Northeastern View | Resurgence of Zo reunification demand bares the high costs of New Delhi’s border closure decision

On May 16, the Zo Reunification Organisation, a Mizoram-based civil society organisation, organised a unique public rally in the state’s Champhai district, bordering Myanmar, to protest the Indian government’s decision to fence the India-Myanmar border and suspend the Free Movement Regime. Two years later, a different set of Zo leaders spawned another congruent organisation – “Zomi Reunification Organisation ” – in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State. This has happened in response to two events – the ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur where Meitei majoritarian interests have undermined Kuki-Zo rights; and the recent decision by the Narendra Modi government to seal the India-Myanmar border, which the Zo people view as a colonial-era disruption of their shared ethnocultural geography. In February, when the current Mizoram assembly passed a resolution against the planned border fencing, the sitting home minister from ZPM, K Sapdanga, argued the Zo people “have been dreaming of reunification under one administrative unit someday.” ZORO’s recent rally against the fencing and FMR suspension wasn’t the first one.