Article

Comment

Freedom of Belief

2 June 2023

6 min read

The month of May(hem) in Manipur

On the 27th May, Archbishop Justin Welby tweeted about the violence unfolding in Manipur. Belle Tindall re-winds the clock to May 3rd and tracks the events that led to his tweet.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A church interior glowing red as parts of its furniture burn. A man walks down the aisel

A video still of a church interior on fire, during violent clashes in Manipur, India.

Open Doors.

A note to our readers: this article includes reports that some readers may find particularly distressing.

On 27th May, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, tweeted about his concern at what has been, and still is, unfolding in Manipur in India. He wrote,

‘I’ve been distressed to hear about the attacks on the indigenous tribal Christians of Manipur, India, and of the churches that have been destroyed in recent weeks.

Kailean Khongsai is training for ordination to the priesthood in the Church of England, and is from Manipur. I join him in praying regional authorities would protect all minority groups, including Christians and their places of worship, and that justice and peace would prevail.’

In doing so, Archbishop Justin pointed the world in the direction of those who are facing extreme pressure, discrimination, and violence in their home of Manipur. Therefore, allow me to paint a fuller picture of what has been happening (largely unnoticed) for weeks now – let’s rewind to May 3rd.

May 3rd

On the streets of Manipur, a state in the northeast of India, indigenous communities protested the (apparent) impending accreditation of Scheduled Tribe status to the Meiti community. Let me provide some context as to why this would be a development to protest about.

Manipur is a self-governed state. A state that is home to the Meiti community, who make up around 53 per cent of the population, and other indigenous communities – the largest of which are the Kuki community, to the south, and the Naga community to the north. There is, and has long been, friction between these neighbouring people groups. The Kuki and Naga communities, being minority groups, have Scheduled Tribal status, thus ensuring that they have a right to protection (particularly regarding the reservations they call home) and representation. The Meiti people, being the state’s majority demographic, do not have such a status… yet.

Despite their legal protection, the Kuki people, in particular, have already faced ongoing evictions from their homes in the hill regions that they have inhabited for hundreds of years. Their expectation is that this is only the beginning. The fear is that, if the Meiti people were to be granted a similar Tribe status, it would result in the Kuki people further losing the right to keep and protect their spaces in both the hills and the forests. It would also pave the way for the Meiti people to assert more societal dominance, as they would be entitled to increased governmental representation; the imbalance would no longer be countered.

And so, on May 3rd, people from both the Kuki and Naga communities took to the streets and marched for ‘tribal solidarity’.

Within a matter of hours, a peaceful protest was transformed into riotous violence as the people marching were met with a wall of resistance. Since that Wednesday afternoon, whole villages have been burnt down, around 15,000 people have been made homeless, hundreds have been injured, the price of essentials has risen to unprecedented levels, schools and public facilities have been closed, internet has been suspended, and although numbers are proving a challenge to confirm, it is thought that anywhere between thirty to seventy people have been killed. Some media outlets are perceiving this violence as the rumblings of an impending civil war; while the Kuki and Naga communities are placing the entirety of the blame upon the Meiti people, The Meiti community are directing all blame toward the tribal communities. And the violence continues to rage on.

May 4th

Recent footage has emerged of a particularly heinous incident taking place on 4th May, one that has re-caught the world's attention and thus prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to break his silence, declaring that the attack has 'shamed India'.

Two women, both of whom belonging to the Kuki community, were taken from a police van, stripped, publicly paraded and sexually assaulted in broad daylight. Two men, the younger woman's brother and father, were killed while trying to protect them. It is now being reported that this attack was carried out by armed Meiti men, none of which were arrested until astonishingly recently, more than two months after the attack took place.

Manipur is imploding, and the violent ramifications are devastating.

But there is just one more piece of context that undergirds the Archbishop’s tweet, one more thing to note about the societal dynamics at play in Manipur: while the Meiti community are a majority Hindu people group, the various indigenous groups are almost entirely Christian. As such, Open Doors have reported that the women who were subjected to to the afore-mentioned attack were Christian women.

A complex ethno-religious conflict

The goings-on in Manipur are anything but simple; and so, it is not my intention to reduce the geographic, political, and historic complexities of this conflict, nor to wholly define it as a war between religions. Following Archbishop Justin’s lead, it is with particular caution that I speak of violence being inflicted particularly on Christians in Manipur, acknowledging that it is not the only identity marker that is proving to be targetable.

Nevertheless, it is being widely reported that Christians are being singled out; their Christianity used as a target to aim at, their identity wielded as a weapon against them. Whether it be as the means or the end, as the goal or merely the tactic: it is happening.

According to further Open Doors’ reports, derived from their partners in Manipur, around three hundred churches have been burnt down thus far, one of which still had people in it when it was set alight. A further one hundred public Christian buildings have been destroyed, while one thousand homes which were owned/inhabited by Christian people were ruined, while neighbouring properties remained untouched.

And it isn’t only the Kuki Christians who are facing such discrimination, the (very few) Meiti Christians are also facing particular difficulties as a result of their unusual ethno-religious identity. Noticing this, one Indian news publication is reporting that from the perspective of the Meiti Hindus, Meiti Christians are somewhat of an oxymoron, personified. It is believed that to be Christian is to have converted to a tribal way of living (assimilating the Kuki and Naga people), and therefore comes with assumptions of deep betrayal. And yet, the publication also observes that ‘if their [Christian] faith is making them feel insecure in the valley, it has not come to their rescue in the hills either. The Kukis have made no distinction between them and other Meiteis’. They are, subsequently, a community that are ‘sandwiched’ in conflict.

While the conflict is undoubtedly spilling over ethnic and religious lines, Manipur has just become one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a Christian. In yet another part of the world, it is now a hazardous faith.

And so, back to Archbishop Justin’s tweet.

The need to be seen

One only needs to spend thirty or so seconds tracking the comments generated by this particular tweet to get a sense of how powerful it is to be seen. To be noticed when in distress, to be acknowledged when in chaos, to be advocated for when in danger.

In many ways, social media is a genie that we wish we were able to squeeze back into the bottle. And as justified as such feelings often are, in this case, as in many others in our recent history, it has proved to be a way in which our eyes are opened to what is happening in the most remote corners of our world. Archbishop Justin has publically called for protection, justice, and peace, and in doing so, has made it difficult for the conflict to continue to rumble on unnoticed.

It is now on all of us to refuse to look away. The people of Manipur, Christian and otherwise, need us to continue to look in their direction.

Article

Comment

Feminism

Migration

Trauma

10 October 2025

6 min read

“Defending our girls” is less about safety, more about scapegoating

The men who finally care about violence against women — just in time to blame immigrants for it

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A protestor holds a blue smoke canister towards the camera lens.

An asylum hotel protester, Epping.

Something has profoundly shifted in the way we are speaking about male violence against women and girls. Or perhaps I should say, the shift is precisely that we are speaking about male violence against women and girls.

Wait.

Would you allow me to slightly amend that statement once more?

I say ‘we’ are talking about it, what I really mean, if I may be so blunt, is ‘men’. Men are talking about male violence against women and girls.

Therein lies the shift.

Women have been speaking about this epidemic of violence for years, they have been having endless conversations about the complexities of their own sense of sexual safety, relentlessly sounding the alarm. And, all too often, being ignored. It has so commonly felt as though women could scream about this topic at the top of their lungs and be met with an exasperated eyeroll. Perhaps that’s ungenerous of me, maybe the lack of political interest has been more about despondence than disbelief. Either way, it has continually appeared as though male violence against women and girls has sat, slumped and hopeless, at the bottom of the political agenda.

Until now, that is. Now, it is the crux of many campaigns, sitting right at the forefront of multiple political conversations. One conversation, in particular.

Earlier this year, Conservative MP, Robert Jenrick, wrote an article in which he stated that he fears for his daughters’ safety, not wanting them to live near ‘men from backward countries who broke into Britain illegally and about whom you know next to nothing’. Political party Reform UK has a concern for women’s safety sitting at the forefront of their campaigns; again, Nigel Farage (leader of Reform UK) has continually suggested that it is the immigrant communities in the UK who are posing the threat. Signs that read ‘defend our girls’ have been ever-present at many of the anti-immigration protests that have happened throughout the summer months, the same phrase was chanted by those taking part in the ‘Unite The Kingdom’ march, organised by far-right activist, Tommy Robinson.

So, we have a direct line being drawn between immigration and the epidemic levels of violence against women and girls. A common enemy is a powerful thing, isn’t it? A uniting thing? An energising thing, even? This line from A to B (‘A’ being the violence and ‘B’ being people who have come to this country from another) is one that I cannot draw myself. I find no biblical nor sociological justification for doing such. In fact, I’m hit with quite the opposite.

I’ll get biblical, but shall we start with the sociological?

Violence against women – be that physical, verbal, sexual, financial, or any other nuanced kind – is a tragic reality here in the UK, as well as globally. We know this and there can be no denying it.

One in three women will experience domestic abuse.

A woman is murdered by a partner/ex-partner every four days.

One in two rapes against women are carried out by a partner/ex-partner.

More than 90 per cent of perpetrators of rape and/or sexual assault are known to their victims.

One in three adult survivors of rape experience it in their own home.

These facts are heartbreaking, stomach-churning, worthy of our indignation and fury. They do not, however, imply that the dominant threat to women are strangers who have come to UK from other countries. Such claims, while being spoken of loudly and continually, are unfounded.

There’s almost an ‘if-only-ness’ about such claims, isn’t there? And so, if I lower my hackles, I can sympathise with wanting such claims to be true, albeit momentarily - if only we could solve male violence against women and girls so easily.

If only it were so neat.

Instead, we have to sit in the utterly overwhelming, and often debilitating, reality that violence is being carried out against women in every age group, every socioeconomic group (although it must be acknowledged that women who can’t access public funds, such as welfare support or housing assistance, are three times more likely to experience violence), every ethnic group, and in every corner of the country. As a woman, if a man is shouting at me while I’m alone – it makes no difference what language he’s shouting at me in, tragically, I’ve learnt to be scared regardless.

The notion that it is an imported problem that can therefore be a deported problem, is wrong. And, dare I say it, undergirded by racism.

It’s perhaps also worth mentioning that there is footage from the recently held ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march, during which the mandate to ‘defend our girls’ was continually chanted, of men chasing female counter-protesters down the street. While a call to defend women was chanted one minute, a call for women to expose themselves was chanted the next. Furthermore, it has been reported that 40 per cent of those arrested during the 2024 anti-immigration protests had previously been reported to the police for domestic abuse. In my home city of Bristol, it was two-thirds of those arrested.

So, while women’s safety seems to be at the forefront of political and social movements right now, I can’t help but be deeply suspicious of the intentions behind it. It seems to me that the same people who have spent the last five-or-so years responding to women’s pleas for help with an irritated ‘not all men’ chant, are now more than happy to point at a marginalised group of people and declare ‘but probably all those men’.

But this isn’t simply sociological, nor is it purely political. For me, there are theological reasons why I can’t help but wince at what is happening.

I simply don’t think the Bible gives us the option of pitting one marginalised group against another; it’s clear on the fact de-humanisation can never be a tool in our societal toolbox. In fact, if we’re going to get biblical with it, vulnerable women and ‘migrants’/’foreigners’/’strangers’/’sojourners’ – they’re always on the same list.

‘He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing’ – that’s the book of Deuteronomy. And this – ‘Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’ – is the book of Zechariah.

I could go on.

We have a shared humanity and, therefore, a sacred responsibility to protect both the women and girls who are facing unspeakable injustice, and those who are being unfairly scapegoated for it. It’s an uncomfortable tension, I can’t deny it. It refutes quick-fixes, it raises its eyebrows at cheap blame, and it absolves any comforting notion that the problem flows from elsewhere - Christianity simply does not offer such a luxury. Compassion cannot be finite, love – as Graham Tomlin has argued – cannot be a limited commodity.

And this is precisely why such things being increasingly carried out in the name of Christianity makes no sense to me. Surely, this cannot be espoused in the name of the Jesus who destabilises the boundaries between ‘Our Sort of People' and 'Those Others Over There?’ (to quote Francis Spufford)

We cannot be fooled, fear and distrust on the basis of someone being different from ourselves is not – I repeat, not - a Christian value. One vulnerable group’s pain being unjustly weaponised against another vulnerable group has no hint of Jesus about it. Plus, doing so knowingly compromises the care we can offer to both groups.

I’m getting a little weary of being told that, as a woman, this hate will ensure my safety. Both sociologically and biblically, I’ve found the grounds to call time on such a claim.

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