India's Modi breaks silence over Manipur violence after viral video shows mob molesting women
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has broken his public silence over deadly ethnic clashes in India’s northeast after a video went viral showing two women being assaulted by a mob
NEW DELHI (AP) — Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke more than two months of public silence over deadly ethnic clashes in India's northeast, saying Thursday that the assaults of two women as they were being paraded naked by a mob in Manipur state were unforgivable.
A video showing the assaults triggered massive outrage and went viral late Wednesday despite the internet being largely blocked and journalists being locked out in the remote state. It shows two naked women being surrounded by scores of young men who grope their genitals and drag them to a field.
“The guilty will not be spared. What has happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven,” Modi told reporters ahead of a parliamentary session in his first public comments related to the Manipur conflict.
The violence depicted in the video was emblematic of the near-civil war in Manipur that has left more than 130 people dead since May, as mobs rampage through villages killing people and torching houses. The ethnic violence was sparked by an affirmative action controversy which saw Christian Kukis protest a demand from the mostly Hindu Meiteis of a special status that would let them buy land in the hills populated by Kukis and other tribal groups and get a share of government jobs.
