Bengaluru, Sep 13 (IANS): The Kuki Students' Organisation held a candlelight march on Sunday near Byrathi cross on Kottanuru main road in the city to mark the 27th anniversary of the Joupi massacre in Manipur.

Speaking to IANS, Gin Doungel, president of the organisation, said that hundreds of Kukis were butchered and forced to leave their homes, lands and fertile fields.

"On this 27th anniversary of the Kukis genocide, we the Kuki people in general and Kuki Students' Organisation in particular urge the Union government to ensure justice, to defend and secure our land. As even after 27 years of Joupi Masscare, both central as well as the state governments have failed to rehabilitate the Kukis to their villages which were taken during those years," he explained.

According to Doungel, the Kukis majorly inhabit Manipur and the other North-Eastern states of India and the North-Western parts of Myanmar and the Chittagong Hill tracts of Bangladesh.

"We are the indigenous people in these geographical areas since time immemorial, living in peaceful co-existence with its neighbours. September 13, 1993 has been the darkest day in the history for us, as more than a hundred of them were mercilessly butchered by National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) or NSCN (IM) on a single day in different parts of Tamenglong and the erstwhile Senapati district of Manipur which is also known as the 'Joupi Massacre'.

"The Kukis all over the world have ever since, observed this day as Sahnitni or Kuki Black Day not as a retaliation but as a day of mourning and to remember the departed souls," he observed.

He further added that from 1992 to 1996, more than a thousand Kukis have lost their lives, including women and children, hundreds of their villages "their ancestral lands taken over by NSCN (IM) for its greater Nagalim plan."