Church leaders have concu-rred with a global rights group report that relief camps in Mani-pur in India’s northeast are “in dire need of support” after secta-rian strife uprooted more than 50,000 and killed over 220 people, most of them Christians.
”There is no doubt, Amnesty International has come out with the reality existing in Manipur” in northern India, said A.C. Michael, based in the national capital New Delhi. “Both the federal and state governments failed to restore peace even after a year,” he told on July 19. In a report released on July 16, Am-nesty accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Manipur, bordering civil war-hit Myanmar, of ignoring the plight of people living in relief campus in the state. They are “in dire need of support” even after the promise of a financial aid package by Modi in April this year, the London-based rights group said in the report. Amnesty said its findings revealed “a picture of a state missing-in-action” despite the claims of “ti-mely intervention” and promise of financial aid. The camps lack adequate relief and rehabilitation measures, including adequate shelter, sanitation, food, water, medical care, and access to edu-cation opportunities “in violation of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement,” the re-port said. The Catholic Church has a diocese in the troubled state, based in the state capital Imphal, and headed by Abp Linus Neli.