- By Divya Arya
- BBC World Service, Manipur
2 hours ago
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Kuki’s nursing student Chiin Sianching was dragged from her room, beaten and left to die
In the north-east Indian state of Manipur, new allegations of violence against women are emerging after the reaction to a viral video showing two women being paraded naked by a mob encouraged others to speak up.
Warning: This article contains details that may concern some readers.
For more than two months, Mary (not her real name), a Kuki woman, could not find the courage to go to the police.
Her 18-year-old daughter was kidnapped outside her home, raped by several people overnight and left badly beaten on her doorstep.
“The attackers threatened to kill my daughter if she talked about it,” Mary told me when I met her outside the relief camp where they have been living since ethnic clashes between the Meitei and Kuki communities erupted in Manipur in May, killing more than 130 people.
Last week, a video surfaced on social media of two Kuki women being paraded naked by a mob.
Great outrage and condemnation ensued, leading to the arrest of six men.
This prompted Mary to file a complaint with the police.
“I figured if I don’t do this now, I won’t get another chance.” She says. “I will always regret not even trying to punish my daughter’s attackers.”
Mary says her daughter is now talking about killing herself, but reassures her that there is still something she can do with her life.
Nineteen-year-old Chiin Sianching fears that a similar fate could easily have happened to her.
She and a friend were singled out because of their affiliation with the Kuki community, she says, and attacked at the dorm where they lived while studying nursing in the state capital, Imphal.
“The mob kept banging on the door of the room we were hiding in, screaming that your husbands raped our wives, now we’re going to do the same to you,” she says.
She called her mother and said it might be the last time she would speak to her. Minutes later, the two young women were dragged into the street and beaten unconscious – Ms Sianching believes the mob thought she was dead and ran away.
The police who found their bodies only realized they were alive after checking their pulses.
Unconfirmed reports of Meitei women being sexually abused by Kuki men fueled this mob of Meitei men against Chiin and her friend.
After the conflict flared up, the fault lines quickly deepened, leading to the complete separation of two communities that had previously lived side by side. Both have now set up barricades at the village entrances and there are continuing reports of clashes at night.
But the video showing the two Kuki women naked also united the Meitei women in protest.
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Sinam Surnalata Leima, a leader of the Meitei women, condemns the attack on the Kuki women as a “heinous crime”
Manipur has a long tradition of women playing an important role in civil society, including the Meira Peibis, or torchbearers – also known as the Mothers of Manipur – who have protested abuses of power by the state and army, and human rights abuses.
Sinam Surnalata Leima, who leads the Meira Peibis in a group of villages where the two Kuki women in the video were attacked, says the villagers themselves turned the prime suspect over to the police.
Then the local members of Meira Peibis got together and burned down his house.
“The burning is a symbol of the community condemning the heinous crime committed by these men. Your actions cannot damage the honor of the entire Meitei community,” says Ms. Leima.
The defendant’s wife and three children were banished from the village.
But why did the mafia behave like this in a society that values its women highly?
“It was sadness and revenge for the Meitei women who had been attacked by Kuki men,” Ms. Leima explains.
She is personally unaware of such attacks, but says Meitei women do not speak out about a crime of this nature as it is considered shameful.
State police said shortly after the clashes began that they had received no reports of violence against Meitei women, but a spokesman for the Meitei community told me there had been many unreported attacks.
“Our women do not want to compromise their dignity by speaking openly about the injuries they have been subjected to or by reporting them to the police,” says Khuraijam Athouba of a Meitei organization called Cocomi.
In his view, the focus should continue to be on the issue of murder and displaced persons and not on sexual violence.
justice
The brother of one of the Kuki women featured in the video is plagued by all these problems.
The mob that stripped and sexually abused his sister also killed her father and younger brother – he and his mother were saved when they visited their family in another village when the clashes started.
The 23-year-old man has a blank expression on his face most of the time when I meet him in a small room in one of his relatives’ houses.
I ask him what he wants from the government and the police?
“Arrest every person in this mob, especially those who killed my father and brother,” he says.
“And treat both communities fairly.”
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Gracy Haokip: “We wouldn’t have gotten so much attention without this video”
In both communities, there seems to be a lack of trust in the federal and state governments.
Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, who belongs to the Meitei community, promised the accused “the harshest punishment, including the death penalty.” However, when asked about the calls for his resignation because he was unable to resolve the conflict, he said: “I don’t want to elaborate, my job is to bring peace to the state and punish wrongdoers.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi only broke his silence on the conflict after the video of the two women sparked nationwide outrage.
“What happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven,” he said, adding that no guilty party would be spared.
But for Ms. Leima, that statement cast her community in a bad light, ignoring the violence that has raged since May and resulted in the displacement of 60,000 people.
“The Prime Minister spoke when Kuki women were attacked. What about everything we’ve experienced? Aren’t we Meitei women citizens of India?” she asks.
The video has put the ongoing Manipur conflict back in the spotlight.
“Without this video, we wouldn’t have gotten as much attention from the government and other political parties,” says Gracy Haokip, a researcher who has supported victims of the clashes, including nursing student Chiin Sianching.
She says it will help the survivors who have bravely shared their experiences while trying to rebuild their lives.
Chiin tells me about the speech she gave to the women in her community when she told them she had signed up at another care facility near her.
“My mother told me that God kept me alive for a reason, so I’ve decided that I won’t give up on my dreams.”