On February 9, Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh handed in his resignation to the governor of the state. A little over a day later, 20 armed men barged into the home of a senior journalist in Imphal, abducted him, and held him captive.

These developments are possibly not connected. But the journalist was Yambem Laba, a familiar name in Manipur. He currently writes for The Statesman, Kolkata, and is known as a human rights activist. He’s also been an open and trenchant critic of Biren Singh. On the evening of February 10, he was a panelist on a local channel discussing Biren Singh’s resignation. He once again criticised Biren Singh and, in the early hours of February 11, he was abducted from his home. 

Laba was released the next day after he made a public apology to the suspected abductors – the United National Liberation Front, one of the oldest armed militant groups operating in Manipur. The trigger for the abduction apparently was Laba stating on TV that the group had “surrendered” when it signed a peace agreement with the Biren Singh government in November 2023. 

Whatever the truth, although the attention of the media is fixed on who will take Biren Singh’s place now that President’s rule has been declared, Laba’s abduction and subsequent release is a reminder of the precarious conditions under which journalists operate in Manipur, and elsewhere in Northeast India.

While the Northeast is often lumped as one “conflict-ridden” area by what people there refer to as “mainland” media, it is inaccurate and inappropriate to generalise because each of the eight states comprising Northeast India have distinct histories, politics, cultures and causes for current and past tensions. 

Manipur, of course, has been paralysed by the ethnic strife that has stretched over 21 months, killing at least 260 people, displacing an estimated 60,000 people, and leaving behind a mountain of distrust and hate between the warring communities that cannot be wished away easily. There is today a virtually unsurpassable divide between areas where the Kuki-Zo people live in the hills, and the Imphal valley inhabited by the majority community of Meitei. 

Most journalists reporting from Manipur used to be based in Imphal. In the past, they could travel and report on the other parts of the state. Today, it would be impossible for a Meitei journalist based in Imphal to travel freely in Kuki dominated areas to find out what is happening and report on it, and vice versa.  

As a result, the information coming from these two separate parts of the state are generated by people living in those areas. Given the distrust between the two sides, neither is willing to believe what the other side reports. 

An Imphal-based journalist pointed out that the only news sent to newspaper offices in Imphal from the Kuki areas comes through official channels, namely the Department of Information and Public Relations. Clearly, this government organisation is not going to issue press releases about the conflict. As a result, he said that “we have lost the idea of a neutral voice”, something that journalism is supposed to be.

Traditional media houses in Manipur, as elsewhere in the region, have been hampered not just by the lack of access to parts of the state, but also the financial reality of operating in a state where the only source of revenue is government advertising. Predictably, the narrative that is played out is one that is approved by the party in power, in this case the BJP. Going against it could mean cutbacks in advertising, or other pressures.

With formal media channels so restricted, most of the information circulating in the state is dependent on social media postings – some true, some partly true, and some blatantly untrue. Siphoning through this flood of information is difficult if not virtually impossible when the obvious avenues for cross-verification are unavailable. Who do you call to check? Every side, including the “authorities”, have their own version.    

While Manipuri journalists have been severely restricted in their ability to report, how have journalists from the “mainland” media managed? Local journalists often speak resentfully about “parachute” journalism and how they are used by journalists from the rest of the country to provide logistics, translation and contacts. This resentment is understandable, especially when such journalists fly in, embed themselves with security forces to gain access, and then fly out without gaining any real understanding of the complexity of the troubles that have overtaken the state.  

It is such reporting, usually by television channels, that has added to what one journalist described as a “trust deficit”. As a result, even when independent journalists make their own way, depend on civil society and other contacts to access both sides, and report in as even-handed a way as they can, they also must overcome this initial suspicion from both sides. It is not always easy. Both sides have what this journalist called “gatekeepers”, who decide how much access to provide a journalist reporting on the conflict. Also, even if independent journalists are technically from the larger Northeastern region, they are still looked upon as “outsiders”.

Against this reality, anyone setting out to document the developments of the last 21 months in Manipur, using media as the “first draft of history”, would have a really difficult time. Although there has been some excellent reporting by a handful of independent journalists, who have persisted and returned to the state despite the difficulties they encounter, these are the exceptions.

Such in-depth reporting has been largely missing from “mainland” print media, again barring a couple of exceptions. Even those newspapers that have correspondents based in Guwahati often do not provide them the space, or the time, to do the kind of layered reporting that is needed to convey the reality of the conflict in Manipur.  

We are all the poorer for this.

Apart from Manipur, even in a state like Assam, where communal tensions simmer and sometimes boil over because of the blatant anti-Muslim rhetoric and politics of the BJP-led state government, some Muslim journalists say that their names, which reveal their religious identity, now hamper access. The people they call sometimes judge their line of questioning as hostile even if they are genuinely trying to get information. 

A brief visit to Meghalaya, a state that is rarely in the news, revealed another challenge that local journalists face. While journalists in Manipur are labelled as Meitei or Kuki-Zo, in Meghalaya the divide is between tribal and non-tribal. Within tribal, it comes down to their ethnicity – Khasi, Garo and Jaintia. It is assumed that as a journalist, you will not report or write against your ethnic group.

In 2018, Patricia Mukhim, editor of Shillong Times, was attacked, with a firebomb thrown at her house in the night because she had criticised a militant Khasi group. Mukhim is a Khasi. Despite this, Mukhim continues to be outspoken. She has campaigned against rat-hole mining, thereby angering powerful local interests in coal mining who demand that the 2014 ban on it by the National Green Tribunal be lifted. She has been trolled and vilified each time she writes anything critical about campaigns against so-called “outsiders” or non-tribals. Once again, her identity is sought to be reduced to her ethnicity, while she argues that she is doing her job as a journalist, calling the powerful to account and rejecting hate politics.  

Whether a state is torn apart as in Manipur, or tensions lurk just under the surface, journalists based in the region have to tread carefully, manoeuvring between state governments that want to push a particular narrative and their detractors, sometimes consisting of armed groups. It is, as a journalist reporting from the region pointed out “a war of narratives” in which journalists are caught.  

We in the so-called “mainland” should be concerned about the state of the media and the difficulties faced by journalists in the Northeast. Because if journalists cannot do what they are trained to do, to seek out information from all sides, verify it, and report as even-handedly as possible, and if on top of it, what we report is measured through the filter of our ethnicity or religious identity, then journalism as we have known it is in deep trouble.  

With journalists and journalism under attack, we need your help more than ever. Click here to subscribe to Newslaundry, and support journalism that is truly in public interest.