Peace talks in India’s strife-torn Manipur state have suffered a setback after fresh violence broke out when unknown gunmen attacked a police station and set on fire five houses. The attackers opened fire with highly sophisticated weapons at the Borobekera police station in Jiribam district in the early hours of Oct. 19, local officials said. However, the army and state police repealed the attack, and there were no human casualties. A search operation was launched for the attackers across the district. Media reports blamed the armed groups of indigenous Kuki tribal people, who are mostly Christians, for the attack as the houses of the Meitei Hindus were set on fire.
A Christian leader disagreed with the “misleading” reports and said “unknown miscreants” had “set on fire a closed Chri-stian school at the district headquarters on Oct. 18,” a day before the Kuki people attacked the police station and Meitei houses. “We do not know who is behind the violence,” he told on Oct. 21 on condition of anonymity due to security reasons. He said the attacks appeared to be an attempt to ”derail the peace initia-tive taken by the federal government.” “People in the state are fed up with violence and bloodshed. They want peace,” the Christian leader added. The sectarian clashes, which began on May 3 last year, have left about 230 dead, displaced over 60,000, mostly tribal Christian people, and destroyed over 360 churches and Chri-stian institutions. Among the 3.2 million people in the state, 41% are indigenous Kuki-Zo people, mostly Christians, and the influential and wealthy Meiteis Hindus account for 53 percent. The north-eastern state borders the civil war-hit Myanmar. The current violence began when the Kuki people objected to a government plan to grant tribal status to the Meitei Hindus, helping them access reservation benefits under India’s affirmation action policy. The Kuki people allege that the official tribal status will also allow the influential Meitei community to buy land in their indigenous areas, which curren-tly can be sold only to tribal people.