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Fleeing armed conflict, over 200 Bangladeshis enter Mizoram
Over 200 people from Bangladesh migrated to Mizoram, fleeing an armed conflict between Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and an ethnic separatist group Kuki-Chin National Army (KNA)
Fleeing an armed conflict between Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and an ethnic separatist group Kuki-Chin National Army (KNA), more than 200 people from Bangladesh migrated to Mizoram in India on Sunday to take refuge in the state, an official said on Monday.
Mizoram shares a 318-km-long international border with Bangladesh.
The official, who did not wish to be named, said that 274 Bangladeshi nationals, including 125 women and children, fled their villages in Bangladesh and entered Siminasora village in Mizoram’s southernmost Lawngtlai district on Sunday.
The Bangladesh nationals belonged to the Kuki-Chin-Mizo community, he said.
The district administration and non-government organisations (NGOs) are providing relief to the Bangladeshis on humanitarian ground, he added.
KNA is the armed wing of Kuki-Chin National Front (KNF), a political front formed by ethnic Kuk-Chin-Mizo community in Bangladesh, that demands separate state and safeguard for the community in the neighbouring country.
Meanwhile, Zo Reunification Organisation (ZORO) has condemned the attack on civilians of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo community by the Bangladesh army.
The Mizo group, which works for the reunification of Chin-Kuki-Mizo tribes of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh, alleged that the Bangladesh army has reached a secret agreement with the Myanmar based Arakan Army (AA) to launch joint operations against the KNA.
The combined forces of Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion and AA attacked Chaihkhiang and surrounding villages last week and abducted 9 civilians, it said.
The state’s influential student body Mizo Students’ Union (MSU) urged Border Security Forces (BSF), which guards the Indo-Bangladesh border, not to prevent the refugees from entering Mizoram.
