Bru Rehabilitation In Tripura

In News

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has received a complaint that Bru refugees from adjoining Mizoram were being resettled in a forest.

About

• The complainant pointed out that construction was being carried out for resettling the Brus in a 250-hectare green belt.
• It was pointed out that this would be in violation of Section 2 of the Forest Conservation Act of 1980.
• NGT has sought a report from the Forest Department and a district administration in Tripura on the rehabilitation of the Bru refugees.

About Brus or Reangs

• The Brus or Reangs is a community indigenous to the Northeast, living mostly in Tripura, Mizoram, and Assam.
•  In Tripura, they are recognised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTGs).
  • It is a classification by the Government for more vulnerable tribes among the tribal groups.
• The tribe has a declining or stagnant population, low level of literacy, pre-agricultural level of technology and are economically backward.
• They generally inhabit remote localities having poor infrastructure and administrative support.

Bru-Reang Refugee Crisis

• More than 40,000 Brus have been living in six refugee camps in northern Tripura’s Kanchanpur sub-division since 1997 when they escaped ethnic violence in adjoining Mizoram. 
  • Only about 7,000 refugees returned to Mizoram after nine phases of repatriation till November 30, 2019.
• Most of the Brus declined the Centre’s rehabilitation packages citing insecurity and poor living conditions in Mizoram and had demanded the creation of an autonomous council for the community as a precondition for vacating the relief camps.
  • The displaced Brus who returned to Mizoram have already begun demanding a package equivalent to the one those who stayed behind in the Tripura relief camps would be getting.

• And conflicts between the Brus and the local Bengali non-tribal people have started taking place in Tripura.

• In Mizoram, they were targeted by ethnic organisations who demanded that the Brus be excluded from electoral rolls.
  • Clashes in 1995 with the majority Mizos led to the demand for the removal of the Brus, perceived to be non-indigenous, from Mizoram’s electoral rolls. 
  • This led to an armed movement by a Bru outfit, which killed a Mizo forest official in October 1997. 

Steps For Their Rehabilitation 

• The Government has made multiple attempts to resettle the Brus in Mizoram. 
• The first was in November 2010 when 1,622 Bru families with 8,573 members went back. 
  • Protests by Mizo NGOs, primarily the Young Mizo Association, stalled the process in 2011, 2012 and 2015. 
• Meanwhile, the Brus began demanding relief on a par with the relief given to Kashmiri Pandits and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees. 
• The Centre spent close to ?500 crore for relief and rehabilitation until the last peace deal was brokered over three years since 2015. 
  • A final package of ?435 crore was arrived at in July 2018 and it involved Mizo NGOs besides the governments concerned.
• In January 2020 , the agreement of Bru settlement in Tripura was signed by Tripura, Mizoram and the Centre with Bru organizations to resolve the impasse of about 40,000 Brus.
  •  This agreement will allow the displaced refugees to permanently settle in Tripura.

Source :TH