DOI: 10.36344/ccijhss.2015.v01i02.005

Pages: 50-54

The word statelessness has long been recognized as an important problem in international law. Nowhere is the problem of statelessness more acute than in South East Asia. The Sri Lankans, Tibetan, Afghani etc. in India, Burmese in Thailand and in Bangladesh, Vietnamese refugees in Cambodia and many ethnic Chinese in all parts of South East Asia are currently stateless and thus specially vulnerable the same type of human rights abuses as those suffered by the Chakmas of Arunachal Pradesh. The Chakmas are the victims of the partition of the country. They were displaced from their original homeland and migrated to Northeast India. They were rehabilitated in NEFA by the Government of India but still fighting for citizenship status. The present paper examines the statelessness of the Chakmas of North East India, especially in Arunachal Pradesh. It tries to analyze the origin of the problem of migration of the Chakmas from Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of erstwhile East Pakistan to Mizoram and Tripura and their rehabilitation in NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh). It examines the causes of reactions from the Arunachali indigenous tribes, the All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union and from the State Government. The paper concludes with a study of the role of the Chakma organizations, the Union Government and the Supreme Court in the fight for Indian citizenship status of the Chakmas.