An Invisible Refuge
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THONHLEI Zing, a 23-year-old agricultural labourer and four of her friends from Hnian Lawn village in Myanmar’s Chin state arrived in India this January 1. They walked three days in the jungle barefoot, swam the Tio River to cross the border, exchanged the Burmese kyats for rupees at the black market in the border town of Champhai and boarded a bus to Aizawl city, the capital of India’s border state Mizoram — tough, but the most popular itinerary for Myanmarese refugees crossing India’s unfenced international border.
In their desperate attempt to escape the country, unaccounted numbers of ethnic Chin people in Myanmar’s western provinces like Sagaing Division and Chin state are fleeing to India since the military crackdown on Buddhist monks in September 2007.
Zing and her friends sat with swollen feet in a crammed one-room house in Aizawl. “The military is unbearable like never before,” said Zing. She was a bonded labourer in the military operated tea plantations. Zing was hardly given food, let alone payment.
The sanctions imposed by the United States and European countries have hit Myanmar’s economy severely. In a desperate move, the junta sold its mineral and oil fields to Chinese and Indian companies and began aggressive cultivation of cash crops by taking over villagers’ land. Tea and castor, a poisonous spurge seed used to make vegetable oil, are the most common military plantations in western Myanmar. Zing escaped one such plantation near Hakha Township in Chin state.
Across the border, in India, Zing and her friends fear to come out in the open because they are not recognised as refugees. “The Indian authorities will deport us since we cannot produce any papers,” said Zing, hiding with a Chin family in Aizawl who agreed to accommodate her and her friends for two weeks. Until they find jobs or learn the local Mizo language to pass off as Mizos, they cannot go out.
Without any refugee status or identity proof, 60,000 ethnic Chin Myanmarese are estimated to be living in Mizoram. The inflow began 20 years ago but since September last year there has been a sudden increase. In the absence of any international or Indian agencies at the border, there are neither any credible numbers nor any relief for the refugees. Decades-old security regulations by the Indian government into its sensitive north-eastern territory bordering China and Myanmar restricts the operations of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) or international NGOs at the 1,000-mile long border with Myanmar.
Women’s League of Chinland, an umbrella organisation of women’s groups from Chin state, is one of the few representatives of the Chin people. Their coordinator at the border, Cheery Zahau, is upset by the absence of any international agencies on the ground. She says, “It is sad that nobody is even keeping a register of how many people flee their country as refugees. By ignoring these people, we are ignoring major humanitarian issues from forced labour to religious persecution of Christians.”
American Baptist missionaries converted ethnic Chins from their animistic beliefs to Christianity over a century ago. Today over 90 percent of them are Christians and face severe harassment from the junta.
Benedict Rogers, Advocacy Officer for South Asia at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, says, “Religious persecution is a key factor for the fleeing of Chin people to India. The junta has forced Chin Christians to tear down crosses on mountainsides and build Buddhist pagodas in their place. The regime is guided by a very extreme, narrow, distorted and perverted form of Buddhist nationalism, summarised in the phrase “One race, one religion, one language’.” Adds Zahau, “If you are C2 — a Chin and a Christian — you can’t do anything in Myanmar except bear the cross of atrocities.”
In their desperate attempt to escape the country, unaccounted numbers of ethnic Chin people in Myanmar’s western provinces like Sagaing Division and Chin state are fleeing to India since the military crackdown on Buddhist monks in September 2007.
Zing and her friends sat with swollen feet in a crammed one-room house in Aizawl. “The military is unbearable like never before,” said Zing. She was a bonded labourer in the military operated tea plantations. Zing was hardly given food, let alone payment.
The sanctions imposed by the United States and European countries have hit Myanmar’s economy severely. In a desperate move, the junta sold its mineral and oil fields to Chinese and Indian companies and began aggressive cultivation of cash crops by taking over villagers’ land. Tea and castor, a poisonous spurge seed used to make vegetable oil, are the most common military plantations in western Myanmar. Zing escaped one such plantation near Hakha Township in Chin state.
Across the border, in India, Zing and her friends fear to come out in the open because they are not recognised as refugees. “The Indian authorities will deport us since we cannot produce any papers,” said Zing, hiding with a Chin family in Aizawl who agreed to accommodate her and her friends for two weeks. Until they find jobs or learn the local Mizo language to pass off as Mizos, they cannot go out.
Without any refugee status or identity proof, 60,000 ethnic Chin Myanmarese are estimated to be living in Mizoram. The inflow began 20 years ago but since September last year there has been a sudden increase. In the absence of any international or Indian agencies at the border, there are neither any credible numbers nor any relief for the refugees. Decades-old security regulations by the Indian government into its sensitive north-eastern territory bordering China and Myanmar restricts the operations of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) or international NGOs at the 1,000-mile long border with Myanmar.
Women’s League of Chinland, an umbrella organisation of women’s groups from Chin state, is one of the few representatives of the Chin people. Their coordinator at the border, Cheery Zahau, is upset by the absence of any international agencies on the ground. She says, “It is sad that nobody is even keeping a register of how many people flee their country as refugees. By ignoring these people, we are ignoring major humanitarian issues from forced labour to religious persecution of Christians.”
American Baptist missionaries converted ethnic Chins from their animistic beliefs to Christianity over a century ago. Today over 90 percent of them are Christians and face severe harassment from the junta.
Benedict Rogers, Advocacy Officer for South Asia at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, says, “Religious persecution is a key factor for the fleeing of Chin people to India. The junta has forced Chin Christians to tear down crosses on mountainsides and build Buddhist pagodas in their place. The regime is guided by a very extreme, narrow, distorted and perverted form of Buddhist nationalism, summarised in the phrase “One race, one religion, one language’.” Adds Zahau, “If you are C2 — a Chin and a Christian — you can’t do anything in Myanmar except bear the cross of atrocities.”
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