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AUGUST 05, 2012

SEVEN SISTERS

NELit review

FIFTH WALL
UDDIPANA GOSWAMI
Literary Editor

Forced migration in NE
Refugees, IDPs and the stateless

T
Nowhere people

iNKPOT
EXTRACT

HE current unrest in Bodoland is a re-enactment of the same old story of settler-indigenous conflicts in this western frontier of Assam, one that has been played out in the same theatre with different actors many times before. The extent of devastation and human misery that these conflicts bring in their wake has also remained the same. What also remains the same is the play of politics behind these incidents. The responses of those who are responsible for safeguarding the lives and livelihoods of the people of the country also continue to be predictable. What is different each time, however, is the number of those killed and displaced. The individual stories of death and destruction, each time, are different. The individuals killed each time, the families broken each time are also different. The same families and individuals, of course, can and in some cases have been displaced each time. At the risk of sounding callous, I would say that those who are killed in such incidents of mindless violence have at least had a way out. Those who remain behind, dispossessed and displaced, have to often suffer fates worse than death. Stripped of their basic human dignity, these people have to live on, remembering the dead, while struggling every day not to join their ranks. It is to these people that the current issue of NELit review is dedicated. Of late, the media has been agog with stories of those displaced in western Assam. But they have been using labels like displaced, refugee, etc. indiscriminately. For them, as for other lay persons, categories like refugees and internally displaced people (IDP) are interchangeable. Just like the scholar, social worker, administrator and policy maker, they too, however, need to understand the distinctions between the different nomenclatures. Issues like rehabilitation, compensation, restitution of rights and so on are closely linked with such definitions. We have, therefore, tried to clarify these concepts and familiarise our readers with the different types of displacement and forced migration by extracting from a media reader recently put together by the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group. Assams Bodoland has seen ethnic violence since the 1990s. Some of the worst clashes have been between the Bodos and the Adivasis, as also between the Bodos and the immigrant Muslims. Many of those displaced in these clashes have not yet been rehabilitated. The lives and laments of the Adivasi IDPs have found expression in a recent novel by Arpana Goswami. The novel, Neela Noi, even won the Aank-Baak Novel Award this year. I had requested the author to tell our readers about the inspirations behind her novel and the kind of research that went into it. The angst of watching reality unfold gave birth to the fictional work that Goswami discusses in this issue. We also excerpt snatches of the screenplay of an award-winning feature film in Kokborok which deals with development-induced displacement. They bring out, poignantly, the darker side of development that disregards the human dimension. The curse of resource-rich Northeast is that our people will always have to face the trauma of displacement every time somebody eyes our resources. I agree whole-heartedly with the director of the film when he says, Our region does not deserve to witness such marauding of nature. T

HE distinction between the two terms refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) often gets blurred not only in common parlance but also in official and media usage. Perhaps this happens in the mind of the subject, too. In terms of the hardship faced, the difficulties on the way to return and the struggle necessary to rebuild life after displacement, the two situations are most of the time so much similar that after some time, it matters little to the person concerned whether one had been evicted from a place in another country or someplace else in one's present country of residence. Yet, on the back of the person's mind, two distinct thoughts keep on working that make them different in their respective status. Those who have been forced to migrate from another country across the border (refugees) are likely to nurture maybe through subsequent generations the hope of going back to their country of origin some day. They are likely to face more problems getting along with the local community in their present place the hosts may even turn hostile. On the other hand, those who have been displaced within their country (IDPs), at least can afford to claim the same citizenship rights that they used to enjoy before eviction and encounter much less differences with the local community in their present surroundings. More complications arise when the officially accepted definition of a term is not adequate for explaining

FORCED MIGRATION IN NORTH EAST INDIA: A MEDIA READER

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a phenomenon in its entirety. This creates problems when the journalist, researcher, activist or even policymaker seeks to address the problem posed by the phenomenon. For example, under the United Nation's mandate as well as according to common peoples understanding, refugees are those who have been forced to take refuge outside their country of origin or habitual residence. But what if there is no official documentary record that the country wherefrom they have come?

What if the government of that country refuses to recognise that they had been citizens of that country at all? Then they enter into a legal void. They are not citizens of either country and cannot claim the rights that recognised citizens of either country are entitled to. And yet, one cannot say that they do not have any right. Here, there is an apparent contradiction between a right-based approach towards the issue of displaced persons and the approach towards rights as an applicable con-

cept based in law. The conceptualisation of a third category helps us to encompass this group of displaced people. Under the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons 1954 a person who is not considered a national by any State under the operation of its law is referred to as a stateless person. The state of statelessness may deprive a person of citizenship rights, but it cannot take away ones human rights. So, in the end, the sustainability of refugee

Nilanjan Dutta (ed) Frontpage Publications, 2012 `450, 132 pages Paperback/Non-fiction
rights (using refugee as a generic term here) is tested by the sustainability of the human rights that are laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the latter describes as inseparable and inalienable. And, it is a charter that most of the countries, including India, have signed. T

PTI

Resource politics, climate change,

environmental degradation and displacement

AND and water are the basic resources that sustain life. These resources are becoming scarce because of the growth in population. So, these have become areas of contention that often leads to the forceful dispossession of one group by another. Obviously, this causes involuntary mass displacement. There is another factor that adds to, and intensifies, this trend of displacement. The large corporate bodies want to capture much of the resources that are available on the surface of the earth and underneath for their profitmaking ventures. In recent times, the jargon of economic globalisation and liberalisation tries to make this look like a normal practice, and the state facilitates this process in the name of development. Researcher Walter Fernandes has estimated that 50-60 million people have been displaced in India between 1947 and 2000, largely because of such development projects. Moreover, climate change and environmental degradation also force a large number of people to leave their homesteads every year. Although these events are generally regarded as natural calamities, sometimes human causes are discernible behind them. Also, we do not always see the basic human rights of the people being protected properly after they

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are displaced by a disaster. The Chakmas who are living in Arunachal Pradesh, for example, had been uprooted from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan) in 1964. The primary cause of this displacement was the construction of the Kaptai dam for a hydro-electric project over River Karnaphuli with funding from USAID (United States Agency for International Development). When the dam was commissioned, about 40 per cent of prime agricultural land was submerged in the CHT and more than 100,000 Chakmas were forced to evacuate the area. They took shelter in the then NEFA (North East Frontier Agency), now

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RESEARCHER Walter Fernandes estimates that 50 to 60 million people were displaced in India between 1947 and 2000, largely because of development projects (by corporate bodies)
Arunachal Pradesh), where there was enough vacant land for them to settle. Again, with the growth in population in Arunachal Pradesh, land, employment and other resources for economic sustenance became scarce and tension arose between them and the local communities. Now, they are forced in a condition of statelessness in a not-toohospitable environment. The situation that the indigenous people of North Sikkim are facing at present also illustrates this issue poignantly. In a memorandum to Union environment and forest minister Jairam Ramesh, the Affected Citizens of Teesta has expressed concern over the fate of the

three large villages of Lachung, Lachen and Chungthang that will be affected by mega dam projects on River Teesta. These villages are inhabited by the Lepcha and Bhutia tribes. The memorandum mentions that 35 per cent of Lepcha lands have been acquired by the army, Border Roads Organisation and state government agencies and almost 30 per cent of good cultivable land by the Teesta HEP stage III. If this project comes [up] then by and large the primitive tribes will be left with very little land to live on. Further the implementation of Teesta stage III has already caused serious damage to the environment and social fabric of the people. The rampant uncontrolled blasting has disturbed the young mountains; further blasting will cause serious threat to lives and properties as the boulders from the ridges might fall off and cause destruction. As it has been revealed through various studies that once so many Mega projects are implemented in these area, the demographic changes are tantamount to human rights violation as all rights of the indigenous people are trampled. Further, no one has taken in consideration of the cumulative impact of 10 mega projects on the people and the small geographical area. T

IOLENCE has been one of the greatest causes of forced displacement of population in history. The violence stems from conflicts that take place between countries, as in a war, between communities (as in a riot) or even between the state and its citizens. In any of these cases, the human rights of people sometimes on one side and sometimes on both sides of the conflicting parties are violated to such an extent that the sufferers might have no other way than to flee the zone of fire. This history has been repeated in the North East several times in the recent past, resulting in forced mass migrations. Here, we present a few of such episodes to illustrate the complexities of conflict-induced displacement. The situation for the Brus who had to flee from Mizoram and settling in Tripura and for the communities that took shelter in camps within the state following the violence during the Bodoland movement in Assam must not have been the same. Understanding the context of displacement is crucial to the sensitive handling of information regarding the problem. Genocide is an extreme form of violence on a population during which acts are committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, including killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948, Article 2, and ICC Statute, 1998, Article 6). Many of those who have been displaced internally or across the borders often assert that they have been victims of genocide. This is true of the North East also. Further, groups that have once suffered displacement sometimes become targets of pogroms in places of their new settlement and are forced to relocate again. However, there are other forms of violence that are not so apparent in terms of application of direct physical force but might become equally unbearable for members of a particular population and compel them to leave their habitation. These may include various methods of coercion, severe economic, social, cultural or educational discrimination or imposition of the cultural mores of a community on another. Journalists or researchers have to be sensitive to all such acts of pronounced or silent violence behind the fact of displacement. Another aspect that demands their sensitiveness is the gender-dimension of violence. The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women by the UN General Assembly defines Gender-Based Violence as Violence that is directed against a person or a group of persons on the basis of their gender or sex. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty whether occurring in public or private life (A/RES/48/104, December 1993). One must remember that during most events of large-scale violence on a particular population, it is the women who bear the brunt of this kind of assault on their person and persona. A practical question that one faces in reporting about the persons who

Conflict/violenceinduced displacement V

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MANY of those who have been displaced internally or across the borders often assert that they have been victims of genocide. This is true of the Northeast also. Further, groups that have once suffered displacement sometimes become targets of pogroms in places of their new settlement and are forced to relocate again
have been targets of violence is how to refer to them. Usually, they are referred to as victim. In various documents of the United Nations, victims have been defined as persons who, individually or collectively, have suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights, through acts or omissions that constitute violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law (UN General Assembly, Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, GA/RES/ 60/147, 2005; Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, GA/RES/40/34, 1985). However, many feel that those who have gone through the violence and are still there to testify about it through their speech or simply presence should better be referred as survivors. The UNHCR Handbook for the Protection of Internally Displaced Persons observes that This term is used to highlight the strength and resilience of victims of violence and to acknowledge that the term victim may imply powerlessness and stigmatization. T NELit review has not made any editorial changes to the extracts