Yamtsumong Khiam
Burma Camp, Dimapur
Dear Joshua Thong,
I as a layman would like to give you a lay picture of the Nagaland that we live in today as you seem to be far from the truth and reality. On the surface, Nagaland we know seem to work pretty well. But scratch the surface we bleed disquiet, distress, desperation & despair.
Have you ever thought about the pain & poverty in east nagaland (Burmeseoccupied)?
From killings to extortions to diseases to malnutrition, there are plenty of factors that causes self inflicted pain to occur in East Nagaland.
It is not there that they live in poverty; it is their economy and the environment created by the skewed perspective possess by the so called national workers about sovereignty and never aid the Nagas who they profess to represent. They constantly seek to maintain the status quo in order to maintain greater influence over the populace.
Do you know that in east Nagaland (Burmese occupied), nearly 75% of the population lives in abject poverty? The east Nagas are forced to cope without modern health care, schools, roads and there are negligible avenues for paid jobs.
The inability to obtain the essential commodities and services required for a dignified existence, and also lack of health care, little or no opportunity to go to school to learn & develop skills compel many people to migrate to big towns and cities to become domestic servants or laborers thereby losing their lands to other ethnic groups.
The nagas from the east lack hope for the future because they live in a lie spread by the so called national workers & occupational forces. The lie of backwardness, that is reinforced day-in and day-out is, “You are backward.” Imagine not being able to provide enough food for your children or pay for education, or for a hospital visit when a child is sick or injured. Imagine the guilt, grief, and despair.
Meanwhile, in the Indian occupied western Nagaland the so called political groups and factions fleece the people by way of the following:
1. Impose fines for petty quarrel rather than solving problems;
2. Extortions; 3 monopolize the market in collaboration with Indian business men.
4. Influence Indian elections. They use extorted money to buy hotels, night clubs, and other business establishments, get deals with the occupational force to build infrastructures, houses, run illicit drugs, gold & motor vehicle theft.
They have brazenly hijacked areca & timber trade from local growers by establishing ties with occupational forces.
5 Protection racketeering with the unions
6. Lure the gullible youth to join the gang with false promises.
8. Loan sharking
9. they provide willing participant with illigal gambling and prostitution services.
The Collaborators and the occupational force act as if they are the center of the universe and any not involved with them is peripheral to their world.
They make sure that the only way anyone could be involved productively in nagaland is through the agency of their structure.
They relate to people in terms of their gang. They can only react to people in terms of their regulations. Should anyone have the tenacity to resist the imposition of such warped perceptions & corrupted processes, which inevitably manipulate & exploit people, the gangsters quickly move to confront the person and punish them to protect the place of their structure in nagaland.
We are all compelled to live in a militaristic structure which is controlled & manipulated by the collaborators and the occupational force that reward compliance, punish protest and open & close options from jobs to trade, according to their own agenda, without any regard for love & justice.
While you call the NNC a defunct and surrendered organization, most of the layman in Nagaland stand for NNC, theonly legitimate mandated national organization. How can you say it has surrendered or failed to condemn the Shillong Accord? If NNC was not part and parcel of it, where is the need to condemn or reject something you have not done? Or are you trying to implicate the NNC, the foundation of the Naga nation, for a crime it never committed? If this is so, then you are in danger of being implicated and charged of trying to wipe out the very foundation and legitimacy of the Naga nation. For your information NNC is very much alive and and working from which I have benefited without having to be extorted. The NNC works silently without blowing it's trumpet and all Nagas by birth members of NNC. None can be discriminated under this but if you think otherwise I am in doubt whether you are really a Naga or not. The day is not far when common people like me, who are many, will rise to the occasion to eliminate the predatory acts of terror and to take the baton passed down to us by our forefathers.
