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Christian separatist group in Tripura target tribal Hindus By Syed Zarir Hussain, Indo-Asian News Service Guwahati, Dec 31 (IANS) Tribal Hindu villagers in India's northeastern state of Tripura Tuesday vowed to fight back alleged extortion demands by a Christian separatist group, community leaders said. Militants of the outlawed National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) have served extortion notices to hundreds of Hindu tribal villagers and threatened to kill them if they don't pay up soon. "The notes were served only to Hindu villagers with warnings of capital punishment to those who violated the diktat," Aswathama Jamatia, head priest of Jamatia Hoda, an influential tribal Hindu group, told IANS by telephone. The NLFT, fighting for an independent tribal homeland, is a predominantly Christian group. Police have confirmed the extortion demands to Hindu villagers in Tripura. "We have received some complaints in this regard," said a police official in Tripura's state capital Agartala. Community leaders say the NLFT was demanding three percent of the annual earnings of all government employees as tax, besides charging between Rs. 2,000 and Rs 5,000 from farmers and other businessmen. Villagers in remote areas have formed vigilante groups to foil the NLFT's extortion drive. "People armed with sticks and other crude weapons, including bows and arrows, patrol vulnerable villages to scare militants who come for extorting money," said Rampada Jamatia, secretary of Jamatia Hoda. "At no cost are we going to pay the militants." Tribal Hindus account for 22 percent of Tripura's 3.2 million people. Christians are just about eight percent of the state's total population. Tribal Hindu groups say the NLFT has been converting people to Christianity at gunpoint. "We believe up to 5,000 tribal villagers were coerced into converting to Christianity by the NLFT during the past couple of years," the head priest said. Community chiefs and religious heads of 19 tribes, who met recently, formed a platform called the Tribal Culture Protection Committee to counter the perceived militant threat. The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) ruled government in Tripura has accused the church of boosting secessionist campaigns in the state. Police in Tripura in 2002 arrested 10 church leaders on charges of colluding with separatists in the killing of some CPI-M members. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, however, said his government does not have "hard evidence" of the Christian missionaries' nexus with rebel groups. "The fact remains that militant groups have been targeting government schools and non-Christian people, while institutions run by missionaries are never touched," he said. "We want the Christian missionaries to make their stand clear and help us fight militancy for the greater interest of the state." Church leaders have denied the allegations. "In fact, a number of our priests and missionaries have been the target of attacks by unidentified miscreants over the past couple of years," said Jong Bahadur Debbarma, a church leader. "Instead of just accusing the church of having nexus with militants, the Indian government should initiate a probe and punish the guilty." The genesis of insurgency in Tripura can be traced back to the massive influx of Bengali-speaking refugees when East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, was created during India's partition in 1947. The indigenous tribal people, who accounted for 95 percent of the Tripura population in the 1931 census, are now just 30 percent. More than 10,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in Tripura during the past two decades. --Indo-Asian News Service WANT TO check out which mailing lists you could subscribe to? Send a blank email message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ========================================================================
