An FIR has been registered in Manipur against three members of a fact-finding team of the Editors Guild of India, along with the president of the Guild, for publishing a report on how Manipur’s media outlets have covered the ongoing conflict. The EGI report also accused the state leadership of being partisan during the ongoing Manipur conflict. A day after the police registered an FIR against four members of the Guild, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh on Monday, September 4, claimed that the EGI report on Manipur ethnic conflict was "biased and factually inaccurate".
The report was published on September 2 and prepared by senior journalists Bharat Bhushan, Sanjay Kapoor and Seema Guha. The three journalists were in Manipur from August 7 to August 10 and spoke to journalists and other stakeholders from the hills and the valley regions. Manipur has been engulfed in an ethnic conflict for over four months between the tribal Kuki community and the non-tribal Meitei community.
The report said that with the internet suspended in the state and communication and transport affected, the media relied “almost entirely” on the narrative of the state government. This narrative under the N Biren Singh dispensation “became a narrow ethnic one playing up to the biases of the majority Meitei community," the report said.
The FIR was registered against the three journalists and the Guild president Seema Mustafa on Sunday, September 3, by Imphal West police under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 200 (using as true such declaration knowing it to be false), 295 and 298 (uttering, words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief), 505(1)(b) (intent to cause fear or alarm), 499 (defamation), 120B (criminal conspiracy); and section 66A of the Information Technology Act.
Last year, the Supreme Court had said no person should be prosecuted under section 66A of the IT Act.
In its report, the EGI said there are clear indications the leadership of the state became partisan during the conflict in Manipur. "It should have avoided taking sides in the ethnic conflict but it failed to do its duty as a democratic government which should have represented the entire State,” the EGI report said.
"It failed in its duty by constant propaganda against the Assam Rifles claiming that it was only purveying the views of the public. It failed to verify the facts, weigh them and then use them in its reportage. The state government also tacitly supported this vilification by allowing Manipur Police to file an FIR against the Assam Rifles, suggesting that one hand of the state did not know what the other was doing or this was deliberate action," the report read.
The report further said that the leadership of the state labelled the entire community of Kuki-Zo tribals as “illegal immigrants” and “foreigners” without any reliable data or evidence. Referencing the military coup in Myanmar and the arrival of around 4,000 refugees in Manipur, the report said, “This was presented as pressure on resources but was also a war for political space, with the Meitei leadership of the government using the fear of the outsiders to consolidate its political position.” The report further mentioned the state government’s ‘War on Drugs’, and the drive to evict tribals from ‘protected’ or ‘reserved’ forests as other factors that led to the violence in Manipur.
The EGI’s report was met with opposition from both the All Manipur Working Journalists Union (AMWJU) and the Editors Guild Manipur (EGM) who issued a statement claiming that the report was ‘half-baked’. The statement noted surprise about how the report could establish within four days that “Meiteis were the initiators of the riots on May 3”. The press statement also questioned EGI’s contention that eviction drives from forest areas targeted Kukis. It claimed that 59 Kuki households had been evicted, 143 Meiteis, 137 Meitei Pangals (Muslim), 38 Nagas, and 36 Nepalis during such initiatives between 2015 and 2023.
The AMWJU and EGM further pointed out that a photo shown to be a Kuki house burning in the EGI report was actually a forest office. This has since been corrected in the EGI report. Among other concerns flagged, the AMWJU and EGM took exception to the cover photo of the ‘Wall of Remembrance’ – which showed photos of Kuki-Zo persons killed in the conflict. “The intent seems to be to show the Kuki-Zo communities as endemically victimised,” read the press statement.