Myanmar Christians demand legal protection in India

(June, 21, 2011) Thousands of Christians in exile from Myanmar’s Chin state, held a procession in the Indian capital New Delhi, demanding legal protection in India and religious freedom back home. The people of Myanmar who fled their country fearing religious persecution, held the procession on Monday on the occasion of the 60th World Refugee Day. “Our supreme aspiration is to live in our own native place of Chin State with dignity and free practice of our Christian faith, culture and language,” said Steven Ral Kap Tluang, president of Chin Refugee Committee. “Due to the systematic, gross violations of human rights and the suppression of our people by the Burmese military regime, thousands of Chins have fled to India and other parts of the world over the last six decades,” Tluang added.
Tialte, a Chin woman from the Euro-Burma Office in Delhi said though many of the over 11,500 Chin refugees in Delhi have identity cards issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, they have no travel documents or legal identity. There are over 70,000 Chin refugees in India’s north-eastern state of Mizoram, which borders the Chin State. None of them have any identity cards by the UNHCR, she added. A May 2011 survey showed that over 25 percent of the Burmese Christian refugees in Delhi were victims of assault, rape, sexual harassment, forcible eviction and other crimes.