Around 30 tribals, including 16 children and four women, fled to Mizoram from Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) after an offensive by the military there, officials said here on Friday.
A Mizoram Home Department official said that the tribal people belonging to the Bawm clan of ethnic Mizos from two CHT villages – Kersetlang and Pankhiang – walked into Hruitezawl village in Lawngtlai district during the past two days after crossing a forested hill near the Mizoram border.
The official said that after the Bangladeshi nationals entered Indian territory, the Assam Rifles troops took them to a camp at Tuithumhnar village where they were provided food and shelter by the paramilitary force.
Till December last year, 2,014 people from the CHT had taken shelter in Lawngtlai district, which shares an unfenced border with Myanmar and Bangladesh. The border district also currently hosts around 5,930 Myanmar nationals and 84 displaced tribals from violence-devastated Manipur.
The Bangladesh nationals from the CHT started taking shelter in Lawngtlai since November 2022 after the alleged attacks and atrocities by the Bangladesh army against the Kuki-Chin National Army (KNA), an ethnic insurgent group fighting for a separate state for the tribals.
Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhoma’s political advisor Lalmuanpuia Punte, also the MLA of the ruling Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM), earlier said that the state government is considering relocating and bringing the Bangladeshi refugees together in four villages within Lawngtlai district, instead of them being scattered across different villages.
Around 7,800 refugees belonging to the Kuki-Zo community from Manipur have also taken shelter in several districts of Mizoram after the ethnic violence broke out in the neighbouring state in May last year. The refugees from Myanmar, Bangladesh and Manipur belong to the Kuki-Zo-Chin-Hmar-Bawm tribal community who also share ethnic, traditional, cultural and linguistic ties with the Mizos of Mizoram.
According to a state Home Department official, a total of 33,004 Myanmar nationals, including 12,572 children, are currently sheltered in different camps, government buildings and rented houses in all 11 districts of Mizoram. They took shelter in Mizoram in phases after the military takeover in the conflict-ridden country in February 2021.
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