Billboard in Jammu bears a warning to refugees from a Hindu nationalist group. Rohingya people, of whom there are roughly 5,500 in the north Indian city, are urged to leave.
Indian government planning to deport of thousands of Rohingyarefugees will increase harassment of the persecuted Muslim minority while proving impossible to implement, activists have warned.
Thousands of Rohingya have fled ethnic violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, with thousands crossing through Bangladesh into India since the 1980s. About 40,000 have settled there, more than 16,000 of whom are registered with the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.
Earlier this month, India’s ministry of home affairs sent a letter to each of the country’s state governments asking them to identify and deport all illegal immigrants, including Rohingya refugees.
The letter said the refugees were a potential security threat and a burden on resources, calling on law enforcement and intelligence agencies to take “prompt steps in identifying the illegal migrants and initiate the deportation processes expeditiously”.
But Madhurima Dhanuka, coordinator of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s prison reforms program, said deporting the Rohingyas to Myanmar was “legally, procedurally and practically impossible”.
“Rohingyas are not merely economic illegal immigrants, but people who have been forced to flee their homeland for fear of persecution,” she said. “This distinguishes them from other illegal immigrants who the government has the authority to deport or prosecute.”
Local leaders of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have increased tensions by suggesting that Rohingya refugees could be used by Pakistani intelligence or Islamic State for espionage and terrorism.
A spokesman for the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “Refugees must not be sent back to places where they fear persecution.”
“Rohingyas in Burma continue to be victims of murder, rape, arson and other violence. Innocent Rohingya men are also being arrested and jailed,” said Dil Mohammad, who fled Myanmar in 2007, and lives in Jammu with his wife and four children.
“Rohingyas are still being targeted in violence and fleeing Burma. It is extremely unsafe for us to return,” said Syed Hussain, who also lives in Jammu.
To deport the Rohingya, who took refuge in India only to secure their lives and survive, is cruel
“We fled to India to save our lives. Indian authorities should be kind to us and not send us back to Burma where our lives will be at risk.”
Zafarul-Islam Khan, a Delhi-based Muslim community leader and human rights campaigner, said the deportation of the Muslim Rohingyas amounted to a “betrayal of the liberal and secular values of free India”.
“Hindu and Buddhist refugees from neighboring countries are welcome in India. India has even allowed the Burmese Buddhist refugee political activities,” said Khan.
“To deport the Rohingyas, who took refuge in India only to secure their lives and somehow survive, is thoughtless and cruel.”
The conflict between the Buddhist majority of the country and its Rohingya Muslim minority goes back to the British colonial period. (Myanmar, formerly Burma, was part of British India until 1937).
