{"id":66161,"date":"2024-08-11T13:00:01","date_gmt":"2024-08-11T04:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/article\/2024\/aug\/11\/unregulated-vigilante-armies-push-indian-state-of-manipur-to-brink-of-civil-war"},"modified":"2024-08-11T13:00:01","modified_gmt":"2024-08-11T04:00:01","slug":"unregulated-vigilante-armies-push-indian-state-of-manipur-to-brink-of-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=66161","title":{"rendered":"Unregulated vigilante armies push Indian state of Manipur to brink of civil war"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thousands of rifles are in the hands of civilian militia who freely mobilise every night, with police and the state accused of being powerless<\/p>\n<p>As the sun began to slip behind the verdant Manipur hills, Kolom Rabi prepared for a long night ahead. Hurriedly he slung a cartridge belt over his shoulder, strapped on a walkie-talkie and grabbed his shotgun. In the surrounding houses, dozens of his neighbours \u2013 farmers, students, teachers and office workers by day \u2013 donned their green army fatigues and picked up their rifles, before gathering in a sandbag-lined bunker on the village outskirts to await instructions. Tonight, it was Rabi\u2019s turn to be the commander of this makeshift civilian militia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Indian state has failed to provide us security so we have been protecting ourselves with our own guns for over a year now,\u201d said Rabi. \u201cI don\u2019t know when this will all come to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/article\/2024\/aug\/11\/unregulated-vigilante-armies-push-indian-state-of-manipur-to-brink-of-civil-war\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thousands of rifles are in the hands of civilian militia who freely mobilise every night, with police and the state accused of being powerlessAs the sun began to slip behind the verdant Manipur hills, Kolom Rabi prepared for a long night ahead. Hurried&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3838,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3838"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66162,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66161\/revisions\/66162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}