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| Saturday, 6 December 2003 |
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Tribal rebel group to surrender en masse under peace accord GUWAHATI, India, Friday (AFP) One of the main rebel groups fighting Indian rule in northeastern Assam will disband this weekend under a peace accord that grants autonomy to the Bodo tribe, officials said Friday. Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani is expected to attend the mass surrender by the 2,500 militants of the Bodo Liberation Tigers on Saturday in Kokrajhar district, 235 kilometers (145 miles) west of Assam's capital Guwahati. "It could be the beginning of a new era of peace and hope in Assam," the state's leader, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, told AFP. At least six other ethnic separatist groups continue to fight in Assam, where more than 10,000 people have been killed in insurgency in the past two decades. At least 2,000 deaths have been attributed to the campaign of the Bodo Liberation Tigers, which was formed in 1996 and is blamed for several explosions on trains. But unlike most rebel groups, the Bodo Liberation Tigers were not fighting for outright secession from India but for a separate administration for the Bodo tribe, which accounts for 1.6 million out of Assam's 26 million people. A peace agreement signed in February between the rebels and the Indian government establishes the Bodoland Territorial Council under which Bodos will be granted executive and legislative powers in parts of the state. Several top rebel leaders will be sworn in Saturday as members of the council. "The challenge before us is immense as we have to work for the overall uplift of the Bodo community from now onwards," rebel chief Hagrama Basumatry said. He expressed concern that a rival rebel group, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, would target members of the Bodo Liberation Tigers to show their rejection of the peace accord. "But then we have the support of the people who want peace and a solution to the Bodo problem," Basumatry said. |
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