ZORO demands refugee status to Myanmarese who fled to Mizoram

AIZAWL:

The Zo Reunification Organisation (ZORO), on Tuesday, staged a demonstration in Aizawl demanding that the Centre grants refugee status to the Myanmarese people, who fled to Mizoram following last month’s military coup in the neighbouring country.

ZORO is an organisation representing an ethnic group present in India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

ZORO also urged the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to withdraw its order directing four Northeastern states — Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh — bordering Myanmar to guard against the influx of people from that country.

“Thousands of people from Bangladesh and other countries have illegally migrated to India in the past. The central government accepted them as refugees and provided them with asylum. But now it has instructed the four border states to identify and deport the Myanmarese nationals, who have taken refuge in the country,” ZORO president R Sangkawia said while addressing the demonstrators.

The majority of the refugees who have taken refuge in Mizoram belonged to the Chin, also known as the Zo community and share the same ancestry and culture as the Mizos of Mizoram.

The Centre is discriminating against the Zo people, Sangkawia alleged.

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