Whether it was the destruction of their Jahangirpuri encampment in Delhi or the moves to oust them from Srinagar in Kashmir, exiled Muslim Rohingya are feeling the heat in India as the pressure builds on what many claim is the world’s most maligned exile community.
Naturally, the main focus of the Rohingya crisis tends to be on the over 700,000 refugees who fled “genocidal” violence in 2017 in Rakhine State, joining earlier arrivals in camps in Bangladesh.
But India is also host to a sizeable community of 40,000, out of which at least 20,000 are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Their presence in India has proved problematic.
Newsclick in a story entitled 'Rohingyas in National Capital between Devil and Deep Blue Sea', the illegal aliens are facing discrimination and charges, with claims that this relatively small exile community is a “threat to the nation”. According to a press release issued by the Human Rights Watch on 31 March, the Rohingya in India face “tightened restrictions, arbitrary detention, violent attacks often incited by political leaders, and a heightened risk of forced returns.”
Take the situation in India’s crowded capital, Delhi. A battle between Indian political parties has broken out in Jahangirpuri migrant encampment on the outskirts of the city.
Demolition of tents was carried out at Kalindi Kunj by South Delhi Municipal Corporation on 12 May 2022, and the Rohingya refugees were reported to be worried.
Their anxieties arose from the recent announcements by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionaries that public land in Delhi was illegally occupied by Rohingya and Bangladeshis. The BJP has been alleging that the ruling Aam Aadmi Party is helping illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya migrants settle in the city.
The debate over the Rohingya, who are now present in many places in India, having crossed the border to escape persecution in Myanmar, is now a BJP-AAP battle.
Similarly, in the Kashmir capital of Srinagar, panic gripped the displaced Rohingya refugees on 6 March 2022, a day after the Jammu ' Kashmir administration rounded up over 150 immigrants as part of “a verification process”. Only the Rohingya Muslims were picked up. They reportedly claim there are not ready to leave India to be repatriated since their country Myanmar is not yet safe for them to return to.
The Telegraph of India reports the Jammu and Kashmir police detained over two dozen Rohingya refugees, who were part of a Tablighi Jamaat group (the Tablighi mission to Ramban who were scheduled to spend the holy month of Ramadan there in prayers), They were detained in Kathua jail, triggering panic in the community and region amid reports that the Indian government had deported a refugee from Jammu to Myanmar. Police sources said 25 Rohingya were picked up from two mosques in Ramban’s Sangaldan area on 30 March and later sent to a “holding centre” inside the jail at Hiranagar in Jammu’s Kathua district.
Thousands of Rohingya refugees have been staying in Jammu for several years to avoid persecution in their homeland in Myanmar. However, they have been facing a campaign by Indian Right-wing groups calling for their ouster. The police have not officially cited any reason for the detention of the Rohingya. However, community members are often accused of staying illegally in India.
Northeast India has also seen problems.
Police in Assam’s Cachar district recently detained 26 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar on 29 May for allegedly travelling without valid papers. Cachar SP Ramandeep Kaur told The Telegraph that those detained had travelled from Jammu to Guwahati in Assam by train and from there to Silchar in three vehicles. The detained included 12 children.
There has also been news of Tripura Police arresting 24 suspected Rohingya migrants from Kailashahar in the Unakoti district, Tripura on 2 May. Speaking to reporters in Agartala, Kailashahar sub-divisional police officer Chandan Das said they were arrested while trying to enter Kailashahar town. Primary interrogation revealed that they were issued refugee cards by the UNHCR.
According to the Hindustan Times, 26 Rohingya were recently arrested in Assam under the Foreigner’s Act and were sent to a detention centre.
The roots of the Rohingya crisis can be traced back to British Colonial times and the actions of players in pre-independence and post-independence Burma and India.
At its core, the conflict arises chiefly from the religious and social differences between the Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. During World War II in Burma, Rohingya Muslims, who were allied with the British and promised a Muslim state in return, fought against local Rakhine Buddhists, who were allied with the Japanese. Following Burma's independence in 1948, the newly formed union government of the predominantly Buddhist country denied citizenship to the Rohingya, subjecting them to extensive systematic discrimination in the country. This has widely been compared to apartheid by many international academics, analysts, and political figures, including the late Desmond Tutu, a famous South African anti-apartheid activist.
In the 1970s, Rohingya separatist movements emerged from remnants of the local mujahideen, and the fighting culminated with the Burmese government launching a massive military operation named Operation Dragon King in 1978 to expel so-called 'foreigners'. In the 1990s, the well-armed Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) was the main perpetrator of attacks on Burmese
authorities near the Bangladesh–Myanmar border. The Burmese government responded militarily with Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation but failed to disarm the RSO.
In October 2016, Burmese border posts along the Bangladesh–Myanmar border were attacked by a new Rohingya insurgent group resulting in the deaths of at least 40 combatants. It was the first major resurgence of the conflict since 2001. Violence erupted again in November 2016, bringing the 2016 death toll to 134, and again on 25 August 2017, when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) launched coordinated attacks on 24 police posts and an army base that left 71 dead.
This sparked a massive Myanmar military crackdown, described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in a report on 11 October 2017 detailing the Burmese military's 'systematic process' of driving hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas from Myanmar 'through repeated acts of humiliation and violence'.
Well over a million Rohingya now live in camps in Bangladesh, waiting to go home.
For the Rohingya residing in India, the situation does not look good.
In India, Narendra Modi’s government issued its plan to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees, including at least 16,000, possibly 20,000, who have been registered with the UNHCR.
When an appeal was filed on behalf of two of the refugees to the Supreme Court of India opposing the deportation, the Home Ministry filed an affidavit listing reasons why the Rohingya refugees should be deported. One of the reasons given is that the Rohingya pose a “threat to national security” due to their supposed ties with Islamic extremist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Daesh or ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
India’s current politics, with Hindu nationalism ascendant, does not bode well for the Rohingya, a refugee community that is one of the most badly treated in the world.
