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On Sunday when the whole of Mizoram is closed, because everybody goes to church, we were introduced to U Than Sein, MP (Member of Parliament) of the righteous elected party of the 1990 elections in Burma, the NLD- National League for Democracy. He had to flee his country, as a political refugee. I was quite shocked to find such an important person, in such hard living conditions. His story was, that when he first arrived here that there was no job for him, except for digging roads, crushing stones and cutting wood, after having saved enough money, he was able to buy a handloom, and now he and his friend have been weaving for the past 6 years. There are many such stories, that highly educated people have to do ‘lower-paying’ jobs, because there are no other job alternatives. It made me realize even more so, that anybody can be poor one day.
We had some free time, so we went out for a walk; we went to the biggest stadium in Aizawl. It was on the army ground, when one soldier asked Tuidim to come to him. Apparently we seemed a suspicious trio, 1 man with 2 girls and asked if we were from here. There was no problem. Next we met with some handloom-weavers, they also live in hard conditions, the room was about 40m², there were 4 big weaving machines, which were taking up all the space in the room. 2 families were living in that room, with each family having one bed. They said that this was actually a very good place, because at their previous working places, they didn’t even have enough place to put a bed, and they had to sleep on top of the weaving machines. Also it doesn’t seem to be very healthy to me, inhaling al those small fibers all day long, day-in-day-out.
Tuidim took us to one last place; a house where a man arranges daily work for many people. They were all boys between 17 and 30 years old, mostly stone crushing. It was difficult to interview at the time, because there were too many people, and it was raining like crazy, and we could hardly hear each other because of the rain loudly plunging on sink roof. Anyway I tried to find out what kind of information they were interested in. First I asked them how they used to get information mostly; from TV, radio, newspaper, or talking to each other. They answered mostly by talking to each other. If they wanted to know some information, how would they try to get it? By talking with each other. What information are they mostly interested in? We don’t know. But they would like to do more developed work like teaching, sewing, taxi driving, weaving instead of stone crushing. They would like to be trained in these skills. I just got very fresh news, that the Mizoram police have arrested 16 Chin people to the border areas. A few have come back, but most are staying in the border areas, due to lack of money to travel back. The Mizoram police are looking for illegal refugees, to repatriate them.
It is a big problem, as UNHCR is only in New Delhi, because the Indian government doesn’t allow UNHCR in this northeastern part of India, so many refugees can’t afford to travel to New Delhi, to apply for a refugee status. When you have a refugee status, you will receive Rs. 1400 per month, and get legal protection, also you have the possibility to resettle in a third country. Recently there was a rumor in Burma, that refugees could be resettled in the USA. More than 100 Kachin (another ethnic group from northern Burma) arrived in New Delhi, 45 were sent back.
Actually we hardly encountered any problems during our whole trip, I just had diarrhea for 2 days, and Jang suffered from the opposite during those days. I don’t know whether people believed our stories everywhere, because at our guesthouse in Aizawl, everybody was extremely curious, what we had come to do, because obviously we weren’t tourists. And than Tuidim also came to pick us up every day at the guesthouse. So every day they used to ask one question, who is that (about Tuidim): our friend, what are you: we are students, where are you from: from New Delhi, really? yes, really. What have you come here for? tourism. Well it was clears that they didn’t believe us, also because maybe my Hindi is not that fluent. But we didn’t really care, because we weren’t harming anyone, and doing anything wrong. But that night Jang and I were talking, when I suddenly saw a black scorpion next to my bed, but I thought it probably to be dead. But it was alive. We were quite surprised, but Jang crushed it. I just joked that maybe the hotel people wanted to kill us, for lying to them.
We left the next afternoon at 4.00 p.m. by bus, a 20-hours journey passing through Shillong, a magnificent view; beautiful fresh green. Back to Guwahati we went to the famous Khamakya temple, where there was a big ‘mela’, pilgrims from the whole country come to Guwahati around this time of the year and worship Goddess Kali. You can see a big crowd, people queuing to for many hours to get a glimpse of the Kali; we were too lazy to stand in the long queue, in the heat of the sun. We went to the journalist to pick up our bags and he dropped us at our guesthouse. It was around 9.00 p.m., when suddenly a hotel man knocked on our door. He said that the police was coming to our room in a minute. I was terrified. I asked whether everyone was checked or only us. Fortunately it was everyone. I closed the door, and there was a knock on our door, 2 police officers came in our room.
They asked us some questions, whether we were just 2 girls alone. yes, Where did you come from?: We just came from Aizawl. Where are you touring?
Yes, we were just touring. Where are you going now? We are going tomorrow back home to New Delhi. Can I see your train ticket? We showed our train-ticket. And than he warned us, that we had to lock our door carefully, because it is late in the night. Ok, thank you, bye. Than there was a third time a knock on our door, so I opened again. It was the hotel man; he asked what the police had asked us. So we told him what the police had asked us. The hotel man explained that the police in Assam are terrible people, they go and harass the hotel customers and extort money from them, I think from businessmen or something. But we were again fortunate, that we look as innocent girls.
(The author attends the University of Amsterdam in Holland majoring in International Communications) |
