Mizoram opened its doors to ‘kin’ fleeing Myanmar. But now the mood is turning against refugees

Last month, Farkawn, a village in Mizoram’s Champhai district, issued an order stopping Myanmar refugees from opening shops or running businesses.

The Myanmar refugees were given until May 31 to shut their shops in the village. The village council has also restricted them from moving out of the designated camp built to house refugees.

The village, along the Myanmar border, has hosted a large population of refugees since the military junta seized power in 2021. Initially, they were welcomed with open arms, with children of refugee families allowed to continue their education in government schools in the village.

But four years later, Farkawn’s hospitality appears to be fraying – for a host of reasons.

“As the refugee traders are selling their goods at a lower price, the local traders are losing out, leading to conflict,” B Challianngura, who is the president of Young Mizo Association, Tuipuiral group, told Scroll.

The growing population of refugees has set off a competition over scarce resources. Farkawn has a population of 3,000, but hosts 1,500 refugees. In Champai district, which has a population of 1.2 lakh, the number of refugees has risen to nearly 20,000.

In Zokhawthar, a border town in the Champhai district, refugees now outnumber the residents, a senior leader of the Young Mizo Association in the district told Scroll.

The refugees, too, are under immense pressure to earn a living. “So, they work as daily wagers and earn Rs 500 per day, same as the native Mizo labourers,” the senior leader said. “Sometimes, they work at a lesser wage, which angers the locals.”

He added: “That’s why refugees are not accepted anymore.”

In Mizoram, which now hosts nearly 40,000 Chin refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh, public opinion is turning against the visitors, who were welcomed as the kin of Mizo people only four years ago. The state government had gone against the direction of the Indian government to shelter the displaced.

“For four years, we have been taking care of them without the central government’s help,” said the senior YMA leader, who oversees refugee matters in Champhai district. “It’s very difficult to continue.”

Political scientist CV Lalmalsawmi said: “The change in sentiment is because Mizoram is overwhelmed with refugees and struggling alone to deal with them.”

Political recalibration

The concerns of Mizoram’s residents have been echoed by political leaders.

On March 10, Chief Minister Lalduhoma warned the Assembly of the consequences of the Free Movement Regime, which allowed visa-free movement for people living within 16 km on either side of the largely unfenced border.

Mizoram shares a 510 km border with Myanmar. The Centre’s decision in February to scrap the FMR arrangement, in place since the 1970s, invoked sharp responses in Nagaland and Mizoram where many people share strong ethnic connections with those on the other side of the international border.

Last year, the government led by Chief Minister Lalduhoma passed a resolution to oppose the decision to end the FMR in the Assembly.

But the government itself has since then calibrated its position in favour of regulating cross-border movement. The unrestricted movement has led to many social evils in the state like “rampant smuggling of drugs, arms and other crimes, including murder, which have become grave concern for the state”, Lalduhoma told the Assembly last month.

The people of the state, Lalduhoma said, should be cautious of the law and order problems that may emerge from the humanitarian responsibilities of meeting the needs of “our Chin brothers”.

A day after the chief minister’s statement, social activist VL Thlamuanpuia wrote a letter to Union Amit Shah, flagging the alleged “increasing influx of Myanmar refugees into Mizoram, which has raised serious concerns regarding national security, demographic shifts, and the strain on local resources”.

Thlamuanpuia is a secretary of the Centre for Environment and Social Justice, one of the biggest civil society groups in Mizoram.

Young Mizo Association, the most influential civil society group in Mizoram, also acknowledged the brewing resentment against the refugees. “Due to some misbehavior shown by a few refugees, the attitude of some local people towards them is changing,” Malsawmliana, general secretary of the central body of YMA, told Scroll.

“It is not the same anymore,” admitted T Liansiama, general secretary of the Mizo National Front, the main opposition party.

His party was in power when the junta dislodged the elected government in Myanmar, leading to an exodus of people fleeing violence into violence. In 2021, there was an overwhelming sympathy and concern amongst Mizos towards their Chin brethren at the time, Liansiama recalled.

“[Even now], they are our brothers and we can’t just ignore them,” he said. “But crime involving refugees has increased as there is a spike in seizures of drugs and other contraband.”

A refugee leader from Aizawl, however, denied that his people were involved in selling or smuggling drugs in Mizoram. “Refugees who have fled their country and sought safety in Mizoram are ordinary families, children, women, and elderly people,” he said. “They have left everything behind and come to India only for peace and survival," he said.

Political scientist Zonuna Chhakchhuak told Scroll that a significant number of people have started to think that maybe it’s time for “our brothers and sisters” from Myanmar to go back, because of the improving situation in the villages on the other side. “They themselves control maybe 50 or more villages in the Chin state, especially the villages bordering Champhai district,” Chhakchhuak said. “In the past few months, they have not seen any brutal fight. They are under the complete control of the PDF forces.”

The People’s Defense Force, a resistance group against the Myanmar army, was formed by residents of towns and villages in Chin state.

Outsiders driving up crime? Data says no

In Aizawl city, residents Scroll spoke to were extremely critical of the presence of Chin refugees.

“The majority of the people would like them to return,” said D Fanai, a resident of Aizawl city. “They have become a menace. They are eating up our limited resources. I feel there could be a conflict between the Mizo and Myanmarese immigrants.”

Many alleged that the Chin refugees pose a security risk, because of their alleged dealings with drug cartels.

“Since welcoming the refugees, our crime rate has shot up a lot,” said a former chairperson of the Dawrpui local council located in the heart of the city.

Some of the local councils in Aizawl have also met the district administration authorities to raise their concerns. “There are a lot of robberies and illegal activities related to drugs and substance abuse,” the former chairperson, who declined to be identified, said.

In a village in south Mizoram's Lawngtlai district, refugees have been asked to take permission before travelling out of the village and report any new tenants, after the seizure of 56,000 methamphetamine tablets, The Times of India reported.

Data, however, does not support the allegations of refugees fuelling crime in Mizoram.

Between September 2023 and December 2024, the Mizoram Police conducted an extensive crackdown on crime, resulting in the arrest of 3,210 individuals. According to an analysis, the cases in which arrests were made involved theft and burglary (42%), followed by violations under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (16%), and breaches of the Mizoram Liquor Prohibition Act (14%).

“Of the total arrests, 96% of the individuals were Indian nationals, while 4% were from Myanmar,” a statement issued by the Mizoram police on January 21 said. “Among the Indian nationals, 92% (2,833 individuals) were local to Mizoram, with the remainder hailing from neighbouring states such as Assam (5%), Manipur and Tripura.”

“Every small crime by someone from Myanmar leads to an uproar and evokes 10 times the anger on social media compared to a crime by a state resident,” an Aizawl-based journalist told Scroll.

The refugee leader from Aizawl pointed out that several immigrants, under extreme pressure to fend for themselves, may have been involved in petty crime. “These are very poor people,” he said. “But a small issue is being portrayed in a big way.”

Political scientist Chhakchhuak said that “manufactured narratives” were being spread in the media and social media to “demonise the refugees” and accuse them of “horrible crimes”. “There are incidents when some refugees are involved in crime. But that is not a big number. You cannot use these random incidents to paint the whole refugee community with one brush,” Chhakchhuak said.

The refugee leader accused the Zoram People’s Movement government of making refugees a “scapegoat”. “They promised development and came to power,” he said. “But they are not doing enough to address the economy’s problems. In order to escape from responsibility, they blame refugees.”

Observers pointed out that many Mizos believe that the state governments – be it the previous Mizo National Front or the current one led by the Zoram People Movement – have been too lenient and soft on refugees and illegal immigrants.

Political scientist Lalmalsawmi pointed out that the government’s support for refugees was rooted in the complex social dynamic of the state. The state government “works in close tandem with the civil society in Mizoram, which is protective of Chin refugees based on the ‘brotherhood doctrine’ and are also actively lobbied by Chin organisations and churches from abroad,” she said. “It has to cautiously balance these divergent interests and demands.”

The contest over housing

One of the areas of conflict between the immigrants and the natives is housing and rentals.

The YMA leader said that in Champhai town, the more recent arrivals from Myanmar can no longer be accommodated in designated camps built for them. “Without funding from the government and other sources we cannot build big enough camps to house all of them,” he said.

As a result, the refugees are renting homes in the town, in the process driving up rents. “If it was Rs 3,000 before the coup, then nowadays it’s Rs 6000,” he said.

In other urban areas, too, rents have skyrocketed, as Chin refugees spread out.

Malsawmliana, general secretary of YMA, pointed out that the association had asked “the government to arrange proper shelter homes or accommodation for the people currently sheltered in different districts of Mizoram after they fled from Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Manipur,” he said.

The central YMA had submitted a proposal to the state department to formulate guidelines for managing, supervising and helping the refugees.

“This is to prevent the refugees from scattering throughout the state which might create more problems,” Malsawmliana said.

Though many have asked that refugees should be confined to areas near the border, a senior journalist from the state said that it “is easier said than done” because many have relatives among the Mizo population.

Fault lines in the family

Though the people of Mizoram feel a sense of brotherhood with Chin people in neighbouring Myanmar, fault lines exist within the larger Chin-Zo community.

Political scientist Lalmalsawmi said that the Chin people often assert and celebrate a separate identity, nationhood and history, making integration difficult.

In a 2009 report, the Human Rights Watch had examined the “discrimination” and “abuses” Chin people faced in Mizoram allegedly at the hands of voluntary associations and Mizoram authorities, and the continuing lack of protection for Chin refugees there.

“This undercurrent of xenophobia was always there,” said a researcher who has done work on Mizo identity and cross-border politics.

He explained that the Mizo society’s perception of Chin refugees is “complex”.

“There is a formulation of kinship but that kinship is heavily bordered with strict red lines,” he said. “This is the inherent character of Mizo society which does not tolerate an outsider's presence for long.”

The conspicuous involvement of a sizeable number of Chin people in the drug trade and narcotics smuggling from Myanmar, which has seen a significant rise in the post-coup period, “contribute to the deepening of chasms between the refugee and host,” said Lalmalsawmi.

The researcher, however, contended that the anxiety about drugs and crime were ruses. “They are excuses only. There is actually a deep-seated discomfort with the fact that there is a huge population of the Myanmarese Chins sitting in a closely guarded Mizo territory.”

The refugee leader appealed to the Mizo society to recognise the humanitarian crisis of the immigrants. “Day by day, their situation is becoming more difficult – with shortages of food, shelter, education, and medical care,” he said. “This crisis needs urgent attention and collective action from both the authorities and the public.”