Bodies Of Victims Of Indian Violence Returned To Their Families

The bodies of 60 people who lost their lives amid ethnic violence in India’s state of Manipur have now been returned to their families.
Seven months after violence first erupted between the Meitei and the Kuki communities on 3 May 2023, the bodies of the victims were airlifted from mortuaries in the Meitei-majority Imphal district to Kuki ancestral lands in Kanggui and Lamka districts.
Four Meitei bodies that were in Lamka district were also airlifted to Imphal. The bodies were returned to their families on December 14.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) sources report that all of those who were moved were killed in the month of May, and that the delay in returning their bodies to their relatives has been attributed to security concerns over moving the bodies of one community through an area where another community is in the majority.

The state government also took the decision to airlift the bodies to avoid any further conflict.
On 28 November, the Supreme Court ordered that the bodies be given a dignified burial, however the majority remain unclaimed amid reports of relatives facing pressure from civil society organisations not to accept them.
CSW’s Founder President Mervyn Thomas said: “CSW remains deeply saddened by the loss of lives over the past seven months in Manipur, however we are grateful to the Supreme Court for ordering the release of the bodies of the deceased.

“This will allow families who have lost loved ones to carry out the last rites and bury their dead in peace, and we hope it marks a step towards closure.”
As of 25 November, 153 members of the Kuki community had been killed, over 45,000 displaced, and over 200 villages, 7,000 houses and 360 places of worship had been burned since violence erupted in Manipur on 3 May.
One Kuki source told CSW that there are no more members of their community in the Imphal valley.
In November, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in India for a diplomatic dialogue focused on defense cooperation.

The U.S. sees India as a key regional security partner and counterweight to China.
The meeting came amid a serious diplomatic spat between India and Canada, America’s neighbor to the north and a close ally, over the assassination of a prominent Sikh activist, in Canada, allegedly at the hands of Indian government agents.

The Sikh community is a religious minority with roots in northern India.
Though the details of the plot are not fully known to the public, U.S. intelligence services have determined with a high degree of confidence that India was responsible for the killing.

India denies the allegation but seems to have handled the situation in a way designed to create maximum publicity around the topic—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is speculated to have rebuffed efforts by Justin Trudeau to handle the situation quietly, as would be the norm, at an in-person meeting just days before Trudeau made the allegations public.

If true, Modi may be leveraging the assassination to whip up his core voter base of radical Hindu nationalists ahead of this year’s elections.

This article is originally published on https://mychristiandaily.com/bodies-of-victims-of-indian-violence-returned-to-their-families/