Silchar, July 2: The pro-talks Dilip Nunisa faction of the Dima Halam Daogah today strongly assailed both the factions of the NSCN for inciting criminals among the Zeme Naga community to launch serial attacks on Dimasa villagers during the past three months in North Cachar Hills district.
Addressing reporters in Haflong, Dilip Nunisa, the chairman of DHD (N), said, “The NSCN factions are provoking the Nagas to attack the Dimasa people in the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual district with an aim to trigger a racial war.”
He admitted that some volatile elements among the Dimasa tribe, the mainstream population in the 4,888 square km sprawling district, had also joined the tit-for-tat racial war between the Dimasas and Zeme Nagas as they were “bent on defending their brethren”.
Condemning this racial rivalry spawning the vengeance killings in the district since April this year, Nunisa gave a clarion call to both communities to refrain from indulging in such bloodspill and killings, which, he added, “retard development”.
Jesius Jeme, the president of the Indigenous People’s Forum in North Cachar, on the other hand, traced the antagonism between these two major tribes in the district. He said the animosity started after the North Cachar Autonomous District Council, under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, had passed a resolution renaming the district as Dima Hasao Raji in May 2008.
He claimed that the racial amity among the tribal and non-tribal people living in the district had fast soured after the resolution was passed.
Last evening’s attack on a group of Dimasas has been dubbed by police in Haflong as a revenge killing in a fallout of the gruesome murders of three Zeme Naga women, including a 15-year-old girl at Hereguilya.
The five killed in yesterday’s attack have been identified as Wasi Thangru, M. Phonglo, Thingtham Langthasa, Mo Langthasa and Karen Thangru. Over 50 people have been killed in the ethnic clashes since March.
More than 10,000 people from both the communities are taking shelter in 29 relief camps after their houses were torched in the cycle of violence.
