The Bharatiya Janata Party is facing serious resistance in Mizoram from one of its key allies in the northeast, the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF), on the issue of India’s dealing with refugees fleeing the military junta in Myanmar, following the coup there. It is also being told to match up to its position as the largest democracy in the world.
Zoramthanga, chief minister, Mizoram, has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that India, being the largest democracy in the world and Myanmar’s immediate neighbour, “needs to do more and be more open” in view of the humanitarian crisis unfolding there. The Mizoram MP in Rajya Sabha, K. Vanlalvena, has also raised the issue in Parliament.
The Modi government has adopted a policy of accommodation vis-a-vis the military junta in Myanmar, turning a blind eye to its strong-arm methods in view of the support it has received in the past in neutralising the North-east insurgencies and also to check China’s growing footprint in the region. The government has told the state that the refugees should be identified and deported and that the state governments have no power to ‘grant refugee status to any foreigner’.
Following the coup in Myanmar, the Union Home Ministry had written to the four states bordering Myanmar – Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram – as also Assam Rifles, on the ‘probability of a large-scale illegal influx’ due to the ‘current internal situation in Myanmar’. The Home Ministry asked the states and Assam Rifles to ‘stay alert and to take appropriate action to prevent a possible influx’. It also asked all law enforcement and intelligence agencies to be sensitised ‘to take prompt steps to identify the illegal migrants and initiate the deportation process expeditiously and without delay’.
Assisting refugees
However, the state government of MNF, which has extended issue-based support to the NDA, is in favour of allowing the refugees from the neighbouring Myanmar to come in and even laying down a policy to assist them. This flies in the face of the directive issued by the Centre, asking all bordering states and the force guarding the border to prevent the influx and deport those, who have come in since the coup, mainly police personnel. The Assam Rifles, which guards the 510-km India-Myanmar Border (IMB) in Mizoram, has also informed the Centre in early March that the state is ‘supporting the movement’ of refugees and has ‘promulgated an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) to manage’ them. The SOP has since been withdrawn.
Assam Rifles has also told the Centre that it is not ‘in sync’ with the state government on the issue and that its ‘rather contradictory’ position ‘can result in the deterioration’ of the ‘working relation’ with it. The force warned that because of the coup, “the situation is volatile and there are inputs of a likely refugee crisis”. It informed that, by early March, a number of refugees had been ‘successfully pushed back’, while the ‘balance have been provided shelter by the state administration’, although there were inputs of ‘more such crossings across the IMB’. It has asked the Union Home Ministry to pass “necessary directions…so that the state government doesn’t facilitate any such movement of Myanmar nationals seeking refuge in the Indian territory”.
There is a Free Movement Regime between India and Myanmar, which allows people living within 16 km on either side to travel across the border for a period of 14 days. But Assam Rifles sources say this facility was suspended after the pandemic broke out last year – and remains so. Many refugees and protesting policemen, who fled Myanmar following the coup, crossed the border with the active connivance of the Mizoram government.
Zoramthanga says the Centre’s advisories are not acceptable to Mizoram. He has urged Modi to “to intervene so that the political refugees from Myanmar are given asylum and provided food and shelter.” In his letter, he also pointed out to the PM that the Myanmar areas bordering Mizoram are inhabited by Chin communities “who are ethnically our Mizo brethren, with whom we have been having close contacts through these years, even before India became independent. Therefore, Mizoram cannot just remain indifferent to their sufferings today. India cannot turn a blind eye to this humanitarian crisis unfolding right in front of us in our own backyard.”
The Chin ethnic group comprises Lai, Tidim-Zomi, Lusei and Hualngo tribes – all dominant in Mizo society.