The Indian military’s alleged human rights abuses, shielded by a heavy-handed anti-separatist law, are provoking resentment in Manipur:

… there is the seething grievance against the Indian troops and paramilitary forces that saturate the state, and particularly against the sweeping powers they are granted by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which allows them to search, detain and interrogate anyone suspected of guerrilla activity…

Manipur erupted in anger against the law after the killing of Thanjam Manorama in July 2004. Ms. Manorama, 32, was taken from her home in the dark of night, shot dead and left in a field. Semen stains were found on her underwear, according to reports in the Indian news media. The military said she was a militant and challenged a state government inquiry into her killing, citing the Special Powers Act. An army spokesman said in a recent interview that there was no conclusive evidence of rape.

The attack against Ms. Manorama set Manipur boiling. In one of the starkest acts of protest the country has ever seen, nearly a dozen elderly women stripped themselves naked, stood in front of the military base in Imphal and held up a haunting imperative on a homemade white banner: “Indian Army Rape Us…” [Link]

The alleged murder-rape reminds me of a similar U.S. army case in Okinawa. In classic repressive style, foreign journies are banned:

Foreign journalists must have permits to even set foot in the state, and those are only rarely issued. India’s home minister, Shivraj Patil, in an interview earlier this year offered this justification for the virtual prohibition against foreign journalists: “Because you are so interested…” [Link]

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p>Manipur is the state where zealots burned its library of rare texts because they were displeased with the language in which they were written:

In early July, Naga protesters set fire to dozens of government offices across the state. In April, a mob from another ethnic faction, angered at the use of Bengali rather than Manipuri script in official documents, burned down the state library here in Imphal, the state capital… [Link]

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p>The roots of the long-running, low-intensity conflict:

Like Kashmir in the north, Manipur was a princely state under British rule, and its incorporation into Indian territory in 1949, two years after independence, remains a sore point among many Manipuris. More than a dozen ethnic armies operate here, each with its own separatist agenda… In the half-century of conflict, India has poured in troops and money. But neither seems to have stanched political grievances or everyday misery. [Link]

In general, I favor politically-negotiated reconciliation over secession in most ethnic conflicts. Larger economic units are almost always more successful than smaller ones due to economies of scale, and every nation has the right to defend its territorial integrity. But lesson #1 in anti-insurgency is to starve a rebel force of support by winning over the host population. I don’t know enough about this conflict to say whether the article is accurate, but the tactics reportedly in use seem totally counterproductive to winning the war.

In recent history, I suspect that the loss of popular support for the militancy was the main factor in quelling separatism in Punjab. That was a self-inflicted wound for the militants. It seems far more significant to me than granting carte blanche to cops to torture and kill young Sikh men without trial, both the innocent and the guilty.

It’s not killing brutal terrorists or fighting secession which I object to. It’s the imprecision and immorality of sweeping up and killing the genuinely innocent. The ‘mistakes will happen’ excuse is total bullshit when lives are at stake: detaining for investigation is vastly preferable to shooting first, asking questions never.

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