COCOMI appeals for mass support to IDPs' protest

By Our Staff Reporter
IMPHAL, Nov 18 : The COCOMI has appealed for mass support to the sit-in-protest planned by IDPs on November 20 against holding Manipur Sangai Festival 2025.
The committee has also appealed to all the people to stage similar protest demonstrations on November 21 too, the opening day of Manipur Sangai Festival.
Speaking to media persons at their Lamphelpat office this evening, COCOMI convenor Khuraijam Athouba said that IDPs have raised strong objections and deep grievances against the PR administration’s decision to hold Manipur Sangai Festival.
The IDPs have been suffering untold misery and living like refugees in their own homeland for the past two years and a half.
While conveniently ignoring all the hardships of the IDPs, the PR administration started preparation for the Manipur Sangai Festival without any prior announcement. This evoked vehement objections from the IDPs, Athouba said.    
Fully convinced that celebrating Manipur Sangai Festival under the prevailing situation goes against the collective interest of the people, the COCOMI decided to boycott Manipur Sangai Festival.
Meanwhile, the PR administration has been making hectic preparations for the festival and this has only added fuel to the people’s anger.
With the PR administration functioning in a manner totally disconnected from the citizens, people’s grievances and anger are only rising, he said. It was this growing grievance and anger which compelled the IDPs to come out with a decision to stage a protest demonstration on November 20, the COCOMI convenor said before appealing to all the people to join the scheduled protest.
The IDPs have taken a decision to expose that Manipur Sangai Festival 2025 is not a festival for the masses but is a festival organised by the Government for the Government alone.
“All of us ought to extend moral support and solidarity to the growing grievances of the IDPs”, Athouba said.
Apart from calling for mass support to the protest scheduled on November 20, the COCOMI convenor appealed to all the people to suspend their activities and  stage protest demonstrations at their localities under the banner “Handak Chahi gi Sangai Festival Eikhoi Saruk Yaroi (We will not take part in this year’s Sangai Festival)”.
He appealed to all the people to stage protest demonstrations with a conviction that “there is no reason to celebrate Sangai Festival when we are being denied the basic right to life”.
The Government’s act of giving all the attention to the tourism festival instead of prioritising the people’s fundamental rights is quite illogical and absurd, Athouba said.
It is a deliberate attempt to smokescreen the crisis of extensive human rights violation, he said.
The COCOMI decided to boycott the Manipur Sangai Festival 2025 to tell the whole world that the people of Manipur vehemently oppose the Government’s misplaced priorities, he added.