India allows 1300 hundred Buddhist refugees to enter Mizoram from Myanmar
Aizwal
The Indian government has allowed over 1,300 tribal Buddhist refugees from Myanmar’s Rakhine region to enter Mizoram. The refugees left their homeland because of the ongoing war between the Myanmarese Army and the Arakan Army. This group of Buddhist refugees, have come to four villages in Lawngtlai district of Mizoram .
This comes nearly a month after the Union Home Ministry had directed the northeastern states to take strict measures to prevent Rohingyas — who are Muslims — from entering Indian territory despite persecution by the Myanmar regime.
According to the state administration, the refugees are being taken care of on humanitarian grounds as all of them came to escape clashes back home, but on the same time the Mizoram government, the administration is struggling hard to bring down the rising tensions among the refugees and the residents of Laitlang, Dumzautlang, Hmawngbuchhuah and Zochachhuah villages.
“We basically have two rules — one relating to national security and other related to humanitarian assistance. Under the humanitarian rules we are providing food as we do not want any starvation deaths. We also have to guard against the outbreak of diseases,” said district spokes person.
Additional police, health workers and doctors have also been deployed not just to keep a vigil on the new arrivals but also to keep a check on their health condition.
“The problem is that the population of each of the villages is just 200-400. The arrival of such a large number of people is a matter of serious concern,” sources said .
The current crisis in Myanmar comes nearly two months after the Myanmar Army had launched operations against the Rohingyas in Rakhine province. While the conflict led to more than 600,000 Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, the United Nations Human Rights Commission called the strike by the Myanmar Army “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
