GUWAHATI: Over 30,000 fleeing Myanmar nationals are scattered across Mizoram and an influential youth organisation in the state has urged the Zoramthanga government to accommodate them in relief camps in a "compact" area.
These refugees had fled their hearth and home in Myanmar’s Chin State in the wake of the coup by the Myanmar military last year. After they had entered Mizoram, the locals sheltered them in community halls, public halls, school buildings etc.
Currently, the Young Mizo Association (YMA) wants the state government to set up relief camps in a compact area so they could live together.
“The present arrangement, wherein they have been sheltered across villages and districts, might create a problem in the future,” the YMA said without elaborating.
The law-enforcement agencies found the involvement of a section of the refugees in crimes with reports suggesting an increase in Mizoram’s crime rate since the influx had begun last year.
However, the state’s Home Minister Lalchamliana said he had not received any such report.
On the YMA’s call for the setting up of the relief camps in a compact area, he said the government has not considered it yet.
“The state government does not have enough money to provide them with good shelters. The churches, NGOs and others have provided shelter to them. The government is providing only marginal support,” the minister said.
He admitted that these refugees are always a burden for any government. “Wherever they are and whatever be the cause, they are always a burden in one way or the other,” he said.
Mizoram views the influx as a humanitarian crisis. Last year, Zoramthanga had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees. Help has not come yet from the Centre.
The refugees include a number of lawmakers. As their return to Myanmar is not happening anytime soon given the volatile situation in the country, many of the refugees have got their children enrolled in schools in Mizoram.
People from Myanmar’s Chin community and the Mizos in India belong to the ethnic Zo group and they share the same ancestry.