Displaced Brus Heading for Home

By Arlene Chang

Asian Center for Human Rights Bru Camps in Tripura, India.

In conflict-ridden Northeast India, which has recently seen flare ups in Manipur and in the Meghalaya-Assam border region, the news that 259 Bru families are being repatriated from Tripura to Mizoram is welcome news.

Beginning today, around 1,500 people from the displaced Bru population of 37,466 who had been living in six camps in Kanchanpur, Tripura, will be sent back to their villages in Mizoram over three days, in 133 jeeps and vans. They will be accompanied by police on each side of the state border.

“The security from the Bru camps to the border of Mizoram will be taken care of by the Tripura police and beyond that by the police of Mizoram,” said Dilip Chakma, sub division magistrate of Kanchanpur.

Brus are Hindus. They were first displaced in 1997 following attacks on their villages because they demanded the creation of autonomous district councils. The majority population of Mizos, whose main religion is Christianity, was accused of serious human rights violations against the Brus. In November last year, a Mizo boy was allegedly murdered by the Brus, whose villages were once again attacked, forcing 5,000 people to flee.

This is the first time since their initial displacement in 1997 that Brus are being sent back to their villages and rehabilitated, according to Suhas Chakma, director of the Asian Center for Human Rights, a Delhi-based NGO. After the NGO’s intervention, the Ministry of Home Affairs gave the organization written assurance about the rehabilitation and security of the returning Brus.

“The first phase of repatriation should build necessary confidence to start the stalled dialogue for resolving the disputes surrounding the Brus who fled in 1997,” said Mr. Chakma. That will hopefully encouraging the government of Mizoram and the Bru Coordination Committee – a body formed to monitor the process of repatriation – to find a permanent solution to the crisis.

In a letter signed by R.R. Jha, director for the northeast at the home ministry, has also committed to providing all families displaced in 2009 a sum of 38,500 rupees as housing assistance. For those families displaced in 1997, the government offered 41,500 rupees as cash grants and 38,500 rupees as housing assistance (i.e. 80,000 rupees per family). The Brus were also promised free rations for nine months.

The Home Ministry has agreed to provide more than 24.3 million rupees to the government of Mizoram for rehabilitating all 37,000 displaced people. The timeline for repatriating all Brus has yet to be fixed, but Mr. Chakma is “quite hopeful that a solution could be found before the end of the year.”

Amid the worsening plight of displaced tribal villagers in the Maoist insurgency and accusations that the government isn’t doing enough to help displaced people in central India, it is heartening to see one group offered security and assistance to try to return to their normal lives.

[ via wsj blogs ]