Muslims stuck between warring groups

MANIPUR (India), June 12 (Al Jazeera): Samim Sahni was sitting outside her brick house last week, hunched over a radio along with a dozen of her neighbours, listening to the 7.30pm news broadcast when they heard a bullet whiz by.

The 25-year-old mother of two children - a seven-year-old son and a toddler daughter - rushed inside her house in Kwakta town of Manipur state's Bishnupur district in northeastern India.

Chaos ensued and others who had gathered to hear the news began running helter-skelter even as the firing continued.

"We hid behind the bed for some time. Then between 10.30pm and 11pm we got out and went and hid in the mosque. We only got back in the morning," she told Al Jazeera.

After returning to her house, Sahni and her husband noticed half a dozen bullet holes lining the side of the entrance to their house.

"We didn't want to come back but we don't really have a choice," said Sahni.

According to the authorities, nearly 100 people have been killed, 310 injured and more than 40,000 have been displaced in Manipur since May 3 as the remote Indian state witnessed ethnic clashes between the mainly-Hindu Meitei community and the Kukis who are mostly Christian.

The Meitis - who constitute about half of Manipur's population of 3.5 million, as per India's last census conducted in 2011 - are largely based in and around the state capital Imphal.

The Kukis, along with another major tribe, the Nagas, form around 40 per cent of the state's population and mostly live in the hills. They enjoy the Scheduled Tribe status, a constitutional provision that protects the rights and livelihoods of some of India's Indigenous communities.

The violence was triggered by a Kukis-led protest against the Meiteis demanding to be designated as a Scheduled Tribe.

Sahni's village had been caught in the crossfire between the Meitei-dominated area of Kwakta and a nearby Kuki village.

Sahni and her husband are among around 8,000 Muslims inhabiting Kwakta, according to the 2011 census. Local estimates say there could be as many as 20,000 members of the community, known as Meitei Pangals, in the area.

At about 8 per cent, the Meitei Pangals are the fourth largest community in Manipur after the Meiteis, Nagas and Kukis. They live in and around Imphal.

The area under the Kwakta Municipal Council consists of nine administrative wards, located close to the Kuki-dominated Churachandpur district, one of the 10 hill districts of Manipur.

"We [Meitei Pangals] live in the valley areas. We have a relationship with both the Kukis and the Meiteis… Since the incidents started happening, we have been facing pressures from both sides," S M Jalal, president of the All Manipur Muslim Organisations Coordinating Committee (AMMOCOC), the apex civil society organisation of the Pangal community, told Al Jazeera.