GUWAHATI, May 19 � The Union Home Minister has been urged to initiate the requisite steps towards creating space for reuniting the broken Chinese families of Assam who are still facing the consequences of the 1962 India-China war.
Writer Rita Chowdhury and a victim of the war Lyong Linchi aka Pramila Das, who got separated from her parents at the age of six, have appealed to the government of India to come forward and resolve this humanitarian crisis.
Interacting with media persons at a function held at the auditorium of Vivekananda Kendra here on Tuesday, Lyong Linchi shared her emotional sufferings that had been integral to her life since the separation. �During the Sino- Indian War in 1962, I was only six years old. I was at my grandmother�s place when the police detained my parents and took them away to Deoli Internment Camp in Rajasthan where from they were deported to China. I was left alone in Assam,� she recollected divulging that since the separation she has been passing the days with deep pain in her heart.
�I have never seen my parents since then. However, I started receiving letters from them more than a decade back and came to know that they were alive but getting old and ailing. They long to see me. I have a great yearning to see my parents,� expressed Linchi, a resident of Kehung Tea Estate, Makum.
Rita Chowdhury, on the other hand, said that the journey which she undertook by writing Makam would reach a meaningful destination only when the Indian Chinese who became the victims of war between the two countries are reunited with their families.
�The Sino-Indian war has become a part of history, but the war induced suffering � suffering of partition from their families, depriving them of their legally owned property and deporting them from the land they had considered as motherland and deporting even the Indian citizens (married to Chinese) with their families and the State considering them as non citizen, is still intense in the mind of the people of the community,� said Chowdhury stressing the importance of resolving this issue with a humanitarian approach.
A documentary titled Wars and Tears revolving around the sufferings of the Indian Chinese and directed by Chowdhury was also screened on the occasion.
