Refugees’ group urges Manipur not to repatriate Myanmar nationals ’till they can safely return’

Burma Refugees Committee - Kabaw Valley expresses concern about repatriated people being handed over to Myanmar junta. Manipur govt plans to send 77 people back in the coming days.

Myanmar nationals lodged at the Sajiwa Detention Centre, Imphal East | Karishma Hasnat | ThePrint

KARISHMA HASNAT, The Print, 25 March, 2024, Guwahati: With the Manipur government deciding to send 77 Myanmar nationals back to their country, the Burma Refugees Committee – Kabaw Valley (BRCK) — an organisation that has been helping people fleeing to Manipur from strife-torn Myanmar— has expressed concern over the state intending to hand them over to the military junta during the process of repatriation.

Releasing a press statement Sunday, the BRCK also expressed its willingness to cooperate with the Indian government in implementing all necessary policies concerning Myanmar nationals living in the state. 

Referring to the military regime’s imposition of a conscription law on 10 February, the organisation said it is “extremely worried that handing the Myanmar nationals to the junta would prompt the military regime to use them as human shields on the battlefields”.

“We express our utmost concern and sympathy for their safety if they are to be deported as per the plan announced some time ago,” the statement said. The committee requested the N. Biren Singh-led Manipur government to “reconsider the plan on social, political and humanitarian grounds”.

The Manipur government sent back eight Myanmar nationals on 8 March and plans to repatriate a total of 77 people in the coming days, including 51 women and five children. 

After sending back the first batch of displaced people, Singh had announced that India had given shelter and aid to those fleeing the crisis in Myanmar on humanitarian grounds, with a systematic approach, despite not being a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. 

The state Home Department had issued an order earlier this month for the repatriation of the 77 Myanmar nationals. They were to be flown from capital Imphal to the border town of Moreh in Tengnoupal district through the state helicopter service and handed over to the custody of Myanmar authorities in Tamu. 

The BRCK Sunday urged that the Myanmar nationals be given a choice on “whether they would like to return to Myanmar or stay back in Manipur temporarily — till the circumstances are conducive for a safe return”.

Expressing gratitude to the people of Manipur and the government, it further requested the Manipur government to consider allowing them to stay temporarily along the border areas after being released from the detention centre where they’ve been held — “till they can safely return to their homes.”

During a visit to the Central Jail in Sajiwa, Imphal East district last year, ThePrint learnt that the Myanmar nationals in Manipur are mostly from the border town of Tamu in Kabaw Valley in the Sagaing Region, Chin State and the Magway Region of Myanmar. They largely belong to the Kuki-Chin-Zomi-Mizo people, bound by ethnic ties and kinship. 

Around 75 Myanmar nationals were lodged at the Central Jail around that time. At the intervention of the Manipur Human Rights Commission (MHRC), they were later shifted to the Foreigner Detention Centre nearby. During its inspection, the MHRC team had found that some of the prison inmates had been “illegally detained” at the jail even after completion of their sentence.

While interacting with the inmates, ThePrint found that most of the Myanmar nationals at the detention centre had entered India in search of livelihood — some came before the COVID-19 pandemic, and many had run away from junta atrocities since the February 2021 military coup that unseated Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government.

Only 10km of the 390-km-long, porous border between India and Myanmar in Manipur is fenced. The two nations earlier shared a Free Movement Regime (FMR) that allowed people living along the order to travel 16 kilometres into each other’s territories without a visa. However, Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced the Indian government’s decision to scrap the FMR on 8 February.