Chin Fear Repatriation from India’s Mizoram State

By LAWI WENG

Chin migrant workers in India report that Indian authorities are threatening to send them back to Burma after some of them complained about conditions there to Human Rights Watch.

Min Thang, a member of the Chin National Council in India’s Mizoram State, said the authorities and members of the Young Mizoram Association (YMA) were angry that Chin migrant workers had complained about alleged human rights abuses.

A Chin living in Mizoram said that some members of the YMA were compiling lists of Chin working in the state and also photographing them. The Chin migrants were worried that the authorities were planning to send them back to Burma.

Another Chin migrant worker, Ehang Len Piang, said the YMA had instructed the Chin National Council and other organizations based in Mizoram to find out who had submitted complaints to Human Rights Watch. The YMA had threatened to send those responsible back to Burma, he said.

The YMA accused the Chin complainants of insulting India and tarnishing its image.
Chin complaints of human rights abuses were baseless, it said.

Chin complaints were cited in a report titled “We are Like Forgotten People,” published by Human Rights Watch on January 27. The report carried interviews with Chin migrant workers, who complained that they suffered discrimination and human rights abuses because they came from Burma.

The report said three Chin workers had been forced to return to Burma. A further 22 told Human Rights Watch they had been threatened with repatriation by the authorities and Mizoram organizations.

Human Rights Watch estimates that between 75,000 and 100,000 unregistered Chin migrants from Burma live in Mizoram State. Most had been forced to seek work in Mizoram because of famine in Burma’s Chin State.

In 2003, Mizoram authorities forced 10,000 Chin migrants to return to Burma.