Aizawl: Mizoram Bru Displaced People’s Forum(MBDPF) on Sunday said it has not received any official communication from the Mizoram or the Tripura government that repatriation of Bru refugees staying in Tripura would resume from the first week of November. “We also have not received the copy of the ‘Road Map’ for Bru repatriation prepared by the Mizoram government and submitted to the Ministry of Home Affairs,” MBDPF president A Sawibunga told PTI over phone from Naisingpara relief camp in North Tripura district.
He said the Forum would consult the people staying in the relief camps after receipt of the official information. The Bru people in the relief camps have made various demands before being repatriated and those demands were not met by the Centre or the Mizoram government, Sawibunga said.
On why they did not attend the meeting recently convened by the Home Ministry in Agartala, he claimed they first received an invitation from Tripura government saying two persons were to attend the meeting but at the last minute an e-mail from the MHA invited only one representative creating a confusion that could not be cleared due to time constraint.
The previous attempt to repatriate over 3,500 Bru families from the relief camps in Tripura during June to September lastear was a complete failure as none came forward to be identified as bona fide resident of Mizoram.
Thousands of members of Bru community migrated to Tripura following violence after a forest guard in the Mizoram-Tripura-Bangladesh border Dampa Tiger Reserve was gunned down by Bru National Liberation Front militants on October 21, 1997.
The first attempt to bring them back to Mizoram from November 16, 2009 failed due to the murder of a boy near a bordering village and triggered another round of migration. However, hundreds of families have returned on their own and the rest remained in six relief camps in North Tripura district. (PTI)
