About 800,000 people who fled ethnic violence in northeast India lack basic necessities - report
p>NEW DELHI (AlertNet) - More than 800,000 people in northeast India who have been forced to flee ethnic violence over the last two decades lack even basic necessities, a report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said.Myriad violent insurgencies have beset India's remote northeast region for decades and at least 50,000 people have been killed there since independence in 1947.
Some conflicts are campaigns for autonomy - for an entire state, a district or a tribal homeland - while others are clashes between numerous indigenous tribes, often over access to land.
"Most of the people displaced by this violence have been forgotten," said Elisabeth Rasmusson, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) which runs the Geneva-based IDMC.
"State governments and district authorities have provided different levels of assistance. However, this has generally been insufficient to make displaced peoples' recovery possible and ensure their continuing access to basic necessities," she added in a statement on Monday.
Rasmusson called on the Indian government to enact legislation or draw up a national policy to hold state and district authorities accountable for protecting and supporting displaced communities.
But government officials in Assam have denied the charges, saying that proper compensation and resettlement of affected communities has been provided.
LITTLE SUPPORT
The report titled "This is my land" focuses on the plight of communities hit by three separate ethnic conflicts - in western Assam, along the border between Assam and Meghalaya, and in Tripura - since the 1990s.
In January, clashes between Garo and Rabha people along the border of Assam and Meghalaya forced 50,000 people to flee their homes to displacement camps. The camps were closed in March, said the report, even though people were reluctant to return fearing more violence.
While in western Assam, more than 46,000 tribes people, Muslims and people from the Bodo ethnic group remain in protracted displacement after several hundred thousand were forced to flee fighting during the 1990s.
Some returnees, said the report, were displaced yet again in late 2010, after being evicted by forest authorities without compensation.
In the state of Tripura, more than 30,000 Bru people have been displaced from neighbouring Mizoram by violence involving Bru and Mizo people in 1997 and in 2009.
The return of the Bru people had started in May 2010 but the process has been stalled, with concerns over their security and with Mizo groups remaining opposed to their return.
The report said more than 76,000 of 800,000 displaced were still homeless and an absence of proper monitoring has made it difficult to ascertain whether others had actually managed to rebuild their lives after being uprooted.
However, Indian government officials refuted the findings.
"We don’t agree to what other agencies say, but according to our guidelines and policy we have adequately rehabilitated the displaced people back in their villages and they have nothing to complain (about)," said an official from the Assam government, who refused to be named.
(Additional reporting by Biswajyoti Das in Guwahati. Editing by Alex Whiting)
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