Only cowards kill children

Both the Meitei and Kuki communities must find a way to coexist, to see each other not as enemies but as fellow human beings.

- SAVIO RODRIGUES

OPINION nly cowards kill children. There are no excuses, no justifications, no ideologies that can ever redeem such an act.

To harm the most innocent is to abandon not just morality, but the very essence of humanity itself. The ongoing conflict in Manipur, once defined by territorial disputes and ethnic grievances, has now crossed a line so horrifying that it shakes the conscience of every decent human being.

For 18 months, Manipur has been torn apart by the violent conflict between the Meitei and Kuki communities, each side entrenched in a bitter struggle over land, identity, and survival.

But the recent abduction of three women and three children, including a defenceless eight-month-old baby, revealed the depths of brutality this war has reached.

Days later, the bodies of a woman and two children were found discarded like refuse near the confluence of the Jiri and Barak rivers. The horror of their fate sends shivers down the spine and fills the air with questions that no one dares to answer.

What evil resides in a person who sees a child as an enemy? What kind of desperation or depravity leads to the targeting of women and children, the most vulnerable and defenceless among us? To kidnap and kill them is not just an act of violence-it is a declaration of moral bankruptcy.

The baby, barely eight months old, knew nothing of the Meitei-Kuki conflict, nothing of the history, the hatred, the politics. Its only knowledge of the world would have been the warmth of its mother's embrace and the comfort of her voice. To extinguish such a life is not just a crime; it is an act of unfathomable cruelty, a violation of the sacredness of life itself.