MYANMAR BORDER STATES WARY OF FREE MOVEMENT PACT

GUWAHATI: Mizoram and Nagaland, two of four north-eastern states bordering Myanmar, are wary of a free movement agreement between the two countries that could burden them with Rohingya refugees fleeing alleged ethnic cleansing.

India and Myanmar have a decades-old free movement regime (FMR) that allows ethnic communities on either side of the border to travel 16 km into the other side without a visa. Some 300,000 people in more than 250 villages within this zone often cross the border via 150 formal and informal crossing points.

New Delhi has instructed Assam Rifles, the paramilitary force guarding the 1,643-km-long India-Myanmar border, to intensify vigil in view of the possibility of Rohingya Muslim refugees sneaking in. The alert specifically cites Mizoram’s Lawngtlai district — closest to Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state from where the Rohingyas are fleeing.

Mizoram shares a 510km border with Myanmar. The other border states north of Mizoram are Manipur (398km), Nagaland (215km) and Arunachal Pradesh (520km). Large hilly swathes of Myanmar’s Chin state — dominated by Chin or Zomi people, ethnically related to Mizos — separates Mizoram from Rakhine.

Officials in Mizoram said the alert along the Myanmar border could be a routine drill. “The ethnic cousins of Mizos in Myanmar do visit their relatives on this side of the border, but it is geographically unlikely for Rohingyas to cross over,” Mizoram’s home minister Larzirliana said.

The sea route or relatively less hostile terrain along Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh is more convenient for the Rohingyas to travel. If at all they move inward, it would be easier for them to travel 746km from Rakhine to Moreh (Manipur-Myanmar border) via the Monywa-Kalewa highway, officials said.

This is why Manipur was the first state on the Myanmar border to sound an alert for possible influx of Rohingya refuges.