Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, who visited some villages in western
Mizoram where Bru refugees repatriated from Tripura are being resettled,
told the community to try to be good citizens. Addressing a public
meeting at Damdiai village yesterday, the Home Minister made a repeated
appeal to the Bru refugees, still lodged in six relief camps in North
Tripura, to return to Mizoram ignoring problems created by a few Bru
leaders to derail the repatriation process. Assuring them that the
Centre would do everything to ensure proper resettlement of the Bru
refugees from Tripura, Chidambaram said, " There is no human dignity in
refugee camps and everybody should return to Mizoram. Fund allocation
for the repatriation process will not be a problem." He requested
the Bru community in Mizoram to convince their brothers and sisters now
lodged in the Tripura relief camps to return to Mizoram.
Meanwhile, the Bru Coordination Committee (BCC) submitted a memorandum
to Chidambaram at Damdiai appealing him to extend the period of free
ration to the repatriated Brus for two years. The BCC memorandum,
signed by its general secretary Elvis Chorkhy, also urged the minister
to establish Bru Migrant Facilitation Cell as proposed by the state
government and start functioning of special development project in the
Bru inhabited areas of the state. Chidambaram on Wednesday had told
reporters at the Raj Bhavan in Aizawl that the fourth phase of Bru
repatriation would commence from April 26 when 669 Bru families would
return from the relief camps in Tripura. These 669 families, he added,
were identified by the Mizoram government as bonafide citizens of
Mizoram, and should not be doubted. Thousands of Brus fled Mizoram
in 1997 following ethnic conflict with Mizos triggered by the killing of
a Mizo forest official by Bru militants. Other hundreds of families
fled in 2008 in similar communal conflict sparked off by the killing of
Mizo youths by Bru miscreants. Over 3000 Brus had been repatriated
to Mizoram in the first three phases until it was stalled by the
Mizoram government in June 2011 to put pressure on the demand for
rehabilitation of 83 Mizo families driven out of their homes in Sakhan
Hills in Tripura by Bru militants in 1998. After the Centre decided to
give rehabilitation fund of Rs 1.5 lakh each to the families, the
Mizoram government agreed to resume the repatriation. Mizoram
officials said this would be the final phase of repatriation as all the
rest refugees would be taken back.