Friday, 03 February 2012 13:21 Nay Myo
The government has offered peace talks to the Chin National Front and the Arakan Liberation Party, which also operate on the India-Burma-Bangladesh border, but they have not yet extended such an offer to the ZRO, Min Thang told Mizzima.
Explaining the lack of an offer, he said, “We don’t attack” Burma in an armed struggle for ethnic rights. “We are supporting the objectives of the NLD from India by supporting Aung San Suu Kyi on her democratic path,” he said.
The Manipur State-based ZRO was formed in the Pha Pyin region under the control of the Kachin Independence Organization in 1993. It says it has a 1,000-man army, which is led by current chairman Pu Thang Lian Pau.
Thang Lian Pau is a former secretary of the Zomi National Congress and is also an MP-elect from the 1990 general election.
Zomi nationals live in Tamu, Kalay, the Kabaw valley and Chin State in Burma, India and Bangladesh.
“We bear arms for our security,” said Min Thang. “We fight through nonviolent means also, but we think nonviolence means is not workable so we hold arms for self-defense and for accomplishing our goal of Zomi re-unification.”
At the a meeting with ZRO officials on December 17, 2010, Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram said he appreciated ZRO efforts to maintain regional peace for democracy in Burma, according to a statement issued by the ZRO Information and Public Relations Department.
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