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Mizoram’s bond with people fleeing Myanmar  

23rd March, 2021 International Relations

Context: Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga held a virtual meeting with Myanmar Foreign Minister-in-exile Zin Mar Aung of the National League for Democracy. The meeting took place despite the Centre’s reluctance to accommodate people fleeing Myanmar in light of the recent military coup and the crackdown on protesters.

 

Background:

  • Mizoram has been reluctant to send back Myanmarese and sought that they be provided political asylum by the Centre.
  • Zoramthanga wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 18, saying India could not turn a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in front of us in our own backyard.
  • The Myanmar areas bordering Mizoram are inhabited by Chin communities who are ethnically Mizo brethren with close contact throughout all these years even before India became independent.

 

Chin communities:

  • The Chin Hills, or the Indo-Chin hill ranges as they are often called, are a mountainous region in north-western Myanmar.
  • At an elevation of 2100-3000 metres, this heavily forested mountain region was the home of numerous tribes that fall under the Zo umbrella.
  • The Zo people include all the tribes that come under the Chin-Kuki-Mizo ethnic group spread across Myanmar, India and Bangladesh including a host of tribes, sub-tribes and clans such as Chin, Kuki, Mizo, Zomi, Paitei, Hmar, Lushei, Ralte, Pawi, Lai, Mara, Gangte, Thadou
  • Believed to have originated in China, the tribes migrated through Tibet to settle in Myanmar, and speak a group of the Tibeto-Burman languages.

 

Bond between the Chin people in India and Myanmar:

  • While they are separated by a 510-km India-Myanmar border, they consider themselves “one people’’ despite past conflicts: the Indo-Chin people.
  • Besides the shared ethnicity, what binds these two peoples together is a shared religion. Mizoram is predominantly Christian, as are the Chin people of Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
  • Mizoram officials refer to the refugees’ status as a Christian minority seeking asylum for them, and also the fear of persecution by the junta.
  • Rih Dil in Chin state, Myanmar, is a cultural and spiritual lake for the Mizos, deeply revered in folklore, shaping pre-Christian belief of traditional Mizo views of life after death.

 

India’s policy on asylum seekers:

  • India is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, and it does not currently have a national law on refugees.
  • In 2011, the Centre circulated to all states and Union Territories a Standard Operating Procedure to deal with foreign nationals who claimed to be refugees.
  • An illegal immigrant can be a foreign national who enters India on valid travel documents and stays beyond their validity, or a foreign national who enters without valid travel documents.
  • Cases that can be prima facie justified on grounds of well-founded fears of persecution can be recommended by states or Union Territories to the Home Ministry for a long-term visa (LTV) after due security verification.
  • LTV-holders are allowed to take up private-sector employment and enrol in any academic institution.

 

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/mizoram-cm-zoramthanga-myanmar-nationals-coup-political-asylum-7240463/