Three years ago, on an October morning, David Siang and his wife and two children fled their native town of Falam in Myanmar’s western Chin state. After walking for three and a half days, Mr. Siang says they reached the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram from where they took a train to New Delhi. The journey took a total of eight days.
On Monday afternoon – the same day as India’s foreign minister set off for a visit to Myanmar — Mr. Siang attended a gathering of more than 1,500 Chin refugees in New Delhi’s central Jantar Mantar area to mark World Refugee Day. He recounted what drove him away from his home. “Life was not good in Falam. We could not stay there,” he said. He says life under Myanmar’s military junta was already harsh but it got more difficult after a constitutional referendum in May 2008. “They said military rule is good. You must vote ‘yes.’”
“Chin people are not in favor of military rule,” said Mr. Siang, 42 years old. “The army forces us to work in its farmland for free and arrests anybody it likes.”
According to the Chin Refugee Committee in New Delhi, the Chins started coming to India after the failed students’ uprising of 1988. The committee attributes the flight of the Chins from their homeland to the more than five-decade-long “systematic violation of human rights ranging from arbitrary arrest and killings, rape, torture, political suppression, religious persecution, force[d] labor, force[d] porter and militarization by the military regime.”
The embassy of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in New Delhi couldn’t be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
Burmese refugee leaders in India say there are more than 80,000 Burmese refugees living in India, over 90% of them of Chin ethnicity. They say the Chins face special discrimination at the hands of the Myanmar’s military junta because of their dominantly Christian religious leanings.
At Monday’s rally, Chin refugee leaders said they wanted a life of dignity for themselves and their children. They said the recent transition from military to civilian rule in Myanmar has failed to produce peace in the country. They encouraged India to ratify the international conventions on refugees and provide them with legal protection.
But such hopes appear unrealistic given India’s abiding and increasing geo-political interest in resource-rich Myanmar with a foreign policy based on its national interest. India in the past has supported the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar and its democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
But now it has been promoting a much more accommodating stance with Myanmar, in part to counter China’s increasing influence there. On Monday, India’s External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna left for Myanmar for a three-day visit to “further vitalize” India’s “multi-faceted relationship” in what an MEA release termed that country’s “new political environment.”
Mr. Siang says he wants third-country repatriation for him and his family. He says he wants his son, 21 years old, and daughter, 19, to go to college. He says they are currently deprived of education in India because of their refugee status. “Life in Delhi is free but living standard is very poor. We are working in the companies here for 2,000-2,500 rupees ($44-$55) a month which is hardly enough for survival.”
A social worker back in his home town, Mr. Siang says he can’t think of going back to Myanmar for fear of arrest and persecution by the army. He says he often remembers his old parents and his sister and her son back home with whom he hasn’t met or communicated for three years.
“We can go to our homes and meet our loved ones when there is democracy in Burma,” he said.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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