Clarifying over the alleged manhandling of journalists at Henjang village in Kangpokpi district, the village chief on Wednesday clarified that none of the journalists were harmed or ill-treated but that they were released safely.
Clarifying the incident, Henjang village chief Kammang Lhouvum said that on Monday evening a few army officials visited him and informed him that some national media, including GTV and the Hindustan Times reporters would be coming to the Leimakhong area for a spot inspection of the area and defence preparedness of the Kuki villages.
He said the Army officials informed him that journalists are coming from Guwahati only and then, they had a gentleman agreement.
However, the next day, when the journalists arrived, we learned that most of them are from the local media and those from the national media are also correspondents or reporters from the local, he added.
He also said that he does not know why the army officials betrayed them and broke their gentleman agreement in changing the media persons from GTV and Hindustan Times to The Frontier Manipur, TOM TV, and others.
Clarifying further, the village chief said that it is not that they are against the local journalists but the situation is not congenial for the two communities to visit each other.
He said that when the villagers came to know that the journalists were from the locals only, there was a little bit of scuffle but no untoward incident, no manhandling, and no harm was caused to them.
He also said that he was also persuading the villagers to control themselves as the journalists have a certain level of ethics to function.
“We respect the journalists, we are not against them, but we are only requesting them not to visit at this juncture”, he added.
The village chief then requested the valley-based journalist fraternity to consider twice before coming to the Kuki areas.
He also appealed to the journalist fraternity to prevail and should not hide the truth so that a day will come again to have a cordial press meeting with lots of love and warmth.
