Khaplang: No space for Isak-Muivah

Kohima, May 6: The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang) today rejected the reconciliation process initiated by a Naga church leader between the Naga warring groups.

“We’ll not attend the meeting nor will be part of the reconciliation process,” said Kughalu Mulatonu, a senior kilonser (minister) of the Khaplang faction.

The meeting has been initiated by Rev. Wati Aier, a prominent Naga clergyman who heads the Naga Reconciliation Forum, and is scheduled to be held at Chingmai in Thailand in the last week of May, the Khaplang group said.

Mulatonu said the outfit’s chairman S.S. Khaplang and general secretary N. Kitovi Zhimomi had received letters from Aier last week, requesting them to attend the Chingmai roundtable meeting, invitations for which had also been sent to the Isak-Muivah and Unification factions of the NSCN.

The kilonser said the outfit did not think it was necessary to reconcile with the National Socialist Council of Nagalim led by its chairman Isak Chishi Swu and general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah.

“We Nagas are already united and there is no question of reconciliation anymore,” the NSCN (K) leader said, referring to the outfit’s friendship with the Unification faction.

Unification, a splinter group of the Isak-Muivah faction, and the Khaplang faction have joined hands against the NSCN (I-M). Factional clashes have been raging since April 15, killing 19 people.

Mulatonu said there was no space to reconcile with the Isak-Muivah group, which has been waging a bitter war against the Nagas since 1997.

The NSCN (K) claimed that the Nagas were with them and the Naga problem should be addressed by Naga people and not by outsiders.

Though Khaplang is from Myanmar, the outfit considers Muivah and his people to be non-Nagas. It asked Muivah to leave Nagaland or face consequences for all his wrong doings to the Naga people.

The NSCN (K) leader charged the Naga Reconciliation Forum with being pro-NSCN (I-M) and claimed that the forum was trying to facilitate Muivah’s escape from India via Thailand.

He said rather than reconciling with “Hebron campers” (the NSCN (I-M) council headquarters), they were trying to smoke out rival cadres from Nagaland.

Swu is in Bangkok but by choosing Chingmai, a popular tourist resort, the forum is trying to bring all the factions to a neutral place to hammer out their differences.

The Isak-Muivah group holds that reconciliation must precede Naga unification, while the Khaplang group says that unification must take place before any solution to the Naga political problem.

In 1997, the NSCN (I-M) had rejected the Atlanta Naga peace meeting sponsored by the North America Baptist church. Khaplang and Zhimomi attended the meeting but Swu and Muivah did not. This time, the Khaplang group has rejected the Thailand meet.

Sources said Swu has also invited NSCN (K) commander-in-chief Khole Konyak to Bangkok recently to further Naga reconciliation and unity.