New Delhi, January 6: India on Tuesday advised its citizens not to travel to neighboring Myanmar and immediately leave restive Arakan, which borders Manipur and Mizoram, after announcing that it would seal the entire international border with Myanmar. state.
The Ministry of External Affairs also advised Indian nationals to leave the unrest.
“All Indian citizens are advised not to travel to Rakhine State in Myanmar in view of the deteriorating security situation, disruption of telecommunication means such as landlines and acute shortage of essential commodities,” the ministry’s advisory said.
Indian citizens already in Rakhine State are advised to leave the state immediately. it added.
Rakhine State, formerly known as Rakhine State, borders Chin State to the north, Manipur and Mizoram to the east, the Bay of Bengal to the west, and Chittagong Prefecture of Bangladesh to the northwest. This part of Myanmar is most troubled by insurgents fighting the ruling military junta.
Home Minister Amit Shah has said that India will erect a fence along the entire 1,643-km-long border with Myanmar and build a patrol runway next to the fence.
The news comes amid racial tensions between Manipur’s hill-dominated Kuki-Zo tribe and Chin State communities, who have ethnic ties, and the valley-dominated Meiteis Violent conflict.
The May Tai view decades of unfettered illegal immigration from Myanmar using the free movement system (FMR) as one of the factors behind ethnic conflict in the state.
The Kuki-Zo tribe refutes the accusation and accuses Chief Minister N Biren Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party of fanning the Maya Tai’s fears of a population invasion to attract their political support.
The FMR, in its current form allowing entry without a visa and passport, was originally a post-independence system designed to allow tribes with family, social and ethnic ties on both sides of the border to maintain contact with their people.
The Center is also considering ending the FMR, but Nagaland and Mizoram oppose the move as kin tribes on the other side of the border live together.
However, with pro-democracy rebels fighting Myanmar’s military junta on the border, the Center appears keen on erecting minimal physical barriers along the border to address the concerns of Indian citizens living near the border.
External Affairs Minister Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, who hails from Manipur, also supported the Centre’s plan to fence the India-Myanmar border.
