Fencing India-Myanmar boundary: Securing nation or dividing people?

It was never difficult for Henliangthang Haokip to travel from his village in the Tengnoupal district of Manipur to his elder brother’s home in the Chin state of neighbouring Myanmar. “I just had to submit my identity document to obtain a travel pass from the Assam Rifles,” the 67-year-old retired schoolteacher recalled. Not only Haokip but many others of his Kuki tribe as well as of Zo, Naga and other tribes of Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh have been freely travelling across the India-Myanmar boundary to visit relatives in the neighbouring country, taking advantage of the Free Movement Regime (FMR), a bilateral arrangement that allowed people living in the border areas to travel freely between the two countries without passports or visas.

Haokip, however, could not visit his elder brother ever since the conflict between the minority Kuki and the majority Meiteis started in May 2023 and the BJP government of Manipur suspended the FMR a few months later, citing spiralling violence. His hope for the resumption of the FMR was dashed recently. Union Home Minister Amit Shah on January 20 said that the government would not only scrap the FMR but would also fence the entire stretch of the India-Myanmar land boundary.

The Meiteis of Manipur as well as the state government led by Chief Minister N Biren Singh have been demanding fencing along the India-Myanmar boundary. They alleged that the militants based in Myanmar were aiding the Kukis to launch attacks on the Meiteis and the security forces in Manipur.

The Kukis of Manipur were also accused of aiding their relatives from Myanmar to illegally migrate to India using the FMR. The Coordination Committee for Manipur's Integrity (COCOMI), an organisation representing the Meiteis, alleged that the “Chin-Kuki narco-terrorists from Myanmar” were responsible for violence in Manipur. The “illegal migration” from Myanmar posed a threat to the culture and identity of the Meiteis, said Somorendra Thokchom of the COCOMI. He went on to allege that Kukis were engaged in the illegal cultivation of poppies on the hills of Manipur, at the behest of the "drug lords" in Myanmar and the drugs were sent to the rest of India as well as to other Southeast Asian nations. The allegations were strongly rejected by the community organisations of the Kukis.

The Manipur government said that more than 2,100 “illegal migrants" had been detected in the state. It also highlighted the recovery of smuggled weapons, narcotics, wildlife parts, gold, betel nuts and others, underlining the need to fence the border. “The current crisis was not a clash between ethnic groups and not a law-and-order issue, but purely a war against the Union of India by the Kuki militants based in Myanmar and Bangladesh in collaboration with militant groups operating in Manipur," Biren Singh, the chief minister, said in October.

The Meitei MLAs even wrote to the Centre, arguing that keeping the border open was a threat to national security, given the unending conflict between the insurgent groups and the military regime in Myanmar. With thousands of refugees from Myanmar coming to Mizoram over the past few months, the Centre is also concerned about the spillover effect of the conflict between pro-democracy activists and the military junta in the neighbouring country.

Sominthang Doungel, a leader of Kuki Inpi, an apex body of the Kukis in Manipur, however, claimed that the ‘baseless’ propaganda had been launched to portray the indigenous Kukis of the state as illegal immigrants from Myanmar. “The FMR has been working well, not only for the Kukis and Nagas but for all communities including Meiteis, who have benefitted from it commercially more than any other communities”. He said that increasing vigil on the border should be the way forward instead of fencing the border.

The Mizo and Naga community organisations also opposed the Centre's decision to fence the border, saying the same would “further divide” their families, who live on both sides of the border. Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhoma and Nagaland Deputy Chief Minister Y Patton, a BJP leader, told the Centre that the move to fence the border was unacceptable. Naga insurgent group NSCN-IM also said that it would, in no circumstances, allow the Centre to fence the border. "The Nagas have never accepted the arbitrary international boundary demarcation set up by Jawaharlal Nehru and the Burmese Prime Minister U Nu in 1953. The Nagas living on either side of the so-called international border have remained as one family defying all the odds," the NSCN-IM said on January 24.

The Centre’s move to fence the India-Myanmar boundary came even as the conflict in Manipur triggered calls for ‘unification’ of the Kuki-Zo communities living on both sides.

Security officials said another reason that prompted the Centre to fence the border with Myanmar could be the fact that insurgent groups in the Northeast (Assam, Manipur and Nagaland) are still using Myanmar as their hideouts and are carrying out violence. More than 9,000 cadres of several insurgent groups, mainly in Assam, have joined the mainstream since 2014 when the Narendra Modi government came to power. But groups like Ulfa-Independent and those in Manipur (PLA, PREPAK, KCP) have still rejected the offers for talks. The Modi government talked strongly about securing the borders with China and Bangladesh but remained soft towards the "ethnic sentiments" of the tribes which led the government to keep its borders with Myanmar open and revise the FMR in 2018 to further the Centre's Act East Policy. Myanmar is India's fourth-largest trade partner and the gateway to Southeast Asian nations.

In September last year, the NIA said terrorists based out of Myanmar and Bangladesh hatched a "transnational conspiracy" with militant leaders in the Northeast to stoke the current ethnic strife in Manipur and wage a war against India.

Since the military launched a crackdown against the "pro-democracy protesters" in Myanmar in February 2021, more than 30,000 "refugees" including MPs, MLAs and police personnel belonging to Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy (NLD), crossed the border with Mizoram and have taken shelter. The NLD was dethroned by the military following which "rebel groups" and those seeking restoration of democracy in Myanmar engaged in conflicts with the military. Nearly 300 Myanmar military personnel were also compelled to cross the border and took shelter in Mizoram after their camps were taken over by the rebels. They were later airlifted by the Myanmar military.

The Kukis alleged that the Meiteis were trying to brand all Kukis as illegal migrants by demanding an Assam-like NRC in Manipur and thereby erasing their history in India. The Mizos, Kukis and Hmars, who share ethnic bonds, have intensified the demand for "unification" of the people belonging to the Greater Zo communities living in India and Myanmar under one administration. The greater Zo community involves the Kukis, Mizos, Hmars, both in India and Myanmar, and the Chins of Myanmar and Bangladesh. Mizoram has also provided shelters to nearly 1,000 Chin refugees from Bangladesh. They fled the Chittagong Hill Tracts after the conflict between "rebels" and Bangladesh security forces.