Kuki Rights Body Blasts Cocomi As ‘War Declarers,’ Seeks NIA Probe, Criminal Action

In a blistering and uncompromising rejoinder that sharply escalates the war of narratives surrounding Manipur’s ethnic conflict, the Kuki Organisation for Human Rights Trust (KOHUR) on Tuesday launched a sweeping attack on the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), accusing it of having “declared war” on the Kuki-Zo people, shielding proscribed insurgent networks, vilifying India’s central security forces, and enabling what it described as a sustained campaign of ethnic violence since May 3, 2023.

Responding to COCOMI’s May 11 press release, KOHUR said the valley-based civil society body’s statement was not a rebuttal but “another exercise in narrative manipulation” aimed at deflecting from what it termed the “systemic violence inflicted upon the Kuki-Zo people of Manipur.” In one of its strongest assertions, KOHUR cited COCOMI’s September 8, 2023 statement declaring “war” against the Kuki-Zo community, calling it an unprecedented and dangerous incitement that no legitimate civil society organisation in a democracy could justify. KOHUR alleged that this declaration emboldened Meitei militias, provided ideological cover for armed groups, and intensified atrocities against Kuki-Zo civilians, including village burnings, killings, sexual violence, and mass displacement.

Rejecting COCOMI’s description of KOHUR as a “pseudo human rights group,” the trust asserted its institutional legitimacy as a registered body with documented interventions before the President of India, Union Home Ministry, National Human Rights Commission, and Supreme Court. It said its reports on the destruction of over 360 Kuki-Zo villages, displacement of more than 41,000 tribals, custodial torture, sexual violence, and targeted killings formed part of the public record. KOHUR accused COCOMI of resorting to slander because it could not counter “inconvenient truths” surrounding the humanitarian consequences of the conflict.

The organisation also launched a fierce counteroffensive against what it called COCOMI’s selective security discourse, accusing it of highlighting alleged foreign links of certain groups while ignoring the long history of valley-based banned insurgent outfits such as PLA, UNLF, KCP, KYKL, and PREPAK, all of which it noted have been repeatedly proscribed under Indian law. KOHUR further alleged that COCOMI had remained silent on the rise of Arambai Tenggol and other armed Meitei militias, including the looting of more than 6,000 weapons from state armouries, while simultaneously running campaigns against the Indian Army, Assam Rifles, CRPF, and other central forces deployed in the state.

In one of the release’s most politically explosive sections, KOHUR accused COCOMI of providing “civilian shield, media architecture, and moral cover” to anti-India secessionist politics by allegedly sanitising groups whose stated objective is a sovereign Manipur outside the Indian Union. Contrasting this with the Kuki-Zo political position, KOHUR reiterated that the Kuki-Zo demand is for a Separate Administration under Article 3 of the Constitution within India—not secession. It asserted that Kuki-Zo communities have remained loyal to the Republic and have never waged war against India or its constitutional order.

KOHUR also accused COCOMI of “selective outrage,” alleging silence on some of the conflict’s most horrific incidents involving Kuki-Zo victims, including village massacres, sexual violence, custodial abuse, church destruction, and the public stripping and parading of Kuki women. It maintained that human rights cannot be selectively invoked based on ethnicity and described COCOMI’s rights discourse as “propaganda dressed in moral clothing.”

In a detailed set of demands to the Government of India, KOHUR called for criminal proceedings against COCOMI over its September 2023 “declaration of war,” including charges of incitement to ethnic violence and sustained vilification of central security forces.

It further demanded a National Investigation Agency probe into alleged institutional and financial links between COCOMI, allied valley-based pressure groups, and banned Meitei insurgent organisations; immediate disarming and dismantling of all militias including Arambai Tenggol; recovery of over 6,000 looted weapons; a transparent judicially monitored investigation into all violence since May 2023; an end to the misuse of the National Security Act against innocent Kuki-Zo citizens; prosecution of political figures, including former Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, for alleged complicity in ethnic cleansing; and, most significantly, the establishment of a Separate Administration with legislative powers for the hill areas within the Indian Union.

Declaring that it “will not be silenced by majoritarian pressure groups,” KOHUR concluded that history would remember not only those who, in its words, declared war on a vulnerable community, but also those who allegedly shielded insurgent forces, vilified Indian soldiers, and used the rhetoric of territorial integrity to justify both ethnic dispossession and what it described as the dangerous normalisation of secessionist politics