SILCHAR, July 26 : In a press release issued by Mason Zeliang, chief co-ordinator of the Citizen Rights Protection Volunteers (CRPV) yesterday strongly condemned Dilip Nunisa, chairman of the pro-talk faction of Dimasa militant outfit DHD for his baseless allegation that the Naga militant outfit NSCN (K) is involved in the recent ethnic clash in NC Hills.
Sources claimed that Mason Zeliang made this statement during his visit to 3 make-shift refugee camps of the Dimasas at Kumarcherra, Doloicherra and Joipur Shibasthan in Cachar recently. Mason made it clear that the CRPV received no help from any of the NSCN factions.
According to him, it was the DHD factions one led by Dilip Nunisa and his rival faction led by Jewel Garlosa which led to the Dimasa massacre, sources informed.
| NGO endeavours to compile trilingual dictionary in association with Dimasa Sahitya Sabha | ||
Guwahati, July 22 : The land of the Dimasas may be in a state of deep and perpetual turmoil, but that hasn’t stopped efforts to bring out the first trilingual dictionary on their language. Once out, seeking the Assamese or English equivalent of Dimasa words would no longer be a tall order as the dictionary would be in Dimasa-Assamese-English versions. The initiative has been taken by the Anundoram Barooah Institute of Language, Art and Culture, a city-based voluntary organisation, in association with Dimasa Sahitya Sabha, the apex literary body of the Dimasas. “Though there had been a couple of word books on the Dimasa language, the need for a complete dictionary was felt for long. This is the first attempt to compile a comprehensive dictionary on the ethnic language,” the institute’s director, D.K. Kalita, said. He said the Dimasa Sahitya Sabha has extended cooperation by nominating a panel of experts to help compile the dictionary. “It will take nearly a year to develop the dictionary and we have targeted around 20,000 words,” he added. Kalita said the primary objective behind the project was “to boost the language spoken by around 75,000 Dimasas in the state since grammar and dictionary are the basic requirements for development of a language.” “Moreover, we feel that such projects will promote amity among the ethnic communities of the state,” he added. The institute also has Mising-Assamese-English and Rabha-Assamese-English dictionaries to its credit and is developing similar dictionaries on Bodo and Karbi languages. Kalita said they would take the help of Bodo and Karbi sahitya sabhas for the compilation of Bodo-Assamese-English and Karbi-Assamese-English dictionaries. For compilation of the proposed dictionaries, the institute is holding a workshop on lexicography at its headquarters at Rajaduar in north Guwahati. Nominees of Dimasa, Bodo and Karbi sahitya sabhas, former director of Mysore-based Central Institute of Indian Languages P.N. Dutta Baruah and head of the department of linguistics, Gauhati University, Jyoti Prakash Tamuli, will be resource persons. Renowned scholar T.R. Taid, eminent linguists Upen Rabha Hakacham, Madhu Ram Boro, Lilabati Saikia Bora and Malini Goswami, compiler of dictionaries Sumanta Chaliha and Asam Sahitya Sabha president Rongbong Terang are also participating in the workshop. Kalita said the dictionaries would contain the head words, international phonetic alphabets, grammatical notes and meanings of the words in Assamese and English. |
As the ongoing ethnic clash between Dimasa and Zeme Naga community in Assam's North Cachar Hills district continued unabated, suspected miscreants today attacked a Dimasa- dominated village in neighbouring Cachar district, killing one, injuring three and torching 25 houses.
They also kidnapped two others during the raid.
Police said at 1100 hrs a group of armed miscreants raided Sonapur village near Harinagar under Lakhipur police station in Assam's Cachar district and set a number of houses on fire. When the scared villagers started fleeing, the miscreants started indiscriminate firing from automatic weapons, in which one Dimasa villager was killed and three were injured.
The miscreants kidnapped two others at the time of leaving the place. Soon after the incident a contingent of police and para-military forces, led by Superintendent of Police (Cachar) Prasanta Kumar Bhuyan, rushed to the place, 45-km from here, and started operation to nab the miscreants.
Police were yet to confirm the actual number of houses torched in the attack.
It was suspected that Zeme Naga miscreants were behind today's attack.
With this the toll in the ongoing ethnic clash between Dimasa and Zeme Naga tribes that started since March 19 this year rose to 66.
While more than 500 houses were torched, 12,000 people took shelter in different relief camps.
Earlier also Cachar district felt the heat of ethnic clash as on June 9 suspected Naga militants attacked Lower Lodhi village and set ablaze 32 houses belonging to Dimasas. Nearly 1000 Dimasa villagers had been living in relief camps in Cachar's Jaypur-Shivasthan area, officials said.
Haflong (Assam), May 30 : A Dimasa tribal woman was killed and two men were injured in an attack by rival community at a village in troubled North Cachar hills district today, official sources said.
Armed Zemi Naga tribals allegedly attacked Phaiding village at around 3:30 pm and killed the 55-year-old woman and injured two others.
The attack was in retaliation to the killings of two Zemi Naga villagers, who were shot dead yesterday allegedly by people of Dimasa community in the village, the sources said.
They had also set 21 houses on fire before escaping, they added.
Thousands of people have been rendered homeless by the turf war between ethnic communities in the district.
Two relief camps have been set up in Maibong and one each in Tunge, Jurai, Hajaichak and Mahur, the sources said.
Haflong, May 21 : Violence continued in Assam’s North Cachar Hills district with unidentified miscreants setting ablaze several villages in Dimasa village today.
Police sources informed that the miscreants tried to torch the entire Dibaula village, under Maibong police station, this morning.
But they managed to set ablaze eight houses while the rest of the village was saved. None has been were injured in the incident, police added.
More than a dozen people had been killed, several villages torched and train traffic halted in the hills district after violence broke out since the pre-poll stage in end-March.
The NC Hills district has virtually turned into a battleground for feuding factions of the NSCN and Dimasa militant outfit, Black Widow, with all the groups trying to claim supremacy in the district.
Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi visited the district to review the situation and ordered intensified operations, but all attempts to thwart violence have met with little success, throwing the district into complete anarchy.
200 residents
take shelter at
relief camp
Night curfew imposed in the district
GUWAHATI: Suspected militants gunned down three Dimasa tribals and set 43 houses ablaze in a pre-dawn raid on a village in southern Assam’s North Cachar Hills on Saturday, taking the toll in a series of attacks on villages in the district since April 28 to seven.
Two persons were killed instantaneously when the attackers, in battle fatigues and heavily armed, resorted to indiscriminate firing at Phiding, while one of the injured died in hospital. About 200 residents fled the village and took shelter in a relief camp opened by the district administration in a nearby village. Night curfew has been clamped in the district.
Phiding comes under the Mahur police station. The victims have been identified as Nipunjoy Dibragede (22), Thungjen Dibragede and (30) Atolal Dibragede (44).
The attack came a day after a raid on Joraibasti near Haflong. On April 28, four Dimasa women were killed when suspected militants raided Yeah and set fire to all the houses there. Police are still to establish the identity of the militant group behind the attacks.
Firms plan to quit Four contractors have conveyed to the Assam government that they are planning to withdraw from the NC Hills Highway Project, commissioned by the National Highway Authority of India, following the kidnapping and killing of their workers and engineers by insurgents. The contractors are Gammon India, Valecha Engineering, TBL and Continental Engineering Corporation.
“The major road contractors…are facing a huge resistance from the insurgents operating in the area. As a consequence, they are finding it impossible to execute work on the Rs. 800-crore project. Gammon India, Valecha Engineering, TBL and Continental Engineering Corporation are now considering absolute withdrawal from the project, since despite several requests, the authorities are not able to protect the workers. This was conveyed to the authorities at a meeting called by the Additional Chief Secretary to review the development of the NC Hills area,” the companies said in a release.
“The development of the entire NC Hills area is in jeopardy owing to the insurgency,” said S.Y. Warty of Gammon India. “The insurgent groups are controlling the area and are asking for money which we cannot pay.”
Dinesh Valecha, director of Valecha Engineering, said; “A series of events has occurred in the past couple of years. On two occasions, engineers and other staff of Gammon India were shot dead. The staff members of Valecha Engineering Limited were kidnapped and held for 46 days.”
Hsiung Chiang of Continental Engineering Corporation said: “Past incidents have confirmed that the presence of security [personnel] provided by the government has been ineffective in dealing with the insurgents. Unless effective measures are taken to control the activities of the insurgent groups, it is not possible to carry out even maintenance of the existing roads and bridges.”
