The police in Manipur have booked the editors of Frontier Manipur, an online news portal, for sedition and criminal conspiracy over an article that was published on January 8. The editors have also been accused of “supporting a terrorist organisation” under the amended Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
M Joy Luwang, who wrote the article headlined “Revolutionary journey in a mess”, has also been charged under the same sections. The piece is a critical indictment of Manipur’s many armed groups who have waged an armed secessionist movement since the 1960s. In the article, Luwang accused the groups of “falling prey to the Indian government’s design of breaking their backbones” and not living up to the “revolutionary” ideals they were formed with.
The armed groups, he wrote, were falling for low-hanging fruits. For instance, the celebration of inclusion of Manipuri as one of the scheduled languages of India “by begging” was “one of the saddest…