In January, Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared that the 23-year-old Bru refugee crisis, which has displaced tens of thousands of people...
In January, Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared that the 23-year-old Bru refugee crisis, which has displaced tens of thousands of people from the community, was over. In what he called the “logical conclusion” to the crisis, Shah announced that around 34,000 displaced Brus, originally from Mizoram, would be settled in Tripura, where they had been living in camps since 1997.
Cut to November: residents of North Tripura, where the government intends to settle a bulk of the displaced Brus, are up in arms over the proposed rehabilitation plan. For over a week, the North Tripura sub-division of Kanchanpur has been shut down by locals opposed to the settlement of the refugees.
On November 21, two people was killed and at least 20 injured as protests turned violent when the police tried to forcibly clear a highway blockade at North Tripura’s Panisagar.
Ethnic tensions
The Brus were forced to leave their homes in Mizoram after a bout of ethnic violence in 1997, triggered by questions over the community’s voting rights in the state. Mizo pressure groups had demanded that the Brus be struck off the state’s electoral list on the grounds that the community was not “indigenous” to the state. This had already led to the formation...
