New Delhi:

Illegal immigrants from war-torn Myanmar have been found building houses in Manipur’s Tengnoupal district without informing the state authorities, officials have said. The illegal settlement was found between pillar number 82 and 89 near the border with Myanmar by volunteers of the Maring tribe, officials said.

Following reports of a significant number of Myanmar nationals pouring into Maring tribe’s areas in Tengnoupal district, the Rilram Area Maring Organisation, or RAMO, sent out volunteers to check their villages near border pillar numbers 82 to 89.

RAMO told the authorities they found a considerable presence of illegal Myanmar settlers building houses and other structures. The areas RAMO volunteers visited were Chanringphai, Choktong, N Satang, and Sangtong villages under Lamlong Khunou circle.

Village chiefs in the area have complained they were no longer able to manage the influx of refugees from Myanmar, the RAMO volunteers said.

A Naga MLA in Manipur had on May 9 written to Chief Minister N Biren Singh alleging the number of “illegal” Myanmar nationals living in shelter homes in eight villages “have outnumbered” locals, leading to insecurity among the locals. Naga People’s Front (NPF) MLA Leishiyo Keishing in the letter alleged “illegal immigrants” have often attacked villagers in Kamjong and Kasom Khullen subdivisions over petty matters. The NPF is a BJP ally in Manipur.

Several Naga civil bodies and organisations in Manipur last week asked Home Minister Amit Shah to repatriate illegal Myanmar immigrants to their country. After visiting border areas on a fact-finding mission, the United Naga Council (UNC), Naga Women’s Union (NWU), All Naga Students Association Manipur (ANSAM), and Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights (NPM-HR) gave a memorandum to Mr Shah.

Despite the Centre announcing the scrapping of the free-movement regime (FMR) in the Manipur section of the border, the Myanmar nationals have been seen moving back and forth across the border with ease late at night, according to the RAMO volunteers.

The volunteers raised questions whether the forces posted along these border pillar markings have informed the local authorities of this development. Officials said the state government was not aware of this new settlement.

There is broad acknowledgment among officials in the Centre and the state that illegal immigration from Myanmar was a key factor in the unprecedented ethnic violence between the valley-dominant Meitei community and the Chin-Kuki-Zo tribes.

Mr Shah in August 2023 had told Lok Sabha the problem in Manipur started with the influx of Chin-Kuki refugees from neighbouring Myanmar after the military rulers there started a crackdown against insurgents in 2021. The refugees started settling down in Manipur’s jungles, raising fears of a demographic change in the region, Mr Shah had said, adding rumours that refugee settlements have been declared as villages was the final straw.

The Manipur government maintains the state has seen a significant rise in the population of illegal immigrants from war-torn Myanmar, and many have been found building houses and clearing forests, which are symptomatic of a broader, unresolved issue.

The ethnic clashes between the Meitei community and the Kuki tribes began over cataclysmic disagreements on sharing land, resources, affirmative action policies, and political representation, mainly with the ‘general’ category Meiteis seeking to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category. Over 220 have been killed, and more than 50,000 have been internally displaced.

The latest flare-up happened in Jiribam, neighbouring Assam. The Meitei community and the Hmar tribe burned each other’s homes after two people from their communities were found murdered, and both sides blamed the other for it.

A section of the Hmar and Thadou tribes and their leaders, however, have said they do not identify with those who participated in the violence in Jiribam.

The Rongmei Naga tribes, too, had opposed a 24-hour shutdown of National Highway 37 called by Kuki groups in protest against the Jiribam violence. The Rongmei Nagas had said the highway belonged to all communities, and condemned the shutdown call as “unwarranted”.

Imphal:

After the Manipur government, several Naga civil bodies and organisations in the state have asked Home Minister Amit Shah to repatriate illegal Myanmar immigrants to their country, sources said on Saturday. Sources said that the Naga organisations submitted a memorandum to the Home Minister earlier this week requesting him to deport illegal Myanmar immigrants.

The memorandum pointed out that around 5,457 illegal immigrants from Myanmar are being sheltered in eight Tangkhul villages in Manipur’s Kamjong district adjoining Myanmar and they have outnumbered the local residents.

After visiting the Indo-Myanmar border areas recently on a fact-finding mission, the United Naga Council (UNC), Naga Women’s Union (NWU), All Naga Students Association Manipur (ANSAM) and Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights (NPM-HR) submitted the memorandum to the Home Minister.

A UNC leader said a section of migrants are involved in illegal and anti-social activities and the law enforcing agencies are unable to effectively control such activities.

“Although biometrics have been captured for 5,173 persons, monitoring the activities of adult male inmates (illegal immigrants) has become a huge challenge as the authority cannot regularly conduct verification exercises amidst the fluctuating numbers of inmates between daytime and night in those makeshift refugee camps,” the UNC leader said, requesting anonymity.

A Manipur home department official said the state government in coordination with the Ministry of External Affairs and the central security forces has deported 115 Myanmar nationals, including women and children in three phases since March 8.

The Myanmar immigrants have been deported through the Moreh border in Manipur’s Tengnoupal district.

Manipur has around 400 km of unfenced border with Myanmar.

Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh said earlier that although India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it has given shelter and aid to those fleeing the crisis in Myanmar on humanitarian grounds.

Since the military took over Myanmar more than three years ago, at least 8,000 Myanmarese have taken shelter in Manipur’s Tengnoupal, Chandel, Churachandpur and Kamjong districts, while over 36,000 people have taken shelter in Mizoram.

Following the advice of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Manipur government has been collecting the biometric details of the Myanmar nationals sheltered in the state.

The Mizoram government, however, initially turned down the MHA’s appeal to collect biometric data of the Myanmar refugees. Later, the state government decided to collect the biometric details of the refugees.

Imphal/New Delhi:

An MLA in Manipur has written to Chief Minister N Biren Singh alleging the number of “illegal” Myanmar nationals living in shelter homes in eight villages “have outnumbered” the locals, leading to insecurity among the locals. Naga People’s Front (NPF) MLA Leishiyo Keishing in the letter to Mr Singh on May 9 alleged “illegal immigrants” have often attacked villagers in Kamjong and Kasom Khullen subdivisions over petty matters.

The police are unable to detain the troublemakers and control the situation as they don’t have enough personnel in the border area, Mr Keishing said.

“… Even local customary law cannot control/bind them because of the foreign custody beliefs of the refugees. There have been numbers of incidence of killings and kidnappings of local residents committed by the immigrants, but the culprits could not be apprehended as they abscond and crosses the border where neither customary law nor Indian law could be enforced,” said the MLA of the NPF, which is an ally of the ruling BJP.

Sources in the Manipur Police, however, told NDTV they do not have first information reports (FIRs) or case diary entries on the alleged “killings” and “kidnappings” by “illegal immigrants” as claimed by the NPF MLA from the Phungyar reserved assembly constituency. Calls and messages to Mr Keishing went unanswered.

‘Targetting Only Kukis’

BJP MLA Paolienlal Haokip, who is among the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs behind the push for carving out a “separate administration” from Manipur, told NDTV that if the data quoted by Mr Keishing is correct, then it clearly indicates the number of refugees coming from war-torn Myanmar is highest in Ukhrul and Kamjong districts.

Mr Haokip alleged the state government focussed only on Kuki villages, and not the villages where tribes other than Kukis live.

“I cannot comment on the authenticity of the data, but if true, it is proof that refugee inflow of Myanmar citizens is highest in Ukhrul and Kamjong districts. Further, whereas the state government choose to highlight the data for Phaikoh, a Kuki village, it chose to hide data for other villages which are Tangkhul villages, accounting for 3,866 refugees out of 5,457,” Mr Haokip told NDTV.

Mr Keishing in his letter to the Chief Minister quoted data announced earlier by the state government, which put the number of refugees from Myanmar at 5,457, out of which the biometrics data of 5,173 has been recorded. He requested the Chief Minister not to repeat “the history of granting Indian citizenships to immigrants in 1968”, referring to a period when 1,500 Kuki refugee families from Myanmar who came to Manipur the previous year were allowed to settle permanently.

Another Manipur BJP MLA, Rajkumar Imo Singh, doubled down on the request by the MLA from the alliance partner on ensuring every Myanmar national who came to Manipur is deported. “… Let us all secure our border and the people of the state, for which the government is taking up all legal and appropriate measures to protect its people,” Rajkumar Imo Singh, who is also the son-in-law of the Chief Minister, said in a post on the microblogging website X.

As highlighted by Kamjong MLA Mr Leishiyo Keishing, the total number of illegal influx touched 5800 in the area of Kamjong District, outnumbering the local populace, detection of such illegal migrants along with capturing of biometrics has been done for more than 5100 of them…. pic.twitter.com/08mIVhEWTn

— Rajkumar Imo Singh (Modi Ka Parivaar) (@imosingh) May 13, 2024

The Manipur government on May 8 announced the completion of the first phase of deportation of illegal immigrants from Myanmar “without any discrimination”.

‘Branded As Illegal Immigrants’

The Kuki-Zo tribes have been for long alleging the Biren Singh government has singled them out in targetted policies such as clearing alleged encroachments from forests, and the drive against illegal opium cultivation. There is a massive pushback by the Kuki-Zo tribes with allegations that the state government is bent on branding them in Manipur as “illegal immigrants” from Myanmar, with the goal of taking over tribal lands.

Kuki-Zo leaders and their civil society groups have alleged the Manipur government’s complicity in the violence between the valley-dominant Meitei community and the Kuki-Zo tribes, who are dominant in southern Manipur’s hill districts and a few other areas.

Over 220 have died and 50,000 have been internally displaced across Manipur since ethnic violence broke out in May 2023.

Silchar:

A name mismatch in multiple voters’ list had led to the declaration of a woman in Assam as an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh in 2017, only to be acknowledged as an Indian citizen based on circumstantial evidence six years later, officials said.

Dulubi Bibi, 50, a resident of Udharbond area in Cachar district, was declared a foreigner by the Foreigners’ Tribunal-3 of Silchar on March 20, 2017 during hearing of a 1998 case under Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act (which was later re-registered under Foreigners Tribunals Act in 2015).

Tribunal member B K Talukdar had then observed in his order that Dulubi Bibi failed to prove that she and her father were born in India and resided in its territory prior to 1971, and as such the tribunal was of the opinion she migrated into India illegally.

It found that she was identified by different names in various voters’ lists and there were mismatches in the names of her father and grandfather, too.

The tribunal also ordered the police to arrest Dulubi Bibi and keep her under detention.

She was later released from the detention centre on bail following a direction of the Supreme Court and in May this year, she challenged the 2017 Foreigners’ Tribunal order in the Gauhati High Court.

The District Legal Service Authority (DLSA), Cachar provided her free legal support and appointed advocate Mahitosh Das as lawyer.

Das said the high court directed the tribunal to hear the case again.

“During the tribunal’s hearings, Dulubi Bibi claimed she had adequate evidence to prove her connection with her grandfather, whose name appeared in multiple voters’ lists before 1965,” Das said.

She was declared Indian by the same tribunal member B K Talukdar, who had earlier declared her an illegal immigrant in 2017, he said.

Talukdar was convinced with the materials produced and arguments placed before him, and declared her as an Indian citizen, the lawyer said.

“… My considered opinion is the OP (Dulubi Bibi) is a citizen of India born out of Indian citizens living in Indian soil,” Talukdar said in his order issued earlier this week and made available to her on Thursday.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Afghans wait inside the passport office in Kabul, Afghanistan, on June 30, 2021. File
| Photo Credit: AP

A day after the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan slammed Pakistan’s decision to expel its undocumented nationals and termed it “unacceptable”, Islamabad on Thursday clarified that its ongoing operation against illegal immigrants was not targeted against people of any particular nationality.

On Tuesday, Pakistan’s caretaker government set November 1 as the deadline for thousands of undocumented immigrants, including Afghan nationals, to leave the country or risk imprisonment and deportation as it intensified its crackdown against those involved in militancy and smuggling.

Reacting to the development, the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan on Wednesday said Pakistan’s decision is “unacceptable”.

“The Pakistani side should reconsider its plan. Afghan refugees are not involved in Pakistan’s security problems. As long as they leave Pakistan voluntarily, that country should tolerate them,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said.

Replying to a question at the Foreign Office’s weekly briefing here, spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said the ongoing action envisages repatriation of individuals who have either remained in Pakistan beyond their visa or do not possess “valid” documents to stay in the country.

“Pakistan is within parameters of its sovereign domestic laws to take action in this context,” she said.

At the same time, she said, the ongoing operation has nothing to do with the 1.4 million Afghan refugees that Pakistan has been hosting for decades “despite its own constrained economic situation”.

Pakistan’s national policy on Afghan refugees “remains unchanged” and their safe and honourable repatriation is a “separate matter” on which Islamabad continues to engage with Afghanistan, the spokesperson said.

In response to another query, Baloch said Pakistan has very clearly articulated its concerns over the use of Afghan soil for terrorism. “Islamabad, while believing in diplomacy and dialogue, continues engagement with Kabul to fight the threat,” she said.

The Foreign Office also refuted media reports that Pakistan has closed transit trade with Afghanistan, saying that the trade continues but the country will not accept the misuse of existing trade facilities.

Pakistan interim interior minister Sarfaraz Bugti on Tuesday said that there are currently 1.73 million unregistered illegal Afghans living in the country.

Since January, 14 out of 24 suicide attacks in Pakistan were carried out by Afghan nationals, he said.

So far more than 700 Afghans have been arrested since early September in Karachi alone and hundreds more in other cities.