Mahua Moitra launches stinging attack, says no-confidence motion to break 'omerta' on Manipur

Moitra alleges, treasury benches have asked why only Manipur, what about rape and murder in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal?

Mahua Moitra speaks in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.: PTI picture

PTI, New Delhi, 11.08.23: Mahua Moitra of Trinamul Congress launched a stinging attack on the Centre on Thursday and said the Opposition’s no-confidence motion was aimed at breaking the “omerta” on Manipur.

“We are here to ask questions in our ‘tum abhi chup raho republic’ - where the Honourable PM tells the governor ‘chup raho’, where we as elected MPs in this House are routinely told ‘chup raho’. This motion is to break omerta, this code of silence in Manipur, the most pressing issue of the day on which we are all supposed to ‘raho chup’,” Moitra said, participating in the debate on the no-confidence motion.

“Even with this motion the Hon’ble Prime Minister did not come to the House day before yesterday or yesterday...'Woh thodi na aapki baithkar sunege, woh aakhri din ayenge aur aap sabki dhajjiyan uda ke jayenge’ (He will not listen to you, he will come on the last day and decimate you). Fine, we are waiting, no problem,” she said.

“I don’t know what is more unfortunate, that the Hon’ble Prime Minister refuses to come to this House, of which he is an elected member, to answer to us on Manipur or that he refuses to go to Manipur to reassure petrified people that peace and reconciliation are his mission,” she said.

“Most no-confidence motions are negative motions moved with the moderate probability of bringing down the government of the day. We know that is not even a possibility, we don’t have the numbers, we know that,” the MP from Krishnagar said.

“We as INDIA are perhaps the first bloc that has been forced to bring a motion not to bring down anything but to resurrect something -- to resurrect India’s founding principles of equality and secularism which this government has buried six feet under, to resurrect the right to express ourselves in the democratic framework which you label as high treason, to resurrect the right of a non-homogenous, diverse people to exist within a Union of state which your government insists of dividing in ‘us’ and ‘them’,” Moitra said.

“The treasury benches have asked why only Manipur, what about rape and murder in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal?

“We (Opposition) in turn have felt compelled to ask what about the violence in Haryana. I want to tell this House that Manipur is different and I will tell you why. The issue of Manipur is of a hate crime against a particular community where it is understood that the police personnel of one community, possibly the same community as of the chief minister, handed over women of another community to be raped and pillaged by a mob and made every attempt to prevent those women from seeking justice,” she alleged.

The issue is that two communities in Manipur have been pitted against each other in an “atmosphere of civil war and ethnic violence”.

She listed the toll of the past three months -- “6,500 FIRs, 4,000 houses destroyed, 60,000 people displaced, 150 people dead, 300 places of worship destroyed - and asked, “which state outside wartime or natural calamity has seen this?”.

“An arms standoff between the Manipur state police and the Assam Rifles, captured on video, which state has seen this? 5,000 firearms and six lakh bullets looted from police stations by mobs, which state has seen this? Two ethnic groups armed to the teeth, a buffer zone where hill (people) cannot go to the valley, and valley (people) cannot go to hill, which state has seen this?” she said.

“Stop your whataboutery, stop your false equivalences, address the problem, Hon’ble Prime Minister,” she said.

“Manipur is a tacitly approved hate crime, make no mistake, this is civil war, these are crimes against humanity,” she asserted.

“Everyone asks if not Modi ji, then who? This inaction on Manipur, Prime Minister, where you had absolute power to intervene but did not, is a cornerstone after which India will say, ‘anyone but Modi’,” she said.