(LifeSiteNews) — This has been the strangest year of my life. While I’ve experienced some amazing things in my life, I never imagined having to deal with my wife being stuck in a war zone.
After the initial shock of the situation, and getting the word out with the help of LifeSiteNews and the Western Standard, my wife and her mother were able to use a lull in the fighting on May 17 to get safe passage out of Manipur to Aizawl, Mizoram.
It was a 341km 12hr drive through dangerous and unstable mountain paths with roadblocks and state borders more like frontiers to other countries. The drive was so bad, my wife later told me that she almost wished she had not taken it. A few days after my wife and her mother made the trip, two families sharing a vehicle attempted the journey, the car went off the road, and only two children survived. These were the realities that we were dealing with, but my wife, my mother-in-law, and I all have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. We all knew that everything was in His hands no matter what happened.
READ: I’m a LifeSite staffer, and my wife is currently trapped in a war zone. Can you help?
We also had all of you praying. I can’t put into words exactly what it felt like to know that hundreds, if not thousands, of people were praying for my wife, and for the people of Manipur. It is something indescribable. I had peace that surpasses all understanding and believed that everything would work out. I know it was God who protected my loved ones and gave them safe passage; the petitions of His people were heard.
On behalf of my wife, my kids, and our entire extended family, thank you. You may never know how much your prayers helped us or how much they continue to help the people of Manipur. Their situation is ongoing, and hundreds of thousands still live in anxiety and fear. Manipur is still a battlefield. While the war has not been formally declared, it is very much a war.
As I wrote in my previous piece, the fight is not just a land dispute. It is a full blown ethnic and religious cleansing by the majority Meitei/BJP state government. I have more than one hundred in-laws still in Manipur, and my wife and her mother are on the phone with one or more of them daily. I hear daily reports of people who have been killed. I hear horror stories of executions and of women and children burned alive. A mob of Meitei women blocked an ambulance on its way to the Imphal hospital and set it ablaze, killing two women and a 7 year old boy inside. The ambulance supposedly had a police escort, but the police abandoned its occupants to the mob.
The fight is complex, and there are multiple factions within the Meitei. There are also tribal militias, the state police, the Indian army regiments, and small-time chieftains vying for power. Having so many groups with different agendas has complicated the advancement of the genocide against the hill tribes. This is so much so that on June 14 when more than 300 fighters from the Meitei area marched towards the edge of Churachandpur district, intending to wipe out the hill tribe people in the area, they ended up killing a member of the Indian military instead. That turned his regiment against the Meitei and thus led to the deaths of 302 of their own young men. The whole situation reminded me of Gideon and the Midianites from Judges 7.
READ: Indian state gov’t bulldozes decades-old Christian churches in land dispute
In the weeks following that meaningless slaughter, the Chief Minister of Manipur (a kind of provincial premier) fled, a significant number of his own people now turning on him. Despite instigating and organizing the violence in his state, he now cries for the Chief Minister of Mizoram to help him “bring piece to Manipur.” Meanwhile, only Meitei are permitted to use the Imphal Airport securely; anyone else risks being killed by the violent mobs roaming the streets. This is preventing the distribution of aid to the tens of thousands of people now displaced and made homeless and destitute by Manipur’s Chief Minister.
Indeed, aid can be brought in by only by helicopter drop or by that same dangerous mountain pass my wife and mother-in-law braved to escape the area. Thanks be to God that more churches and denominations around the world have been made aware of what has been happening, but financial aid can not get directly to the people of Manipur. Not even the banks in the state are trustworthy. Organizing aid is a gargantuan task that is going to need international backing and acknowledgment of the atrocities that have been committed by the state government.
The hill tribes of Manipur and the neighbouring states have requested that “Presidential Rule” be implemented. A form of martial law, this would dissolve the state government and turn control directly to India’s president. The Indian Prime Minister does not want to do that, however, as he belongs to the same party as the Chief Minister of Manipur, the BJP. If the state government of Manipur is dissolved because of the violence, that would be a supreme embarrassment to the PM and his party. It might lose him the coming election. This may also be why you have seen little to no reporting on what is happening in Manipur. In fact since the violence started, and to this day, all internet has been cut off in Manipur, except for ‘verified’ government reports, of course.
As we have seen in Iran and China (and, to a lesser degree, in Canada), when a government shuts down citizens’ ability to communicate, it is trying to cover up what it is doing and keep the rest of the people in the dark. What is happening in Manipur can never be resolved until the wickedness being orchestrated by those in power is exposed. Even if the current calm in the fighting holds up, the rage and bitterness over the recent deaths and destruction will only fester under the surface in a sort of ‘cold war.’ Both sides will continue killing each other in ‘accidents’ and mysterious disappearances.
Please continue to pray for Manipur. Pray for justice to be served. Pray for the continued frustration of the wicked plans of the state to hurt and kill innocents. Pray for lasting peace. Pray for the salvation of those perpetuating these horrible crimes against their fellow man. Pray that the Chief Minister of Manipur will repent of his crime and one day confess Jesus as Lord. And pray that ways may be found to get aid to those suffering in this war.
Lastly I ask that if you have connections among church leadership or in politics, you contact them to raise awareness of the plight of the people of Manipur. Ask them what they can do to put pressure on the Indian federal government to intervene and bring justice.
