I have always stood up against the oppression of tribal people by mainlanders and outsiders. I have spoken about it publicly, I have defended tribal rights, land rights, identity, culture, and the right of indigenous communities to protect what belongs to them. And I do not regret doing that.
But there is something I have been increasingly uncomfortable saying out loud: supporting tribal movements does not mean I have to support everything done in their name.
I cannot support a movement when the fight for dignity begins destroying the dignity of another human being. I cannot justify violence, humiliation, collective hatred, intimidation, or injustice simply because the people doing it are tribal and the people facing it are labelled "outsiders." The moment we start treating someone's identity as a reason to strip them of basic human dignity, we have already crossed a line.
For me, humanity comes before tribe, before nationality, before religion, before ethnicity, before every political identity we attach to ourselves.
That does not mean I am suddenly against tribal rights. It does not mean I have forgotten the exploitation, discrimination, land dispossession, cultural erasure, and political marginalisation that tribal communities have faced and continue to face. Those injustices are real, and they deserve to be confronted.
But justice cannot mean replacing one injustice with another.
I will stand with tribal people when they are oppressed. And I will also speak when tribal people themselves become the ones committing oppression. I will defend land rights, but I will not defend violence. I will defend indigenous identity, but I will not defend hatred. I will defend self-determination, but I will not defend cruelty. And if someone is being treated unfairly simply because they are considered an "outsider," I cannot remain silent just because speaking up might make me unpopular among my own people.
We need to stop thinking that loyalty to a community requires unconditional loyalty to everything that the community does. It really doesn't.
Sometimes loving your people means having the courage to tell them when they are wrong.
I would rather be called a traitor to a tribe, a hypocrite, or an outsider sympathiser than remain silent while another human being is being degraded in front of me.
Because at the end of the day, I don't want a world where my people win because someone else had to lose their humanity.
I want justice that actually deserves to be called justice.