NESO urges Centre not to grant asylum or rehabilitate Bangladeshi immigrants in Northeast

SHILLONG — The North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) on Wednesday urged the Centre not to grant asylum or rehabilitate immigrants from strife-torn Bangladesh in any of the northeastern states of India.

NESO, which is an umbrella organisation of students’ bodies from the northeastern states, urged the Union government also to ensure strict checking to prevent illegal entry from the neighbouring country.

“Not a single Bangladeshi should be granted asylum or rehabilitated in the entire northeastern region,” NESO chairman Samuel Jyrwa said in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He said it is imperative for the Union government to ensure that the international border in the northeastern region is thoroughly and strictly manned so as to detect attempted illegal immigration from across the border.

Tripura shares an 856 km-long border with Bangladesh, while Meghalaya has 443 km, Mizoram 318 km and Assam 262 km border with the neighbouring country.

Stating that “past events indicate that whenever there was a strife in present-day Bangladesh, Northeast India bore the brunt of mass migration”, be it after the partition of India in 1947 or the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, NESO claimed that “lakhs of immigrants from erstwhile East Pakistan illegally crossed the border and forcibly occupied lands in Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya”.

“The arrival of foreigners led to a contestation of space, forced cultural assimilation, economic competition and distrust between the indigenous populace and the foreigners as these illegal foreigners settled in the lands of the indigenous communities without the consent of the community leaders and thus created a sense of animosity between the two groups,” it stated.

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