ULFA’s demand for a sovereign Assam found an echo in the United Nations way back in 2006. The man who took the lead was none other than Dr Mukul Hazarika. In his address the South Asia and South Asia Confederation of Nations during the Second Session of the Human Rights Council from September 18 to October 6, 2006 at Geneva, the widely believed current ULFA chairman strongly advocated sovereignty for Assam.
He said, “the ULFA had to take up arms as the last resort to restore the sovereignty from the colonial occupation of India. In her own statistics India reveals that more than ten thousand Assamese lives have been lost so far as a result of this conflict.”
Dr Hazarika, who later was elevated to chairman of the outfit rued that the Centre has not been sincere to any initiative to settle the issue through negotiation. “In the hope of resolving the conflict politically and swiftly, the ULFA dropped two of the organisation’s long held conditions, that is, 1. To hold talks only in a third country; 2. Talks to take place under United Nations presence,” he observed.
“Now as the peace process has come to a dead end, it appears very clearly that India had no inclination to discuss the restoration of the Sovereignty of Assam but was aiming for a repetition of ‘Assam Accord, 1985’ - an agreement which was not worth the paper it was written on. As soon as it became blatantly obvious that the ULFA is not prepared to accept anything short of the restoration of Assam’s sovereignty, Indian authorities have taken steps to scuttle the discussion process with the PCG,” said Dr Hazarika.
Moreover, at the fag-end of his speech, he said, “simmering discontent of being under Indian rule since 1950s and mass eruption in 1968, 1971 and 1979 supporting an Independent Assam paints a different picture. The world hardly knows about these struggles as India managed to violently suppress each one of them with an iron hand.”
He ended his speech highlighting anguish of Assam for lack of reasonable and fair treatment apart from a demand for the logical conclusion to establish Assam as one of the members of the South Asian member nations.
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