Border fencing opposed

IMPHAL, Nov 24 : The Naga People's Front (NPF), Phungyar AC unit has opposed the proposed fencing along Indo-Myanmar border and the scrapping of the decades old Free Movement Regime (FMR).
NPF Phungyar AC Unit in a statement said that the rank and file of the unit converged at public ground Kamjong and staged a peaceful, democratic and silent protest holding placards and banners against the planned fencing along the  "artificial and imaginary" Indo-Myanmar border and abolition of FMR in the Naga ancestral territory by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
The unit vehemently opposed the construction of the fencing and scrapping of FMR without the prior consent of the Nagas who would be severely affected by such "divisive and Berlin wall like" structure, it said. Such diabolic partition by erecting the fence would cut off all cultural, economic, religious and social ties with Naga brothers and sisters living on the other side of the international border, it said.
The Nagas and other ethnic groups settling along the porous international border would not accept such a drastic move to divide the Nagas, it said.
The division of India and Myanmar by the then colonial British empire had adversely affected the blood relationship of the Nagas. The anguish, pain and wounds of separation are still fresh in their collective conscience and it has not been healed till date, it said.
To add salt to the lingering wounds of the Nagas, the Government of India has come up with an anti-people, unpopular and unacceptable proposal to fence the Indo-Myanmar border in the Naga ancestral domain and removal of FMR, it said. The NPF Phungyar Unit unequivocally deplored the move of the Centre, it said while appealing to all the citizens to support the movement against the planned border fencing and abolition of FMR.