Zou Apex Body Strongly Opposes Indo-Myanmar Border Fencing, Calls on Centre to Retain FMR

The United Zou Organisation, General Headquarters (UZO, GHQ), the apex body of Zou tribe, has opposed and condemned the Government’s intention to fence the Indo-Myanmar border without taking into account the socio-historical implications and the existence of the Zou/Zo people.

The Zou/Zo are trans-border communities who have long lived in the former Manipur-Chin (now Indo-Myanmar) boundary regions, the British Colonial Overlords divided the region, neither consulting nor with the consent of the inhabitants and gave them to Manipur and Chin Hills during the late 19th century, says UZO in a release issued on Thursday.

The UZO stated that the British referred to the Zou/Zo inhabited regions which were located on Manipur’s southern border as the “neutral zone”, “no man’s land”, or “crossed-hatched area”. For a very long time there has been no clear boundary between Manipur and Myanmar.

According to colonial records, there were around nineteen Zou/Zo (or Yo) villages, with 630 households, living in the present-day border regions between India and Myanmar. These villages paid taxes to the British administration of the Northern Chin Hills until September 1892. However, sixteen of these nineteen Zou/Zo villages were “awarded to Manipur” in 1894 when the boundary between Manipur and Chin was drawn. Following, more boundary demarcations were carried out, completing the Zou/Zo people’s final partition into India and Myanmar, says the United Zou Organisation.

The release stated that the Zou/Zo population in India and Myanmar are one and the same, sharing the same origin, speaking the same dialect, and upholding the same customs and traditions.

The Free Movement Regime (FMR) between India and Myanmar facilitates socio-cultural and economic exchanges, allowing individuals on both sides of the border to regularly interact beyond this arbitrary border.

Therefore, it would be a flagrant infringement of indigenous people’s rights to try and stop the same people from having individual and socio-cultural exchanges, stated the release.

The United Zou Organisation implores the Central Government of India to use caution, resist the allure of some majoritarian propaganda aimed at the Kuki-Zo minority communities, and reverse its decision to unilaterally abolish the FMR and erect a border fence in the middle of the Zou/Zo ancestral territory.

The United Zou Organisations also questioned if the Government of India has abandoned its vision of Act East Policy.