18th commemoration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples at Kokrajhar

09/08/2012:Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples North East Zone (ICITP), an umbrella Organisation of 212 tribes in the North East India and Peoples’ Joint Action Committee for Boroland (PJACBM) are while jointly observing the 18^th commemoration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples at Kokrajhar today amid the turmoil situation, expressed deep sorrow over the incidents of the present communal clashes between the simple, straight forward and peace loving Boro Indigenous People and the hostile Bangladeshi Muslim migrants settlers provoked and aided by some miscreants across the Indo-Bangla boarder.

This incident broke out suddenly and took communal colour following the gruesome murders of four Boro Indigenous youths by some unidentified miscreants belonging to Bangladeshi Muslim migrants at Jaipur, a Muslim village which is just one kilometer away from the Kokrajhar Police station on 19 July at about 8 pm, reportedly instigated by some armed anti-social elements who have penetrated from across the international boarder through Dhubri and took shelter in the Muslim dominated villages to deliberately create social tension inciting for communal violence between the native Boros and the migrant shelters.

As deep rooted main stream political conspiracy is continuously and actively working to destroy the ethnic separation of sub-nationlities by encouraging migration to the sub-nationality region with an objective to swamp the locals, specially the Indigenous Peoples of Assam and other states of North East India with huge numbers of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants-usually ethnic groups loyal to the government for the purpose of diluting the culture and identity of the local Indigenous peoples and for the vote bank politics forcing Bangladeshization.

The communal violence of 1950 (Boro-Muslim immigrants), 1983 (Assamese-Muslim immigrants), 1993 (Boro-Muslim immigrants), 1996 (Bodo-Santal), 2005 (Karbi-Dimasa), 2008 (Boro-Muslim immigrants), 2009 (Dimasa -Naga), 2011 (Garo-Rabha) and now the (Boro-Muslim immigrants) are nothing but a calculated designs of the mainstream dominant society driven governments to uproot and exterminate the marginalised Indigenous Peoples of Assam.

Interestingly, the Government of Assam only oversaw the expansion of the recent communal violences because the riots did not affect the mainstream dominant Assamese society.

The present situation of communal violence of Assam has turned out to be very serious and worsening day by day spreading in other parts of Assam which have already claimed more than 73 innocent lives belonging to Indigenous Boro and illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants. Several villages are burnt down and more than 4,000, 00 people are rendered homeless who are presently taking shelter in more than 270 relief camps after being forced to flee their homes for their lives. Though, the present situation appeared to be improving slightly but internally remained alarming due to lack of adequate security arrangement and failure of the Government to tackle the situation effectively, especially failure to nib the continued provocations to indulge in communal clashes by the reportedly presence of external forces in the Muslim dominated villages.

Thus the Indigenous Peoples of Assam, specially Boro and other ethnic tribes  are facing the brunt of systematic political designs of  slow extermination in their own land and territories.

We on behalf of the Indigenous Peoples of the region, strongly urge the government to

1)         stop the communal clashes immediately;

2)         arrest the culprits involved in designing and fomenting the communal clashes;

3)         provide adequate security arrangement in sensitive areas and to provide    immediate sufficient   relief

            materials including food, drinking water, clothes  and   medicines in the relief camps of

            communal clashes belonging to both communities;

4)         provide adequate compensation to the bereaved families and injured victims

            of communal clashes;

5).        stop unabated influx of Bangladeshi migration into Assam and identify and

            deport all the illegal settlers in Assam;

6).        clear the Tribal Belts and Blocks from illegal encroachers in Assam;

7).        update NRC of Assam on the base year of 1951.

8).        implement the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

            (UNDRIP) to protect the rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Assam.

               Sd/-                                                                                                                                   Sd/-

(Jebra Ram Muchahary)                                                                                                    (Sanmoni Kemprai)

           President                                                                                                                   General Secretary

            Sd/-                                                                                                                                        Sd/-

(Eren Basumatary)                                                                                                                (Manjil Basumatary)

Member, PJACBM                                                                                                                 Member, PJACBM