Mizoram now home: Manipur's refugees say nothing left behind

Harried and bedraggled, 45-year-old Thangma and seven members of his family arrived at a transit camp in Aizawl, Mizoram on June 18.

- Ezrela Dalidia Fanai

AIZAWL: They are from the besieged village of Suknu, a village of over 4000 in Manipur’s Kakching district. For close to a month, as ethnic violence roiled the state, Thangma’s village faced wave after wave of attack, but the family persisted. Until June 18, when they could stay no longer and fled their homes, travelling the 373 kilometre distance to Mizoram’s capital Aizawl. Now that they are here, in what is a measure of the scale of violence in Manipur, and how it affects human lives, Thangma says they will never return.

On May 27, more than three weeks after the beginning of intermittent waves of violence that have left at least 131 dead, 419 injured and 50,000 displaced, Thangma said that a group of armed men came arrived in his village, and destroyed the bridge between their village and the city of Churachandpur. The bridge was the village’s lifeline; it was through this bridge that most of the people and goods travelled to and fro. “The cut the rods on the bridge and burnt the wooden floors. That night, after our power station was also destroyed, we went to meet personnel of the Assam Rifles posted at Langching. They assured us that their men were there to protect civilians,” Thangma said.