New Delhi: India and China may be in the middle of deadly military tension in eastern Ladakh with huge escalatory potential, but certain time-tested mechanisms still help to clear misunderstandings and maintain border peace.
It is especially true for the thickly forested border dividing the two countries in Arunachal Pradesh.
On Tuesday, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) communicated to in Indian counterparts in Northeast India that the five missing Arunachali youth from the Tagin tribe have been ‘located’ in China.
Indian army also said modalities are on for their return to India.
An Indian army official said that too much should not be read into the incident as such border ‘crossings’ are normal in a region where the border is not clearly marked.
Arunachal Pradesh shares a 1,126 km long border with China.
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“The border areas are thick jungles. There is no clear demarcation of the border. Local people move around in the area to hunt. The people on both sides of the border are of the same stock, ethnic origin, and speak the same language. They even have relatives. So crossing the border is a normal thing and is not a big incident,” Lieutenant Colonel Harsh Wardhan Pande, the Indian Army spokesperson based in Assam’s Tezpur told ETV Bharat.
“Every day at 4:30 AM in the morning, the Indian and Chinese militaries in the region call each other up on a dedicated hotline and ensure that all is okay. We call it the ‘all okay’ call.”
The case of the five missing youth who were said to have been ‘kidnapped’ by the PLA had added a new element to the ongoing tense relationship between the two Asian giants.
ETV Bharat had earlier written that the five hunters armed with muskets and belonging to the Tagin tribe from Nacho village in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district were picked up by a team of PLA soldiers on Thursday from near the Rezangla pass which is located on the MacMohan Line (ML), which is the de-facto border between China and Arunachal Pradesh.
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The team was reportedly hunting for the famed Himalayan white-bellied ‘musk’ deer which is prolific in the high altitude areas of Arunachal Pradesh above 2,500 metres. The deer secretes a substance from its abdomen called ‘musk’ (‘Kasturi’ in local language and Hindi) which is in very high demand worldwide and is used in making expensive perfumes and in medicines.
On Monday, the Chinese government media mouthpiece ‘Global Times’ in a tweet attributed to Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian had said of the incident: “China has never recognised so-called ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ which is China’s south Tibet region, and we have no details to release yet about the question on Indian army sending a message to PLA about five missing Indians in the region.”
Interestingly, on Monday itself, the Indian army handed over 13 full-grown yaks and four calves to Chinese officials at the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh’s East Kameng district. The yaks had strayed over to the Indian side last week.
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