Book spills beans on China-NE ultra nexus Spl CORRESPONDENT NEW DELHI, Feb 19 – China has never acknowledged aiding insurgents from the North-east, but a new pictorial book shows several batches of rebels undergoing training in the neighbouring country. A newly released pictorial book – Lens and the Guerrilla: Insurgency in India’s North-east – has produced graphic images showing Naga and Mizo rebels in Beijing, Yunnan, Tibet and near the Great Wall. Author Rajeev Bhattacharyya claims that his pictorial book has documented MNF armed wing with Chinese soldiers in Yunnan in 1973, another shows its foreign secretary Lalthangliana with two Chinese guides at a studio in Beijing. The author said he gathered the photographs from erstwhile senior leaders of the Mizo outfit who had also undergone training in China. “They were quite reluctant to give them (photographs) and I really had a tough time convincing them that they would not be put to sinister use,” he said, adding that there were more photographs on China which could not be acquired. So far three militant outfits have been trained by China in its soil. Besides these two organisations, a small batch of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Manipur was also trained in Tibet by the Chinese army. Training was imparted in regions close to army cantonments in Tibet and Yunnan that were remote and away from public glare. The course included political indoctrination as well besides training in arms and explosives. The maximum number of cadres trained in the neighbouring country was however from the Naga National Council (NNC) which was then led by Angami Zapu Phizo. One photograph in the book also shows as many as seven senior functionaries of NNC posing for a photograph near the Great Wall including current president and general secretary of NSCN (IM) Isak Chisi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah. Yet another shows self-styled Lt Gen Povezo Soho of the NNC walking in Tibet in 1992, when he was en route to Beijing on a secret mission to re-establish ties with the Chinese leadership, which, however, did not materialise. The pictorial book covers as many as 52 militant outfits in the region with descriptions, including the Kachin Independent Army (KIA) of Myanmar and Shanti Bahini of Bangladesh. Commenting on the endeavour, Bhattacharyya said that he was motivated by the desire to produce something “unique” and record the tidbits of insurgency in India’s North-east. “A photograph speaks a thousand words and all these would have been destroyed if I had not retrieved them. In fact this is the first pictorial on insurgency in the country,” said the author. (The Assam Tribune,20.02.2013)
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