The Tripura royalty has asked the State government to consider settling the displaced Bru people in the State instead of sending them back to “uncertainty” in Mizoram.
Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma, the royal scion and former president of the Tripura unit of the Congress, said the Brus — also known as Reangs — were refugees in their own land and did not deserve the condition they are in now. Some 35,000 Bru refugees are scattered across six relief camps in Tripura’s Kanchanpur subdivision adjoining Mizoram.
Starvation deaths?
Four of them, including two infants, have allegedly died of starvation after the Centre stopped supplying free ration on October 30.
Some 40,000 Brus had fled two waves of ethnic violence in Mizoram since 1997. A few have accepted rehabilitation packages to return to Mizoram but most refused to budge because of doubts about the government’s intentions.
“If the Tripura government can consider giving 2,700 acres of land for the Border Security Force’s firing range, why can’t it do the same for the Brus, many of whom were displaced by the Dumbur dam project (in Tripura). If you can accept lakhs and lakhs of people from another country, why can’t you accept the Bru people who have become refugees in their own land,” Mr. Debbarma said on Tuesday.
“Another country” is a reference to Bangladesh from where a large number of people came to Tripura between 1947 and the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Mr. Debbarma also asked the Centre not to stop free ration to the refugees in the relief camps.
