Home Minister Amit Shah Announces 'No Free Movement' Between India And Myanmar

The Free Movement Regime between India and Myanmar, an arrangement permitting individuals from either nation to enter up to 16km without travel documents, was suspended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

The announcement related to the matter was made on the social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday.

No Free Movement Between India And Myanmar: Home Minister Amit Shah

Taking to X, he wrote, "It is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "resolve to secure our borders." Further Shah added, "Ministry of Home Affairs has decided Free Movement Regime (will) be scrapped to ensure the internal security of the country, and to maintain demographic structure of north-eastern states."

The decision comes two days after it was announced by Mr. Shah that the entire 1,643-km border with Myanmar will be fenced and a patrolling track will be built next to the barrier.

The announcement comes amid ethnic violence in Manipur between the hill-majority Kuki-Zo tribes, who share ethnic ties with communities in Myanmar's Chin State, and the valley-majority Meiteis.

Understanding Complexities of Border Dynamics

The fates of the countries have been intertwined in more ways than one. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor of India, died in exile in Yangon (then Rangoon) in 1862, and the Burmese king Theebaw was laid to rest in internment in the port city of Ratnagiri in 1916, as reported by The Print.

Before Burma became a province of British India, Frontier Regulation for tribal communities - Kukis, Zo, Chin, and Nagas - living along the border was an accepted feature of the Frontier Policy. The presence of Kukis in Manipur was confirmed by the Census operations of 1881 and the Manipur state gazetteer of 1886.

However, a distinction was made between the 8,000 Old Kukis, who had lived in the state traditionally, and the Kongjai Kukis, who had migrated from Lushai Hills as part of the British strategy to build a buffer between the Meitis of Imphal Valley, as well as the 20,000 Naga tribals who inhabited the surrounding hills.

Their sense of identity, though, was rooted in the tribe and its area of habitation, and not the imposed lines that divided nations, states, and tracts. This backdrop saw India achieve Independence in 1947, followed by Burma the next year. However, the Burma Passport Rules of 1948 allowed indigenous populations from all bordering regions to travel to the country without passports or permits, provided they lived within 40 km of the border. In 1950, India also reciprocated this offer.

Meanwhile, internal boundaries were reorganized by India to resolve the long-standing demand for ethnic and linguistic states - thereby leading to the creation of Nagaland in 1963, and statehood for Manipur and Union territory status for Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh in 1972.

So long as land was abundant, and livelihoods were based on Jhum cultivation and subsistence farming, there was the occasional flashpoint. But with the growing contest for education, government jobs, and natural resources, the rivalry among ethnic groups became acute.

However, in 1968, following a variety of insurgencies in the Northeast, and the emergence of organized drug trade in the infamous Golden Triangle area (the porous borders of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos), India unilaterally introduced a permit system for border crossings.

Fifty years later, as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Act East policy, the Land Border Crossing Agreement (LBCA) between India and Myanmar was approved in January 2018 to "safeguard the traditional rights of the largely tribal communities residing along the border, which are accustomed to free movement," reported PTI.

Under the LBCA, residents living within 16 km of the border on either side were issued border passes for up to 14 days. The Manipur government seeks the withdrawal of LBCA, contending that it is altering the state's fragile demographics. According to Bhagat Oinam of New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), who is of Meitei ethnicity, "the Kuki-Chin migration from Myanmar to Manipur has led to an explosion in poppy cultivation in Manipur's Kuki-dominated districts backed by drug cartels and insurgent groups with a cross-border network, resulting in huge loss of forest cover," as reported by The Print.

In response, Ginza Vualzong, spokesperson for the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF), said: "Of course, some Kuki-Chin people have crossed over from Myanmar over the years due to the hostile situation there, but that has never been in any alarming numbers at all. We have told the home minister that immigration is being used as an excuse to drive Manipur's indigenous Kuki population out of their land."

Further, Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhoma stated that the state government has a moral and social obligation to provide shelter and care to the 31,300 Chin people who fled the civil war in Myanmar in February 2021 and the roughly 12,000 Kuki-Zo people whose life was endangered in strife-torn Manipur from May 2023 onwards.

Meanwhile, although the Nagaland government has not made their position on border crossings explicit, the Deputy CM of Nagaland, Y Patton, met Lalduhoma in January, expressing Naga reservations at the proposed border fencing and restrictions on FMR.