Chin State youths to seek intervention in border row
Source: Hueiyen News Service

Imphal, October 28 2013: A youth group in Chin State is planning to seek the intervention of lower House Speaker Thura Shwe Mann in a border demarcation dispute with India.

According to Mizzima News, the Kalay-based Upper Chindwin Youth Network said it plans to present a letter outlining its concerns during a forthcoming visit to Chin State by Thura Shwe Mann.

A spokesman for the network, Kyaw Thet Win, said it had intended to hand over the letter to Thura Shwe Mann during a visit planned for October 25, but the trip had been postponed.

KyawThet Win said the group had decided to seek the intervention of Thura Shwe Mann because the Chin State authorities had been unable to resolve the issue. The group says a post demarcating the border near Tamu, opposite Moreh, in India's Manipur State, had been moved into Myanmar territory.

"Tamu residents told our group when we visited the area to investigate that border post number 23 had been moved about two miles inside Myanmar," said Kyaw Thet Win.

Tamu residents also said Indian citizens had built settlements in the disputed area, he said.

"But officials in Tamu said they did not know anything about this issue when we asked them so we decided to raise it with a higher responsible official," Kyaw Thet Win said.

Quoting newspaper reports public in Manipur, the spokesperson said that Indian authorities at Moreh had sent a protest letter to their counterparts in Tamu after the Myanmar military established a base near the newly-built settlements.

The newspaper reports said residents had left the settlements after the Myanmar military deployed in the disputed area.

A Myanmar military officer told Mizzima early last month that there were no natural boundaries, such as a river or creek, in the disputed area and the border was vague and unclear.

The border in the area is marked by posts along a road, he said.

Tensions over the border have long simmered in the area.

In late July, Manipuri civil society groups demanded that Myanmar stop building a fence along the border near Chaungnetgyi village in Tamu district because they claimed it was intruding on Indian territory.

A senior Indian foreign affairs official was quoted as saying on September 20 that while India and Myanmar enjoyed close relations there were still "some remaining boundary issues" to be resolved.

Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, the secretary for economic relations at the External Affairs Ministry, made the comment at a forum in New Delhi on India's response to the reform process in Myanmar.

Noting that both sides had signed a memorandum of understanding on border area development, Chakravarty added that "we do have some remaining boundary issues where there are problems of identifying where construction can be done and cannot be done." "We are trying to work that out," he said, in report by India's IANS news agency carried by the English-language daily, dna.

The report said India wanted to form a joint working group with Myanmar to seek a resolution to the issue.

The Tamu-Moreh crossing is one of two on the border between Myanmar and India.

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