DIMAPUR, AUGUST 10 (MExN): An organization called the Global Naga Forum (GNF) today issued a statement calling upon the Naga people to “emerge from our culture of silence and do our bit in the relay race our ancestors have left the baton behind for us – all through to the finishing line.”
“For far too long, Nagas have been hidden from the gaze of the world. It is time we change that. Global solidarity for peace in Naga land has been long overdue,” a press release from the forum said.
The press release informed that the forum was constituted “to find a shared narrative, to amplify the story of our common struggle for dignity and to build critical solidarity with peace loving humanity across the world.”
It said that so long as Nagas negotiate from a “position of powerlessness, we will always be at the receiving end. We are fragmented along tribal and sectarian lines and split right down the middle along party political affiliations, based on an unjust and unequal socio-cultural, economic and political system.”
The GNF stated that the powerful, “with its militaristic wherewithal would continue to hold sway the Nagas and play the cat and mouse game.” “We knew it all through, from the time the negotiation parameters were brought down the level of talks - from the highest (PM level) to that of a Bureaucrat, from a third country to the first, and without conditions to high surveillance enclosures,” it added.
The forum meanwhile stated that “detractors” will “always be there at every twist and turn to hoodwink and blackmail, by diverting, distracting, and digressing from the truth.”
“That Nagas are a civilization, having survived a thousand years from colonial and alien occupation, standing strong till this day and age. Nagas have been duly recognized by successive Prime Ministers of its unique history and situation; but stopped short of by an unwilling and stiff-necked political regime,” it said.
Be it within Naga Land or elsewhere, the forum stated that “a vibrant democracy requires a good enough expanding space for all social and political activism, and nationalities to flower and flourish and is not unhealthy or threat to development or progress of a nation.” It further pointed out that human rights defenders across India and around the world and nations seeking self-determination and sovereignty are “increasingly threatened and scuttled of their democratic and legitimate voices and futures.”
“All in the name of strategic geo-political interests and economic and expansionist imperatives, that are today fueled by the global neoliberal capitalism that prioritizes profit over people. This again is antithetical to the Naga ethos, world view and political economy. A future bereft of a level playing field for everyone is not a life worth fighting for,” it stated.
The GNF appealed to “this conscience of yours today, to join the rest of us in rising together to the occasion at hand, to become powerful in thought and in speech."
A divided Naga house, it said “is the least our freedom fighters, then and now, have yearned and fought for.”
