only in 1980 and your NSCN IM comes into being only in 1988 and you cannot claim the past history.
Many Nagas had suffered and died for Naga sovereignty in the name of NNC/FGN. It was they who made a unique political history of the Nagas which the GoI directly or indirectly recognised when they entered a ceasefire with the FGN in 1964.
I know there are a lot of misunderstandings among ourselves but if you are prepared there is still a chance to understand each other a chance to come together and the door should not be closed now.
Please do not mislead and deceive yourselves and our people anymore, and do not sell your birthright. What you sow today your children will reap tomorrow. We all will die one day, but history will never die or forgive.
I am your loving comrade, Retd. Gen. Thinoselie M. Keyho (Kitsubozou, Kohima)
