Another hornet’s nest stirred
Subir Bhaumik, August 19, 2017
One of the billboards put up by a right-wing party in Jammu city [Sunaina Kumar/Al Jazeera]
The Modi government has developed a reputation to stir a hornet’s nest where one can be and should be avoided.
With less than a month to go for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Myanmar visit, one of his controversy-prone ministers has threatened to deport all Rohingyas from the country.
But India’s junior home minister Khiren Rijiju, a Buddhist politician from Arunachal Pradesh who earned China’s ire by shepherding Tibetan leader Dalai Lama around his state this year, said the Rohingyas were all illegal migrants and would be deported from India.
But Rijjuju did not make it clear whether his government had a time frame in mind and where the Rohingyas would be deported to — Myanmar where they hail from, or Bangladesh from where they have possibly slipped into India.
Though Rijjuju said his government was in touch with both Dhaka and Nay Pyi Taw on the issue, officials in Bangladesh and Myanmar told this columnist that they were surprised by the remarks of the Indian minister.
Analysts said if Delhi really pressed for deporation of the Rohingyas, both Bangladesh and Myanmar would be ill at ease.
The trickiest part of the exercise would be if the Modi government were to go ahead with it — Bangladesh’s current government does not want any more of the Rohingyas, and Myanmar would be unwilling as well. The Rohingyas would be hardly keen to go back to Myanmar or even to Bangladesh where the Awami League is clearly uncomfortable with their presence.
When she was Bangladesh’s foreign minister, Mrs. Dipu Moni made it clear that the global community should stop lecturing an over-populated country like Bangladesh on its humanitarian obligations to shelter more and more Rohingyas. “We know they are hapless people but why can’t the global community pressurise Myanmar to stop persecuting them, because that alone can stop their exodus,” she told this columnist on the sidelines of “Tripura Conclave” in the northeast Indian town of Agartala.
The Rohingyas are clearly nobody’s people in a no man’s land. In 2007, this columnist, then a BBC journalist, exposed a Thai operation involving seizure of boats carrying Rohingyas, removing their engines and then drag them back to sea, leaving them to die.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7830710.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7832947.stm
I also trained the interns in the Rohingya website
Kaladan as part of a larger exercise to develop the ethnic media in Myanmar in the last decade.
That was when I first realised that the Rohingyas were slipping into India to escape their ordeal in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
An estimated 40,000 Rohingya Muslims now live in India. Rijjiju says they are all illegal immigrants, even those 16,500 who are registered with the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
“The registration with UNHCR does not make them Indian citizens. They are illegal migrants and we have asked all state governments in India to identify and deport all illegal immigrants including Rohingyas,” Rijjuju told the Indian parliament last week.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has issued identity cards to about 16,500 Rohingyas in India to help them “prevent harassment, arbitrary arrests, detention and deportation”.
However, Mr Rijiju said the UNHCR registration was irrelevant.
“They are doing it; we cannot stop them from registering. However, we are not signatory to the accord on refugees,” he said.
“As far as we are concerned the Rohingyas are all illegal immigrants. They have no basis to live here. Anybody who is an illegal migrant will be deported.”
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled from Myanmar, with many taking refuge in Bangladesh, and some then crossing a porous border into India.
The campaign by Hindu groups against the Rohingya in Jammu has prompted vigilante-style attacks against them. In April, unidentified assailants reportedly set on fire five huts housing Rohingya in Jammu.
Some western rights group like the HRW have already protested moves to forcibly return ethnic Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, where they face persecution.
They called upon India to abide by its international legal obligations and protect the Rohingya – a Muslim minority predominately from western Burma – from systematic abuse by Burmese officials and state security forces. The appeal comes in the backdrop of reports that Myanmar’s Tatmadaw has started a massive operation, para-dropping thousands of troops in Rakhine state, to fish out rebels of a new militant group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) believed to be responsible for a fresh spate of attacks on security forces.
“India has a long record of helping vulnerable populations fleeing from neighboring countries, including Sri Lankans, Afghans, and Tibetans,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Indian authorities should abide by India’s international legal obligations and not forcibly return any Rohingya to Burma without first fairly evaluating their claims as refugees.”
About 16,500 Rohingya living in India are registered with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The government contends that tens of thousands are unregistered. Minister Rijiju told Reuters news agency, “They [UNHCR] are doing it, we can’t stop them from registering. But we are not signatory to the accord on refugees.” He added: “As far as we are concerned, they are all illegal immigrants. They have no basis to live here. Anybody who is an illegal migrant will be deported.”
Rijiju’s statement does not accurately reflect India’s obligations under international refugee law, Human Rights Watch said. While India is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, it is still bound by customary international law not to forcibly return any refugee to a place where they face a serious risk of persecution or threats to their life or freedom.
The Rohingya are largely living in the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Rajasthan. Since 2016, Rohingya refugees in Jammu have been targeted by right-wing Hindu groups who have been calling for their eviction from the state, with some groups even threatening attacks if the government rejected their call.
In December 2016, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a group with links to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), demanded the eviction of Rohingya from Jammu, calling them a threat to security. Another group, the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party, started a public campaign against the Rohingya, putting up billboards in the city calling on Rohingya and Bangladeshis to leave the state. In February 2017, a BJP member whose lawyer is the BJP spokesman in Jammu, filed a petition in the state high court seeking the Rohingya’s deportation, arguing that there had been a sharp increase in illegal migrants from Burma and Bangladesh.
The campaign by Hindu groups against the Rohingya in Jammu has prompted vigilante-style attacks against them. In April, unidentified assailants reportedly set on fire five huts housing Rohingya in Jammu. Four days earlier several Rohingya families living in the outskirts of Jammu alleged that unidentified people beat them up and set ablaze the scrap they collected to earn a livelihood.
Xenophobic statements by government officials about Rohingya could fuel further violence against them and Bengali-speaking Muslims, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch has extensively documented the rampant and systemic violations against the ethnic Rohingya in Burma. The estimated 1.2 million Rohingya, most of whom live in Burma’s Rakhine State, have long been targets of government discrimination, facilitated by their effective denial of citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law. The Rohingya have faced longstanding rights abuses, including restrictions on movement, limitations on access to health care, livelihood, shelter, and education; as well as arbitrary arrests and detention, and forced labor.
An estimated 120,000 people, the vast majority Rohingya, are currently displaced in camps in Rakhine State as a result of violence in 2012 that amounted to crimes against humanity and “ethnic cleansing.” The displaced Rohingya live in squalid, prison-like conditions in these camps. An estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Rohingya are living in Bangladesh, where the vast majority have also been prevented from filing refugee claims. The Burmese government refuses to use the term “Rohingya,” with which the group self-identifies, but often uses the pejorative term “Bengali,” implying illegal migrant status in Burma.
Human Rights Watch has documented numerous abuses associated with recent military operations following attacks by alleged Rohingya militants in October 2016 in Rakhine State, including widespread arson, extrajudicial killings, systematic rape, and other forms of sexual violence. The United Nations estimates that more than 1,000 people were killed in the crackdown. A February report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concluded that the attacks against the Rohingya “very likely” amounted to “crimes against humanity.”
In March 2017, the UN Human Rights Council, of which India is a member, passed a resolution establishing an independent international fact-finding mission with a mandate to investigate allegations of recent human rights abuses in Burma, especially in Rakhine State. The government has stated its intention to deny the mission access to the country.
Due to Burma’s discriminatory citizenship policies, it refuses to cooperate in the repatriation of Rohingya, itself a denial of the human right of any person to return to their country.
India has in the past called upon Burma to address the issues around the Rohingya and to ensure their protection. Minister Rijiju has stated that deportations will occur only in consultation with the authorities in Bangladesh and Burma.
“Without the willingness or capacity to evaluate refugee claims, the Indian government should put an end to any plans to deport the Rohingya, and instead register them so that they can get an education and health care and find work,” Ganguly said. “Most of the Rohingya were forced to flee egregious abuse, and India should show leadership by protecting the beleaguered community and calling on the Burmese government to end the repression and atrocities causing these people to leave.”
India, like Myanmar and Bangladesh, have every right to initiate security operations against ARSA or other militant groups. But until and unless they treat the Rohingyas with some compassion, more of their youth will join the training camps funded by Saudi clerics who advise the mullahs in the ARSA’s advisory council. The BJP government ‘s increasingly militaristic policy towards ethnic minorities is now further compounded by a similar attitude by those from across the border. That will only intensify terrorism, not help resolve it.
Subir Bhaumik is a former BBC Correspondent and author.
http://southasianmonitor.com/2017/08/19/another-hornets-nest-stirred/