Video of 2 Manipur women paraded naked, molested by mob sparks outrage in India

globalnews.ca:

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 was widely shared on social media late Wednesday despite the internet being largely blocked and journalists being locked out in the remote state. It shows two naked women 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.

Without making any direct references to the violence in Manipur, Modi urged heads of state governments to ensure the safety of women and said the incident is “shameful for any civilized nation.”

“My heart is filled with pain and anger,” he said.

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 in which Christian Kukis protested a demand from the mostly Hindu Meiteis for 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.

The clashes have persisted despite the army’s presence in Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people tucked in the mountains on India’s border with Myanmar that is now divided in two ethnic zones. The two warring factions have also formed