By Aheli Moitra
Since June this year, 41 identified children in Myanmar’s remote Northwestern region have died. The illness that led to the death of the children is only coming to be identified now, in August, as measles.
The deaths have been recorded in Nanyun and Lahe townships of the Naga Self Administered Zone in Sagaing region, one of the least developed regions in Myanmar, about 750 kilometers from capital Nyapyidaw. The region shares borders with the Indian Union’s Nagaland State, with Lahe being about 150 kilometers from Kohima. Yet official help had to be sought from 750km away (with no road access) and the only effective State institution that rules the Naga areas of Myanmar, the military setup.
The Government of Myanmar first dispatched military doctors as well as military personnel to facilitate the travel of doctors, who are yet to arrive, from the Indian side to safely access the affected.
The first institutions to take stock and respond, however, were the Naga civil bodies. The Council of Naga Affairs (CNA), apex civil body of the Naga people living in Myanmar, took the lead. Their leaders updated all information available to them through social media, and mobilised Myanmar’s State actors to come forward and perform their duties. They also sent out appeals to their Naga brethren on the Indian side. Subsequently, the Naga Hoho and the Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation, apex civil setups of the Naga people living in India, alongside the Naga Students’ Federation, the Eastern Nagaland Students’ Federation, the Naga Mother’s Association, the Eastern Nagaland Women’s Organisation, the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights and the Eastern Nagaland Gazetted Officer’s Association took stock and promised to mobilise resources. Even the Government of Nagaland may chip in with support.
While it is yet to be seen whether the Naga civil bodies, neutral Non Government Organisations or the Government of Nagaland are following up with any action on their committment to prevent more deaths in the Naga areas of Myanmar, the inherent lesson in this tragedy is one to be learned from.
Just like Lahe is too far away from Nyapyidaw, Kohima is 2,241 kilometers away from New Delhi. In keeping with the typical nature of nation states, the borderlands of India have as much been ignored as the peripheries of Myanmar, except in the aspect of militarisation. Education, health care, livelihoods, roads, disaster prevention, news media, democratic rights and liberties have all been brushed aside and substituted with violence in every aspect of life. Rarely do we see any consideration for the perspective of the people who, without their consent, find themselves sitting atop and around these international borderlines.
The price for these historical fault lines is now being paid by children in these remote regions. Access to affordable healthcare to all citizens is a basic duty of every State. Yet it is the Naga people as a nation who have been addressing the disease, and spreading the word to bring aid. The nation states that have usurped the Nagas have done little in the past half a century except practice rhetorics of Look East and West.
Though the Naga civil society on the Indian side has been slow to act (borders, bad roads, bureaucracy?), it is good to be reminded what Naga nationalism is made of. More than a passport or flag, it is the rise of consciousness at the loss of a fellow political being in another despite borders, capital, authority, terrain, distance or violence; a consciousness strong enough to bring change to a critical situation. The quicker we learn this lesson, the more lives we can save.
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