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.

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.