Aizawl on a Reang rebound

by JB Lama

ONE can only imagine what it has cost the Tripura government to look after Reang (known locally as Bru) refugees, so its desire for a lifting of this burden is very understandable. For more than a decade the state provided shelter to 55,000 Chakma refugees from Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts and just when the final phase of their repatriation was about to resume in October 1997, there was a sudden exodus of 12,000 Reangs from Mizoram, triggered by the ethnic clashes in the aftermath of the killing of a Mizo forest warden by suspected Bru militants. This incident merely added to the already surcharged atmosphere created by the Bru National Union’s demand for an autonomous district council and the Mizo Zirlai Pawi — a students’ organisation — whipping up passions against the Reangs.
Over the next few months, the number of refugees swelled to more than 40,000. Several attempts to disperse them failed because the Mizoram government insisted, and continues to do so, that all those huddled in Tripura refugee camps are not its citizens and that it would take back only those with documents to prove their required status.
After verification, the refugees were to leave in November last year but a day before their scheduled departure Bru militants killed a Mizo youth in what seemed an organised move to stall the process.
However, Union home minister P Chidambaram visited Mizoram in October this year and was able to persuade chief minister Lalthanhawla to start repatriation from the last day of that month. The first batch left in early November and the second was to start two weeks later. But now comes the unpleasant news that the Mizoram government has suspended the operation after a faction of refugees blocked passage. The Mizoram Bru Displaced Welfare Organisation now wants the state government to fully implement the rehabilitation package for the first group before more refugees are allowed to leave. The organisation’s major demand – that the refugees be resettled in a compact area for security reasons — has not been met.
Well, Aizawl will have to take the refugees into confidence. Under the Mizo Accord, it is committed to protect the interests of minorities. And unless there is an assurance of sorts for those who do not “qualify” for resettlement, there is little prospect of the problem being solved once and for all.