Nagaland Band Breaks into VH1’s Top 10 List

Mumbai, Oct 2 : Alobo Naga & The Band from Nagaland is the first band from the North East region to be in the Top 10 Countdown list of the international music channel VH1.

The Dimapur based band's music video 'Painted Dreams' is currently on number eight position in VH1 competing alongside international heavyweights like Lady Gaga, Maroon 5, Red Hot Chilli Pepper, Superheavy, etc, claims a release by the producer of the music video.

'Painted Dreams' was conceptualised and produced by Guwahati-based Creovaent Productions, whose founders Prithish Chakraborty and Puja Chakraborty directed the music video.

The video was made as a promotional theme song for Creovaent Productions' first Guwahati International Short Film Festival held in May, the release said.

"In the coming days, the band is hoping to make it to the number one position," the release said.

Manipur Blockade Hurts Champion Boxer: Mary Kom

By Meenakshi Upreti

New Delhi, Oct 2 : The two month old Manipur economic blockade is hurting and world boxing champion MC Mary Kom has not been spared either.

With gas cylinders costing anywhere between 1800 to 2000 rupees, India's foremost sporting hero is keeping the kitchen fire burning using firewood.

Mary Kom, who runs a box academy, says the blockade will hurt her preparations for the Olympics as well.

"We are not getting cooking gas. Hence, we are cooking on firewood. Vegetable, rice, dal everything is very scarce and expensive. My students understand our condition and are saying that they want to go back home. I don't know whether the govt has taken a note of what is happening here. In these conditions, I cannot prepare for the upcoming 2012 Olympics," she said.

The blockade that began on July 31, when the Sadar Hills Committee spearheaded by the Kuki tribe, choked National Highways 39 and 53 to press for their demand of creating a separate district.

At the Mary Kom household, the empty gas cylinders have lined up and getting a new one is either too expensive or simply impossible.

"We are suffering because of blockade. I don't know how we will survive in Manipur. It is very difficult to manage things here. I am running an Academy of 25 to 30 boxers," Mary Kom said.

For the last two months, the state government has held five meetings with no breakthrough.

Meanwhile, queues for a litre of petrol are growing longer and longer and prices of essential commodities are at least three times high. Potato costs Rs 45 per kg while Dal is touching Rs 80 per kg.

"The prices of commodities like onion, garlic are very high," Mary Kom's husband said.

Even as many are now demanding that the Centre intervene to break the crisis, Manipur is hoping Mary Kom's voice may help bridge the divide.

Source: CNN-IBN

Northeast Student Bodies Stage Stir in New Delhi

Guwahati, Oct 2 : The North East Students' Organization (NESO), comprising student bodies from all the seven states of the region, on Saturday staged a dharna at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi seeking a solution to multiple issues ranging from demands for expedition of the peace processes with militant outfits to repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and protest against mega-dams being built in the region.

The students opposed the transfer of land as part of the India-Bangladesh land swap deal. The students' organizations also sought sealing of the international borders with the region to curb the ongoing influx across the borders.

Neso chairman and Aasu advisor Samujjal Bhattacharyya, who led the dharna in New Delhi, said the sit-in was staged to protest against the Centre's lackadaisical attitude towards the northeast in all respects.

Aasu general secretary Tapan Gogoi said the NESO delegation was seeking an appointment with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to submit a memorandum.

"We are strongly opposing giving away of Assam's land to Bangladesh as part of the land swap deal. The agreement is yet to be ratified by the Parliament and so we will be pressing the Prime Minister to keep the deal in abeyance. We will also be asking for his intervention in stopping the construction of mega dams in the region as suggested by experts. The government has been saying that it would like to take the opinion of other experts. We welcome this, but at the same time, the construction should be stopped till the experts carry out more studies on the issue," the Aasu general secretary said.

He added that Irom Sharmila's elder brother Irom Singhajit also joined the dharna.

Apart from Aasu, the student organizations that joined in the protest were Khasi Students Union, Garo Students' Union, All Arunachal Pradesh Students' Union, Naga Students' Federation, All Manipur Students' Union, Mizo Zirlal Pawl and Twipra Students' Federation.

Fate of Sadar Hills Stir To Be Decided Soon

Imphal, Oct 2 : The people of Manipur, who are reeling under a commodity crisis due to a two-month-long economic blockade along two important routes in the state, might finally get some respite. The agitating Sadar Hills Districthood Demand Committee (SDHHC), which has choked the key supply routes - NH 39 (Imphal-Dimapur) and NH 53 (Imphal-Silchar) - since August 1, will convene a meeting to decide whether or not to end the blockade. According to a recent notification, NH 39 has become NH 2 and NH 53 has become NH 37.

The decision to hold this meeting was taken in a public meet held at the Kuki-dominated Kangpokpi area in Sadar Hills on Saturday, a key leader of the SHDDC informed this reporter. "We will continue the agitation till the next meeting, the date and venue for which are yet to be fixed," he said.

The United Naga Council (UNC) has also called similar stir on the same routes to denounce the state government's alleged attempt to create new districts after bifurcating 'Naga areas'.

SHDDC's Saturday meeting, which also reviewed the 61-day-old agitation, was attended by committee representatives, former and sitting legislatures, members of the Sadar Hills autonomous district council, chairman and chiefs of various villages and church leaders.

"As resolved in today's public meeting, we (SHDDC) will decide whether the stir will continue or not. Though the date is yet to be decided, we may hold the meeting either at Motbung or at Sapermeina," the SHDDC leader said.

Meanwhile, the UNC said in a statement that the Nagas wish for peace and harmony with the neighboring communities, based on mutual respect for each other's right over land and its traditional ownership.

"We respect the genuine aspirations and rights of all communities just as we wish that our aspirations and rights are also respected by others," said the statement, sent by the Naga apex body's publicity wing on Saturday evening.

It said the Nagas have their traditional boundaries, but the state government, despite being fully aware of this fact, has made a deliberate attempt to bifurcate and carve out 'Naga areas' by constituting a committee for Reorganization of Administrative and Police District boundaries to fulfill its design of creating a new district without consulting the Nagas.

"The Nagas are one and will stand together as a people and the economic blockade along the national highways is the collective decision of the Naga people. We are not against any individuals, groups or community but against the state government and its nefarious divide-and-rule policy of pitting one community against the other," the statement added.

Hundreds Go Missing in India's Northeast

By Stella Paul 

For records, law and order situation has improved a lot in India's North East region of late. There are fewer killings, fewer attacks and fewer people wounded. Now, just when you are all tempted to say ‘how wonderful!’, comes the news: there are people vanishing, in thousands, every year, all over the region.

Topping the list is Manipur where over 300 people disappear every year. Every morning, as you open a newspaper, you will come across 7-10 faces of the “missing persons”, listed on the last page of the newspaper.

Some will be found eventually; their bodies, often decomposed beyond recognition, are retrieved from remote and isolated locations. Visit the morgue of state capital Imphal and you can see uncovered bodies, lying on the ground, unattended. You can tell that they are victims of extrajudicial killings. Majority of these bodies will never be identified nor claimed by families. They will be hastily examined, and then disposed off by the municipality. They will not be given any names, their stories will not be written, and miniscule records of their passage in the morgue will be kept. In an ultimate denial of their humanity, no religious rituals will be performed.

But, what about those who are not dead? Where do they end up, if not in the morgue?

The answer isn’t difficult to guess: trafficked, to other parts of the country. Yes, human trafficking is growing at an alarming rate all across India and North east is emerging as the greatest source of this trafficked human goods, mostly women and children.

Official data is hardly ever there, but there are indicators to validate such comments. A look at Assam Police’s annual list of missing persons shows up hundreds of images and two third of them belong to young women, between 18-35 of age. And this is just the list of 1 year (2009). How many women have since then gone missing? You can only guess.

Nagaland is no better.  In Nagaland, one person goes missing every 3 ½ days. According to a study conducted by a local NGO called Prodigal Home, 68% of them are children, 35% of whom will never be found again.

There is another scary fact about Nagaland: the state has become the main transit point for human trafficking and this is officially validated fact, provided by state police. According to a senior police officer SP Tuensang Roopa, girls from border areas are brought to Nagaland through ‘agents,’ trafficked to other parts of the country. There, they are forced into prostitution. Some are employed as domestic help in individual households.

(There are 3 lakh brothels in India today with 2.5 million prostitutes in about 1100 red light areas, who are also mostly trafficked and forced into prostitution.)

The biggest hurdle in curbing or even tracking this trafficking menace is that half the times missing cases are not registered. Data collection, therefore, is a mission nearly impossible for those wanting to research the issue. Sometimes, one gets suspected and threatened, simply for asking ‘too many questions.’  Community members, including the relatives of the missing persons too go into a shell the moment they see you taking notes.

Is implementation of laws such as Child Labor (Prevention and Regulation) Act, alone the answer to this menace? Or, is this a larger issue of poverty elimination and creation of livelihood opportunities? It’s time to start asking those questions, aloud.

Stop Lending Names To Non-Mizos: Mizo Church

Aizawl, Oct 1 : Mizoram Presbyterian Church’s social front has appealed to the Mizos to stop lending their names to non-tribals.

Voicing serious concern over this illegal practice, the church’s social front said, ''By lending our names to non-tribals, we are draining our economy for the benefit of outsiders,'' the social front’s communiqué said.

There are over 264 Mizos who earn between Rs 3,000 to Rs 10,000 monthly just by lending their names to non-tribals so that the latter get trade licences. These non-tribals who use Mizo names are beetle shop owners, iron dealers and even contractors and suppliers.

There are also a number of non-tribals who married Mizo girls in order to run business in the tribal state in the name of their wives.

In this process, the state government has also lost a huge revenue as the non-tribal traders have evaded income tax by trading under the guise of Mizo tribals who are exempted from the income tax, the communiqué said.

The social front further accused non-tribal contractors/suppliers, doing the business under Mizo names, usually used/supplied sub-standard materials.

This illegal practice, the social front feared, posed threats to the social and economic security of the indigenous people of Mizoram who are specially protected from the threats of assimilation since the British time.

''The British imposed the Eastern Bengal Frontier Regulation of 1873 in Mizoram since 1930 to protect the Mizos from the plainspeople who were much more advanced in trading activities and larger in number,'' it said.

The Church’s appeal came after the Young Mizo Association, the state’s biggest NGO, launched a state-wide campaign against such benami traders. The YMA has prepared a list of them and submitted it to the state government to take action.

HPC(D) Rejects KNO Merger, Impeaches President

Hmarkhawlien, Oct 1 : The Hmar People's Convention-Democratic (HPC-D) informs to have impeached one Pu Lalhmingthang Sanate from the party as well as his designation as president of the party, on September 29.

According to a note from the group, the said Pu Lalhmingthang Sanate has “severely failed to represent and uphold the interest of the party and the aspiration of the Hmar peoples.”

“After having convinced that the narrow selfish interest pursued by Pu Lalhmingthang Sanate stands against the Hmar People's Convention (Democratic) and the Hmar people that it represents, the executive council of the Hmar People's Convention (Democratic) is compelled to impeach him,” a note from the organization said.

The said Sanate is accused of signing an agreement merging the group with the Kuki National Organization without informing and consulting the executive committee of the HPC-D. The HPC-D declared the agreement signed by Sanate ‘null and void.’

“The Hmar People's Convention (Democratic) is convinced that the act of Pu Lalhmingthang Sanate is untoward, immature and undemocratic,” the note, appended by the group’s ‘information publicity officer, and ‘secretary information,’ said.

“The HPC-D sincerely apologize to the Hmar people for allowing a traitor to lead the party and the people that it represent,” the note said. “From this day Pu Lalhmingthang Sanate should not take the name of Hmar or the Hmar People's Convention (Democratic) for any purpose.

In the interest of the party that it represents and in the larger interest of peace, security and understanding, Pu Lalhmingthang Sanate must accept his serious mistake and his impeachment,’ the note added.

India's Look East Policy Provides Opportunities For Northeast Trading, Business Community

Shillong, Oct 1 : India's Look East policy that focuses on promoting trade with South East Asian countries is creating huge opportunities for the trading and business community of the north-eastern region.

During the recently concluded ten-day International Shopping Carnival in Shillong, the Thai merchant sells artificial flowers and other decorative items and is trying hard to establish her business in India.

The Industries and Trade Fair Association of Assam (ITFAA) organized the fair with an aim to promote trade with South Asian neighbors under the Look East Policy.

Several other traders from Thailand, Singapore, Kenya, Bangladesh and other neighboring countries participated in the carnival. Several big companies also made their presence felt.

"We are trying to take advantage of the Look East Policy and have started working with several countries like Thailand, Bangladesh and Ghana, as we want to promote the trade in Northeast India. Vo: It was not all business at the fair, which ended with a spectacular dance performance by a Thai troupe," said Rajeev Das, secretary, ITFAA.

U Ncharee Capanoglu, a merchant from Thailand, said: "We have many similar features like our looks, the way of talking and others. So I believe if we do business together in future, it will be very good and helpful to each other."

"If Thai and Indian government can work together as business partners, then our economy can grow at a good speed. Also we will not face other problems about importing and exporting goods," said NOI another participant from Thailand.

"I feel very good to come here. The customer response is very good and they buy goods in huge quantities, which is good for both the sellers and buyers," said Amnish Mitra a participant, Kolkata.

Currently trade with Bangladesh stands at 3.9 billion dollars, 1.026 billion dollars with Myanmar, over 3.4 billion dollars with Thailand and 30.6 billion dollars with Singapore.

The central government has taken several initiatives over the years to promote trade with South Asian countries.