By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Guwahati: With peace seeming to be a distant dream for the people living in Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD), the BTAD Citizen Rights Forum (BCRF) on Monday demanded that the state government should play a vital role in bringing permanent peace in the trouble torn zone.
Expressing concern at the sufferings of non-Bodo people at the hands of militants, the Forum also urged the state government to seize all the illegal arms from the region. “It’s a matter of serious concern that the non-Bodo people living in the BTAD have been suffering for a long time and the state government and the BTAD administration have failed miserably to protect the rights of the common people,” Zamser Ali, BCRF president, said.
People under the banner of BCRF stage protest in Guwahati
In a memorandum to the state chief secretary, the BCRF said all the militants of National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) who are in ceasefire agreement should be confined to designated camps and a full-fledged combing cooperation should be carried out for seizure of all illegal arms available in the region.
“The arms are easily available and the militants are roaming freely in the name of ceasefire causes trouble for the region, people are being killed at will. Besides, kidnappings and extortion are going on at a large scale. And most of the times, the soft target is the non-Bodo people residing in the area,” Ali added.
The BTC is a territorial privilege established according to the Memorandum of Settlement of February 10, 2003 under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India following a tripartite accord involving the Centre, state government and the erstwhile militant outfit of Bodoland Liberation Tigers (BLT) headed by Hagrama Mohilary, who later joined the mainstream politics.
The Forum also demanded a high level inquiry in the 2014 killings carried out by militants at Narayanguri, Narsingbari and Balapara where more than 100 Muslims and Adivasis were butchered. “The culprits should be booked immediately and the victims should be compensated properly. The state government and the administration should also ensure that similar incidents do not occur in the region,” he said.
People under the banner of BCRF stage protest in Guwahati
According to BCRF, around 3,000 people, mostly children and women, were killed in different acts of violence in the region which also displaced more than five lakh people.
“Witnessing all these horrific incidents over the last several decades, we demand that a permanent cell of National Human Rights Commission should be established in BTAD,” Ali said.
The other demands included in the memorandum are reviewing the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) accord and Sixth Schedule to the Constitution (Amendment) Act 2003, to preserve constitutional rights of non-Bodo people and to exclude the non-Bodo majority villages from the BTAD.
The BCRF also urged the government to ascertain the security of life and properties of the people in BTAD. “If necessary permanent post of central security forces at all the sensitive places be proposed for the affected people. There should be full-fledged combing operation for the recovery of all the illegal arms in BTAD areas. We also demand that all persons kidnapped and missing since 1989 in present BTAD must be declared as dead and paid compensation,” Ali said.
Besides, the other demands are for unconditional rehabilitation of all the displaced persons, granting of compensations as per international guidelines to the victims of ethnic cleansing started since 1989. Adequate compensation to the victims of violence in BTAD should be granted at per the compensation paid to the Sikh victims of Delhi riots in 1984 and Gujarat riot-2002, read the list of demands in the memorandum.