Aizawl, July 15:The Myanmar refugees, who earlier this month fled to Mizoram, started returning to their country after the situation became normal in their villages, officials said on Tuesday.

Sources in eastern Mizoram’s Champhai district said that around 4,653 Myanmar refugees, including women and children, had taken shelter in Mizoram after the Chin National Defence Force (CNDF) and Chinland Defence Force (CDF), both anti-military ethnic groups, were engaged in a series of fierce gun battles between June 28 and July 5 over domination of territory.

A Senior Mizoram government official on Tuesday said that following the withdrawal of CNDF from the Myanmar villages across the border on the Zokhawthar side, displaced persons who had sought refuge have begun returning to their homes in the neighbouring country.

He said that of the around 4,653 Myanmar refugees, 3867 took shelter in Zokhawthar, 786 took shelter in Vaphai and Saikhumphai villages in Champhai district. Around 500 refugees had taken shelter in relief camps while the remaining were accommodated in the relatives’ and friends’ houses, the official said.

The refugees came from three villages of Chin state of Myanmar – Khawmawi, Rihkhawdar and Lianhna. The Assam Rifles have been guarding the India-Myanmar border and recently stepped up their security to prevent smuggling of drugs and various contrabands and cross-border movement of militants. However, Myanmar nationals intending to reach India and take shelter in Mizoram are allowed to enter by the security forces on humanitarian grounds. After a military coup in Myanmar in February 2021, refugees, including women and children from the neighbouring country, started coming to Mizoram seeking shelter, and now their numbers have increased to around 35,000.

The refugees, mostly Chin tribes, have almost full ethnic and cultural similarity with the majority Mizos of Mizoram, now sheltered in camps, in most of the 11 districts in the northeastern state, which has an unfenced 510 km border with Myanmar.

Meanwhile, the Mizoram government recently decided to collect biometrics and biographic data of Myanmar refugees taking shelter in the northeastern state after a military coup in the neighbouring country in February 2021.

A Mizoram Home Department official said that the large-scale exercise to collect biometric and demographic data of around 35,000 Myanmar refugees would start by this month's end. The biometric exercise would be conducted using the Foreigner Identification Portal and would be carried out in all 11 districts of the state.

According to the official, Rs 38 lakh was earmarked for the exercise, and the expenditure would be borne by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). He said that the biometric and demographic data collection exercise would be done by the concerned district administrations under the supervision of Deputy Commissioners.

--IANS

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