New Delhi: Recently elected Mizoram chief minister Lalduhoma has told Union external affairs minister S. Jaishankar that fencing the Indo-Myanmar border will be “unacceptable”. This statement came two days after the Union government decided to do away with the 40-year-old Free Movement Regime along the Indo-Myanmar border in four northeastern states.
“The British had separated the Mizos by carving out Burma from India. They divided the Mizo ethnic people’s land from the ancient days into two parts. That is why we cannot accept the border, instead we always dream of becoming a nation under one administration,” Lalduhoma told Jaishankar in a meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday (January 3), according to Deccan Herald.
Such a fencing, he said, would divide ethnic Mizos and approve the British-created border. “It shall be unacceptable for us,” he said.
According to The Times of India, Lalduhoma also expressed this sentiment in his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Free Movement Regime, put in place in the 1970s, allows people living near the border from India and Myanmar to travel up to 16 km into the other country without needing a visa.
Earlier, Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh had asked the Union government to cancel this Regime given the ethnic conflict in the state, between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities. Kukis share ethnic ties with the Mizos of Mizoram and Chins of Myanmar, and have been asking to be unified under a separate administration. Such a unification was also a promise Lalduhoma and his Zoram People’s Party had made in their election manifesto.