ITANAGAR: The All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union has made it clear to the Centre that people of the state will not accept citizenship to Chakma and Hajong refugees at any cost, an AAPSU release said today.
The students' body attended the joint high power committee meeting on the vexed Chakma-Hajong issue in New Delhi yesterday, which was chaired by Joint Secretary (North East) Satyendra Garg, the release said.
AAPSU president Hawa Bagang told representatives of the Union Home Ministry that citizenship to the Chakma-Hajong refugees "will never be acceptable to the people of Arunachal Pradesh".
He also highlighted the "atrocities committed by the refugees against the indigenous people" and doubted the Centre's "sincerity in resolving the issue", the release said.
The student body's general secretary Tobom Dai told the Chakma-Hajong delegations, who also took part in the meeting, to consider citizenship outside the territory of Arunachal Pradesh without preconditions.
"Unrelenting attitude (of the Chakma-Hajongs) asking for citizenship within Arunachal Pradesh will boomerang and the people of the state will never accept it," Dai said.
The meeting was convened as a follow-up to AAPSU's demand in June last year here, seeking an early solution to the contentious refugee issue, the release added.
All-party meeting, convened by Chief Minister Pema Khandu on June 19, 2017 had decided to move the Union Home Ministry to revive the Joint High Powered Committee on Chakma and Hajong refugee issue.
In a letter to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on September 18, Khandu said the matter was of deep emotional concern, and Arunachal Pradesh was not ready to accept any infringement of the Constitutional protection given to the state's tribals.
Chakmas and Hajongs were originally residents of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in erstwhile East Pakistan, who left their homeland when it was submerged by the Kaptai dam project in the 1960s.
Several organisations and civil society in Arunachal Pradesh have been opposing citizenship to the Chakma and Hajong refugees, saying it would change the demography of the state.