According to a report published in the ‘Guardian’ 34 Burmese people, who are in jails in India being accused of arms smuggling, are actually the anti-military rule rebels. The report says further that the Indian army claims the men belong to the Arakan ethnic minority. Those people were fighting with the Burmese army and captured by Indian security forces in February 1998.
The Indian army had caught them along with a cache of arms and weapons in the Andaman and Nicobar islands in 1998. The Indian Army had claimed that during the operation Leech it had caught the group of gunrunners aiding anti-Indian separatists in the region.
On the other hand, the arrested people said they were members of Karen National Union (KNU) and National Unity Party of Arakan (Nupa) and they were fighting against the Burma’s military junta. They also claimed that the government of India had been provided arms and a sanctuary to them.
Now, the human right activists have started raising questions against the imprisonment of Burmese rebels in Indian jails. Nandita Haskar, a civil rights lawyer who is campaigning for the men’s release, said:
We have to ask our government why Burma’s freedom fighters have been imprisoned in India like this when people are taking to the streets in Rangoon for freedom.
A retired Indian intelligence officer has also started supporting their case along with the leadership of the two anti-junta groups based in Thailand. The Burmese men said that an Indian army officer named Grewal, who was in the pay of the junta, betrayed them. However, Army said that it has never heard of the colonel.
Khin Maung of Nupa said:
These people are not gun runners, they are our men. The army colonel had promised a camp in the Andaman Islands but he took them there and they were either captured or shot.
According to the report, during the 1990s, India had started taking pulling its steps back from its own historic stand against the military junta and to get rid of its pro-democracy links in Myanmar. Since the Indian Army’s Operation Leech, India has been emerged as Burma’s second largest export market.
Now, India trains Burma’s armed force personnel and supplies arms and ammunition to Burma. India and China, two said supporter to the military junta in Burma, have reportedly joined the race to acquire gas reserves off Burma’s coast.
