A quiet storm is brewing in Myanmar’s remote Naga hills, where a border fence threatens to sever not just terrain but generations of kinship, culture, and survival. As India pushes ahead with fencing its frontier with Myanmar, indigenous Naga communities in the Naga Self-Administered Zone—already reeling under the fallout of the 2021 military coup—say they are being choked off from the only lifeline they have left: Nagaland.
Layshi town, located in Myanmar’s Sagaing Division bordering Nagaland’s Meluri district, is home to over 20,000 people spread across 73 villages and 24 ranges. The area, designated a Naga Self-Administered Zone under Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution, shares deep ethnic, familial, and economic ties with communities in Nagaland, India.
“We are families, kith and kin,” said Thongtsühmiu Jongs, a leader of the Makury Tribal Council, speaking to EastMojo over a telephonic conversation following a solidarity rally against India’s Free Movement Regime (FMR) restrictions.
The Makury Tribal Council from Myanmar participated in the protest against scrapping of Free Movement Regime (FMR) and border fencing organised by the Naga People’s Front (NPF) and the Pokhungri Area Public Organisation (PAPO) at India-Myanmar Trade Centre (ITC) Avakhung in Meluri district of Nagaland.
About a year ago, travel across the porous Indo-Myanmar border was routine, atleast up to 16km. Naga communities on either side moved freely for trade, education, farming, and to meet relatives. “Before the announcement of the border fencing and the implementation of the Protected Area Permit (PAP) by the Government of India, we lived seamlessly across both sides,” Jongs explained. “Now we need biometric verification– which often does not work – and our movement is restricted to 10 km and just 7 days stay,” he shared.
Visiting Nagaland, Jongs said, was easier than going to another Naga village in Myanmar. He narrated how it takes just hours to come to Nagaland but takes days to reach another village in Myanmar.
This “permit culture”, he said, has disrupted the fragile ecosystem of cross-border existence.
The Indian government’s move to tighten border controls and the implementation of Protected Area Permits (PAP) has come at a time when Myanmar’s own military regime has intensified pressure on indigenous populations, including the forceful recruitment of youths.
“Education and economic activities are now stifled. Young people who study in Nagaland are struggling. Even small entrepreneurs who used to buy essentials like rice now find it hard to transport enough due to suspicions from Indian agencies. We are often accused of aiding Naga undergrounds just for carrying basic supplies,” he said.
The community’s dependence on Nagaland has deepened as the Myanmar junta’s clampdown worsens. “We have no road connectivity for years. We use footpaths to reach Nagaland. Inflation in Myanmar has shot up, and we are dependent on India even for salt and rice,” he added.
Jongs, a member of the Global Naga Forum (GNF), hoped the Government of India (GoI) and the Government of Nagaland (GoN) would listen to their plea. “We plan to write to the GoN officially, and if we get the opportunity, to the GoI as well,” he shared.
For Nagas, this is more than a border issue — it is about identity. “It has been the aspiration of all Nagas since ancestral times to be under one administration, one family. We understand that takes time. But with the new developments, we ask India: please reconsider your policies,” he shared.
During Tuesday’s protest, Makury Tribal Council president, Chiujüvthong, recalled the days in 1970-71 when officials of India and Myanmar visited their land to install the border pillars. “Those officials told our elders that they were not installing border pillars but a sign of reaching your land and that these pillars were never meant to divide our land. With a good faith, our elders hosted them with what they had as good hosts. But later, we came to know it was a lie and a crime committed against us,” he said.
Rather than undoing the “serious crime” and apologising, he said that further steps were taken to break the people apart forever by scrapping the FMR and an attempt to put the “illegal” fencing along the imposed border drawn without consent.
“This is rather a serious crime before international law and we the Nagas will not remain silent anymore,” he said.
The Pochury Nagas in Nagaland the Makury Nagas in Myanmar, who share the territory between the imposed border pillars No 130 to 133, he urged, should rise up and by all means protest against th “evil scheme” that will divide the familial bonds once and for all.
The leader also urged all Nagas, to join them in the “struggle against the heinous injustice” done to them so that the Naga family should not be abused by others.
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