No justice, no burial: Relatives mount corpse protest in India

May 11, 2023

A woman walks through the wreckage of a building that was set on fire and vandalized by mobs in Khumujamba, Manipur on Tuesday. Agency photo

AFP :
The stench of death hangs heavy over the morgue at an Indian hospital — and relatives are refusing to bury the rotting corpses in protest at their killings in ethnic violence.

Kamlallian Ype, 35, from the mainly Christian Kuki tribe, was killed fleeing attackers from the majority Meitei people, who are mostly Hindus, said his friend P Hentinglian.

“He was shot in the back and fell down,” the 25-year-old told AFP at the mortuary in Churachandpur. “They approached him and shot him point blank at the forehead. I saw it all.”

Over 60 people have been killed on both sides in the clashes in the hilly northeastern state of Manipur and around 35,000 residents have fled their homes since last week.

The far-flung states of northeast India — sandwiched between Bangladesh, China and Myanmar — have long been a tinderbox of tensions between different ethnic groups.

Now the families of Kukis killed in the latest violence are demanding a separate entity of their own.

Ype’s widow and their four sons want nothing from the Manipur state government and see him as a “martyr for the people… for the tribal community”, said his elder sister Siamting, 39.

“What I really want now is the separation of tribal regions from Manipur, for the Indian government to carve out a separate state for tribals in the region,” she went on.

Another father of four, daily wage labourer Lalthansang Siekzathang, lay among the bodies in the morgue.
“Real justice would be a separate state cut away from Imphal” — the regional capital — “which only promotes one community,” said his widow Jelevi Hmingthangmoi, 30.

Both women insisted their families will not hold funerals for their menfolk until the government agrees to their demands.
“He died defending our land,” said Siamting. “As our demands are not met he is still at the morgue.”

The clashes in Manipur were sparked by a protest about plans to give the Meitei “Scheduled Tribe” status.
A form of affirmative action to combat structural inequality and discrimination, that classification would give them guaranteed quotas of government jobs and college admissions.