The Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation (ENPO), which had announced an indefinite non-cooperation towards the Indian security forces in protest against the botched counter-insurgency operation that left 14 civilians dead in Mon district in December, has condemned the two recent attacks on Assam Rifles personnel in the state.
While nobody was injured in the August 9 attack, carried out by the suspected cadres of the banned NSCN (K-YA) in the Noklak district on August 9, two Assam Rifles jawans were injured in the attack carried out in Nyasa village under Mon district in the wee hours of Monday.
Both the injured jawans were taken to Jorhat in neighbouring Assam by air for treatment.The ENPO, along with its seven federating tribal bodies and frontal organisations, “vehemently condemned” the firing incidents at ITC DAN on August 9 by a group of unknown cadres, and at Nyasha and Longwa village on August 15 reportedly by a group of National Socialist Council of Nagaland (K-YA) cadres in which two AR jawans were injured.
“We condemn both the August 9 and 15 attacks. The ENPO executive will sit very soon to review the law-and-order situation as well as our statehood demand. Any attack is a violation of the Tuensang Summit Resolution adopted on December 18, 2017, against any form of violence in the areas falling under the ENPO because we have seen enough violence and have suffered enough. The ENPO resolution was based on people’s experiences,” ENPO president R. Tsapikiu Sangtam told The Telegraph on Tuesday.
The ENPO is the apex body of seven tribal organisations of six districts falling in eastern Nagaland. The ENPO is also spearheading the demand of a separate state — Frontier Nagaland — comprising the six districts of Mon, Tuensang, Kiphire, Longleng, Noklak and Shamator.
An ENPO statement, shared by Sangtam, made it clear that no group or individual should take advantage of the “tolerance level of the public of Eastern Nagaland” which “needs development instead of arms conflicts, and that, our land should not be targeted for firing and use it as battlefield.”The ENPO said the people of Eastern Nagaland will not tolerate violence or activities that disturb peace in the region. “It is therefore once again reminded to all concerned to honour the sentiments of the public for peace and tranquillity in the region,” the ENPO said.The encounter was the third in less than a week involving the Yung Aung faction of the (NSCN-K) and the Ulfa (Independent) in areas bordering Myanmar, prompting the Nagaland Police to beef up security along the international border with Myanmar.
The NSCN faction is not part of the ongoing peace process to find a solution to the decades-old Naga insurgency.
The NSCN (K-YA), along with the Ulfa (Independent), had urged the masses in Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, and Meghalaya to boycott the 75th Independence Day celebrations. The groups had also called for a bandh from August 14 midnight to 6pm of August 15. Both outfits operate from their hideouts in Myanmar.The outfits had on August 9 jointly attacked Assam Rifles personnel patrolling in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district, leaving a junior commissioned officer injured. A couple of hours later, they carried out another attack about 100km away in Dan Pangsah in the Noklak district of Nagaland. Monday’s encounter site is around 76km from Oting in Mon district where 14 civilians were killed on December 4 and 5 — 13 in the botched-up counter-insurgency operation and one a day later during a protest in Mon town. The Nagaland police had in June charge-sheeted 30 army personnel in the case. The army personnel mistook the civilians for militants.The ENPO had imposed an “indefinite non-cooperation” towards the Indian security forces after the Oting massacre. It was lifted on May 1 this year.
