Lakhipur, Assam: On a rainy afternoon on 7 June 2024, a 27-year-old woman called Lalringmoi and her family fled her home in the Manipuri village of Jairon, where she had grown up, towards the neighbouring state of Assam.
A nervous and soft-spoken woman from the Hmar tribe, Lalringmoi, carried Adaline, her 10-month-old baby, in her arms, with her husband, Lalbiekthuom, a mechanic. Their three other children, aged 3, 5, and 7, ran alongside them, holding their hands tightly, as they escaped a mob of Meitei people, the largest ethnic group in Manipur.
A couple of hundred metres away from their home, they found a jeep and then a bus, carrying 50 other refugees, that would take them, and their one suitcase of hurriedly-packed clothes, towards Assam and safety.
Lalringmoi, Lalbiekthuom (both use one name) and their family are among hundreds of Manipuri Kuki and Hmar tribal minorities, both part of the Zo community, who fled their homes on 6 June 2024, when a new outbreak of violence hit the district of Jiribam and neighbouring areas.
The latest exodus from the district, 216 km west of state capital Imphal, added to the estimated 65,000 already in refugee camps since Manipur descended into civil war in May 2023, claiming at least 221 lives, with the army and police failing to bring peace.
The latest round of violence came as Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the conflict for the first time in Parliament, on 3 July 2024, more than a year after the strife began, saying his government was “working tirelessly to bring stability and ensure peace”.
There has been no peace in Jiribam since 6 June 2024, when the discovery of the severely injured body of Soibai Sarathkumar Singh, a 59-year-old farmer from Manipur’s majority Meitei community, sparked fresh violence in a state already devastated by conflict.
Many families were forced to leave after at least 70 houses were burnt down by suspected militants later that same day.
The renewed violence displaced about 2,000 people, now housed in an undetermined number of refugee camps in Assam. It isn’t clear how many refugee camps exist in that state because many are informal and the state government, officials said, was not counting.
60-80 Share 4 Bathrooms
Since reaching Assam, Lalringmoi’s family has been living in a large hall with nearly 80 others, who share four bathrooms, in a refugee camp called Thalai Inn, run by the evangelist Independent Church of India(ICI).
The camp is in the village of Hmarkhawlien, 434 km south-east of the state capital Guwahati.
Lalbiekthuom has spent most of his time looking for work.
"I take care of the kids while my husband goes out to shop for groceries most days,” Lalringmoi said. “While he looks for work, it's hard for me to mingle with other people.”
As her children played a game of catch-me-if-you-can, Lalringmoi said she could only focus on the home they fled and all that they left behind: friends and community, the children’s school, and most of their possessions.
The journey for refugees like Lalringmoi was difficult and marked with uncertainty. With the constant threat of violence, many travelled through forests and hills and endured severe monsoon rains.
The refugees travelled in groups, relying on numbers for protection, and sharing their scant supplies of food and water.
According to police estimates, approximately 1,700 people crossed the border in a week, beginning on 7 June 2024, some of them by boats across the river Barak, and the Jiri, its tributary, which marks the border between the two states, to Hmarkhawlien, in the Cachar district of Assam, seeking refuge.
‘Hmarkhawlien’, whose name comes from ‘Hmar’, the tribe's name, ‘Khaw’ meaning ‘village’ and ‘Lien’ meaning big, falls under the Lakhipur sub-division of Cachar.
Grim Conditions In Refugee Camps
The Thalai Inn camp is managed by local volunteers like Solomon Hmar under the supervision of Reverend Lalrohlu of the ICI and was built using donations from members of the church, which is headquartered in Churachandpur, Manipur.
“We built the inn primarily for recreation and lodging purposes for our guests, but since the violence started, we have handed it over to Hmarkhawlien village council to use as a refugee camp,” said Reverend Lalrohlu.
Solomon Hmar, who lives in a single-room concrete house inside the camp, manages supplies and other needs of the refugees. Up to 80 refugees live in a common hall with four bathrooms and a single cooking area.
Volunteers, wearing t-shirts and vests in bright colours, rushed through the camp with a sense of urgency, and exhaustion written on their faces. One of them, Dina Hmar, paused to say, "We haven't gotten any help from the government."
The Hmarkhawlien camp, run by the Barak Valley chapter of the Hmar Student Association (HSA), which aims to encourage education and a sense of community among the Hmar people, is a couple of kilometres from the 'Thalai Inn' camp. The camp, which houses close to 100 people, looked like an abandoned godown. The leaky roofs and tarpaulin sheets did little to keep the constant rain out.
The refugees have to deal with the constant scarcity of food and clean water. Dina Hmar, who helps out at both camps, said, “We are doing everything we can, but it isn't enough. These people require more than we can offer on our own."
They struggle to afford food from the local market as most of them no longer have a source of income.
Volunteers at the Hmarkhawlien camp built a temporary septic tank, but excessive rainwater saturated the ground around it and caused it to crack. Dina Hmar said, “It’s a temporary solution; the leaks and cracks overwhelm the tanks, and the wastewater spills out.”
Accessing medical care was also not easy. “Doctors don’t visit here for checkups,” Dina Hmar said. “If someone falls sick, we (volunteers) arrange for a vehicle to take them to the local Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC).”
John Lalhrietsang, 13, was able to escape Jairon with his two brothers and his parents in the same convoy that carried Lalringmoi’s family before the mob could torch their house. He spends his days inside the Thalai Inn camp, with his siblings, while their parents search for work.
When we met them, the children were playing in the muddy grounds of the camp, spending most of their time looking for anything that could be used as a toy.
“I had a football,” said Lalhrietsang. “But I lost it on the journey."
‘No One Has Shown Up’
According to the Geneva-based non-profit, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre's Global Report on Internal Displacement 2024, Manipur accounted for 67,000 of the 69,000 individuals displaced in South Asia last year.
These refugees live in underfunded and overcrowded camps without basic amenities, such as clean water, medical treatment, and sanitation.
Volunteers on the ground voiced their frustration with the government’s apathy.
“Local MLA Kaushik Rai (of the Lakhipur constituency) is the only state-level politician who has visited us and financially supported us,” said Dina Hmar. “Nobody else has even bothered to show up.”
The union and state government’s indifference to the refugees has forced them to depend on community organisations for support.
“We are running the Hmarkhawlien camp with support from Hmar Inpui, the apex body of the Hmar Tribes,” said Jesai Hmar, president of the local chapter of the HSA. “Churches from the North-East region also support us in whatever capacity they can.”
Amnesty International’s interviews with health workers, residents, humanitarian organisations and journalists at shelter camps in Manipur revealed the dearth of state assistance, despite the claims of “timely intervention” of the central and state government and the promise of a financial aid package by Prime Minister Modi in April 2024.
K*, of Fieldnotes, an independent digital media platform that has been reporting on the ground in Manipur, said, “The state has utterly failed in providing adequate relief.”
“In February 2024, the government deliberately stopped supplying relief materials. (Those) in Lamka relief camp held a protest demanding basic sustenance,” said K. “NGOs, churches and other civil society groups have come together to support the internally displaced persons.”
Hostile Govt Rhetoric
The Assam police have deployed specially trained “commandos” to patrol NH-37, a vital highway connecting the state to Manipur. The two states share a 132-kilometre border, a large section of which is riverine.
Patrolling has increased on the Jiri and Barak rivers, as well, according to the superintendent of police Numal Mahatta.
Policies and rhetoric have often leaned towards hostility.
"It's Assam, not Manipur," Prasanta Kumar Bhuiyan, the Assam inspector general (law and order), said at a news conference on 24 June 2024, adding that the "state has a history of combating militancy and would not spare anyone proven to be participating in unlawful activities".
This combative stance was made clear on 16 July 2024, when the Assam police detained three Hmar men, Lallungawi Hmar, Lalbiekkung Hmar and Joshua (who was identified by a single name), and took them into custody from an autorickshaw.
The three men, described by the chief minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, as “militants”, were later declared dead.
The HSA called the men “village volunteers” and said that they had been defending Kuki-Zomi-Hmar villages against “Meitei militants”. They described police action as “brutal custodial deaths” and “extrajudicial killings”.
The HSA, along with the Indigenous Tribes Advocacy Committee, a nonprofit that aims to protect the rights of indigenous peoples in India, called for an impartial, independent inquiry by state and central agencies.
On 23 June 2024, the Assam police began a door-to-door survey to establish the number of Manipuri refugees living in Cachar.
Longing For Home
Kimneihinz Singson, a Kuki woman, first came to the Hmarkhawlien camp after her husband was killed in June 2023, while guarding their home in Phaitol, Manipur. She fled the village with her five children, leaving most of her belongings behind.
She returned home in the winter of the same year, after the first wave of violence subsided, but was forced to leave, yet again, in May 2024. She travelled back to Hmarkhawlien in a convoy of around 100 people.
Jesai Hmar explained that many refugees, like Singson, went back to Manipur last year to try and pick up the pieces of their lives.
“People keep going back to salvage whatever belongings they have left,” he said, “And those who are farmers go back to collect produce from their farmlands."
Many more Manipuri refugees shared similar stories, saying they were living in limbo, as they dreamt of their homes that perhaps did not exist any more.
Samuel Nengngaijou, 15, and his 17-year-old sister Sylvia, from Phaitol, Manipur, fled to Assam last year after hearing rumours that their village was about to be attacked by Meitei militants.
“I hope that when we go back, my parents are still alive so that I can live with them,” said Samuel.
*Name changed to protect identity.
(Debarun Choudhury is a freelance journalist based in Assam.)
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