A day after the Manipur government asked the border-guarding force Assam Rifles to “push back” 718 Myanmar nationals, including 301 children, an official on Tuesday said the “illegal migrants” were yet to be repatriated to the neighbouring country.
The Myanmar nationals entered Manipur on July 22 and 23 to escape the ongoing violence in their country, The Hindu reported on July 24. None of them were armed.
The official said the migrants came from different pockets along the border and were being kept under the watch of the Assam Rifles. They were provided food and other essentials by the locals.
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It was the Assam Rifles that informed the Chandel district administration about the presence of the migrants.
The migrants fled to India after a gunfight between the Myanmar Army and the rebel People’s Defence Forces (PDF) continued for more than 48 hours in the Chin region.
India and Myanmar share a free-movement regime (FMR) within 16 km on both sides of the border.
India allows Myanmar nationals to stay for 72 hours without visa, while Myanmar allows stay only up to 24 hours. The Manipur government suspended the FMR in 2020, post COVID-19 pandemic.
India and Myanmar share a 1,643-km-long, unfenced border. It passes through Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Nagaland (215 km), Manipur (398 km) and Mizoram (510 km).
The Union government has announced that the entire border would be fenced. Some sections, including Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh have blamed “illegal migrants” for the ongoing violence in the State.
On June 1, Home Minister Amit Shah, while addressing a press conference in Imphal, said fencing had been completed on a 10-km stretch along the Manipur-Myanmar border, and an 80-km-long stretch would soon be fenced. “For a permanent solution, the Manipur and Myanmar border will be sealed,” he said.
Officials, however, said that the FMR was not strictly implemented due to shared ethnicity and porous nature of the border. States along the Myanmar and Bangladesh borders have deep ethnic ties.
After a military coup in Myanmar in February 2021, there was an influx of refugees; over 40,000 refugees took shelter in Mizoram and around 4,000 are said to have entered Manipur.
The refugees belonging to the Kuki-Chin-Zo ethnic group which is closely related to the communities in Mizoram and Manipur. Around 200 migrants, mostly Nagas from Myanmar, also entered Nagaland.
“There is no thorough system in place yet to implement the FMR, this leads to issues on the ground,” another official said.
The Union Home Ministry wrote to the northeastern States in 2021 and as recent as April 28 to “take appropriate action as per law to check illegal influx from Myanmar into India”. It added that the the State governments had no powers to grant “refugee” status to any foreigner” and that India was not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol.
