UKHRUL: The Global Naga Forum (GNF) on Saturday issued a strongly worded statement on the fourth anniversary of the Oting incident where 13 Naga civilians were killed in Mon district, Nagaland on December 4, 2021.
In its remembrance statement, the GNF stated, “Oting is a line we will not cross, not forget, and not forgive. Remembrance is our resistance. Sovereignty is our inheritance. And our future remains unbroken,”
The GNF alleged that New Delhi does not respond to grief, justice, or conscience; it responds only to the calculus of control.
“India kills in Naga homelands because it treats violence as a legitimate tool to secure its territorial design, confident that Nagas lack the leverage to alter that map. New Delhi does not respond to grief, justice, or conscience; it responds only to the calculus of control,” the GNF stated.
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The forum described the Oting incident not as an emotional tragedy but as a national wound.
“Those who were killed carried the future of our people, and their deaths were meant to break us as a nation under military occupation. The loss is not merely personal; it is political — it was an assault on the Naga idea itself, an attempt to remind us that force, not consent, is India’s chosen language in our homeland,” the forum stated.
Condemning the Supreme Court’s failure to deliver accountability, the GNF alleged that the Oting massacre exposed the brutality of India’s military occupation.
“On 4 December 2021, 13 Naga men were killed by the 21 Para Special Forces in a premeditated operation that exposed the brutality of India’s military occupation. Even after this massacre, India’s own Supreme Court has failed to deliver accountability, reinforcing a system where uniformed violence is protected rather than punished,” the GNF stated, adding, “Oting was not an aberration. It was the mask falling off. It was the occupying force revealing its true face without hesitation or shame”
The GNF further stated that the superiority of India’s weapons, numbers, or geography does not create authority. “Occupation does not become legitimate because the occupier is strong. Violence does not become governance because uniforms pull the trigger. A forced union does not become nationhood because it is repeated in Delhi’s rhetoric,” the forum asserted.
Maintaining that India is not a rightful authority in the Naga homelands, the GNF stated that Nagas are a sovereign people living under imposed Indian control.
“India is an occupying force, and Oting laid bare the cruelty and contempt inherent in that occupation. A state that kills a people it seeks to rule — and then shields the killers — forfeits every claim to governance, trust, or moral standing. Nagas are a sovereign people living under imposed Indian control. No collaborator, no manufactured division, and no political paper can rewrite this reality,” it stated.
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The Global Naga Forum also cautioned India that every act of impunity in Naga lands further destabilizes the Indo-Myanmar frontier, weakens New Delhi’s long-term Northeast strategy, and opens geopolitical space no occupying force can manage indefinitely.
It also asserted that the Naga political destiny cannot fit inside Hindu-Indian nationhood.
“Our worldview is rooted in clan, land, consent, and ancestral autonomy — not in the majoritarian, centralised, homogenising idea of India. We are a different political people with a different civilizational map, and no amount of force can fuse two incompatible worldviews into one nation,” it stated.
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