Objection to border fencing
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: January 08, 2024 -
DURING his first visit to the national capital on january 4, 2024 after taking oath as the 6th Chief Minister of Mizoram on December 8, 2023, Lalduhoma reportedly told Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several other Union ministers that the central government's plan to erect fencing along the porous India-Myanmar border is "unacceptable" as it would divide the Mizo people living in both India and Myanmar.
Although no media report had mentioned anything about the responses given by the Prime Minister and other Union ministers to the objection raised against fencing of the Indo-Myanmar border in Mizoram sector which shares a 510 km-long unfenced porous border with the neighbouring country, it is interesting to note that Meitei Heritage Society (MHS) has expressed alarm over the justification given by Lalduhoma that the border fencing is against the "dream of (Mizos) becoming a nation under one administration" and called it an anti-lndia stand.
Issuing a statement, MHS had also pointed out that "The Chin-Kuki-Zo insurgent groups have been fighting to make an independent country, the so-called Zalengam, Kukiland, or Zoland, by breaking parts of India's Northeast, Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Lalduhoma's statement, therefore, is a direct support to anti India activities aimed at breaking the territorial integrity of India, which is a serious threat to Bharat's internal and national security."
Citing the long-unfenced border and the Free Movement Regime as the main reasons for the illegal immigrants, drug traffickers and armed insurgents crossing over from Myanmar to India, MHS had also asserted that the fallouts of these issues are among the root causes of the present unrest in Manipur and pointed out the May 2023 report of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) which said that 53,500 Myanmarese immigrants entered India between February 2021 and May 2023 while a committee formed by the government of Manipur with Tribal Affairs and Hill Development Minister Letpao Haokip as the chairman finding Myanmarese refugees setting up new villages and refusing to stay in shelter homes built by the state government.
Even if the media reports had muted the responses given by the Prime Minister and other Union Ministers to the objection raised by the Mizoram Chief Minister to the proposed Indo-Myanmar border fencing, one can safely assume that the concerns of Lalduhoma may not have gone down well either with the Prime Minister or any other Union Ministers including external affairs minister S Jaishankar, who was a batchmate of Lalduhoma when they joined Indian Foreign Service in 1977, for the simple reason that the Government of India is now well-aware of the threat posed by unfenced border and unregulated migration of Myanmarese nationals into the Indian territory.
This fact has been reiterated time and again not only by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the floor of the Indian Parliament but also by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar himself at international forum.
To counter this threat from across the border, it's no wonder that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had recently announced plans to install an advanced smart fence system along a 100-kilometre section of the India-Myanmar border to strengthen the existing surveillance system and also to terminate the four-decade-old Free Movement Regime (FMR) along the India-Myanmar border that allows people on both sides of the international boundary to travel up to 16 kilometres without any restriction.
While the smart fencing is said to be a part of Indian government's comprehensive integrated border management system (ClBMS) that would work both as a surveillance tool and a warning system through use of sophisticated devices, termination of the FMR would necessitate people in border areas to acquire visas for entry into India, signifying a departure from the previous unrestricted movement.
All these changes would definitely affect the social interaction among people of same communities speaking the same languages and sharing the same customs but have been divided by artificially created boundaries, but it also reflects the need of the present reality that the Government of India has finally woken up.
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