In India, a video showing two women being forced to parade naked by hundreds of men is causing a lot of protests among the population and in politics. The episode took place in Manipur, a state in northeastern India where there has been ethnic violence for months between the Meitei majority and the Kuki community, in which more than 130 people have been killed so far.
The women in the video are of Kuki ethnicity, while the men are Meitei. The video was made in May but has only started circulating on social networks in the last few days. According to a complaint filed on May 18 and obtained by several Indian newspapers, the youngest was allegedly raped by the group of men. There was also a third woman with them, but she does not appear in the video.
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Although the incidents were reported in May, the police did not intervene at the time due to lack of evidence, state police told an Indian newspaper. Now police said they are investigating the case and have arrested four men identified in the video. All four will be in custody for at least 11 days. These should be followed by more arrests, when the identification of other people in the video is completed. They will have to answer for the rape of the women and the killing of two men who were with them.
The house of the man suspected of leading the violence was burned down by a group of mostly female protesters on Thursday. There have been protests all over the state of Manipur, and also in various cities in the rest of India. Many opposition leaders have called for the resignation of the head of the state government, who instead defended his management of the crisis and affirmed that his task is to “bring peace” to the state.
Even in the Indian parliament there were major protests by the opposition, which led to the interruption of parliamentary work on Thursday and Friday. In its first meeting, the INDIA coalition, which brings together all the opposition parties and has just been formed, criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi (of the nationalist and conservative Bharatiya Janata Party) very harshly, accusing him of not having been able to manage the crisis in Manipur.
Modi, however, until Thursday had never commented on the ethnic violence between Kuki and Meitei: he did so only after the video of the violence against the two women was released, condemning the episode in a rather general way, but without mentioning the broader context in which it took place.
The Indian Supreme Court also intervened on the matter, which defined the content of the video as a violation of human and constitutional rights. She formally requested the government to be briefed on the measures it intends to take to address the situation in Manipur and ensure that similar incidents do not happen again. It also warned that it would intervene, it is not yet clear how, if the government measures were insufficient.