India begins promised detention, deportation plan of Rohingya refugees

Rohingya refugees leave their camp in Jammu in March 2021 after Indian authorities moved 175 Rohingya to a detention center. Photo by Basit Zargar.

SRINAGAR—Thousands of Rohingya refugees settled in India’s only Muslim-majority region Jammu and Kashmir are at risk of arrest and detention after the Indian government moved 175 Rohingya to a detention center March 6.

The move follows promises from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to deport Rohingya Muslims from India, calling the Muslim minority a threat of extremist violence— in line with the Buddhist-majority Myanmar government and military. The timing of the announcement to deport Rohingyas in Jammu suggests the BJP is looking for a boost ahead of elections in several key Indian states over the coming week. And the BJP says Myanmar, where the military recently wrested control of the government with a coup, asked India to deport the Rohingya.

Mohammad Saleem, a 42-year-old Rohingya Muslim, fled to India with his family of four in 2011 and settled in Jammu. He said he’s terrified at the prospect of the government rounding them up in the “Holding Center” or deportation.

“We can’t go back, until the situation improves in Myanmar,” he said. “It is extremely distressing for us to be sent back to Myanmar against our wishes.”

Over a million Rohingya Muslims have fled from Myanmar in just the past five years after a brutal military crackdown in Rakhine, where Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship status, not allowed to travel, go to school or own businesses, and the army destroyed Rohingya villages and killed and raped Rohingya people. The Rohingya trace their origins to Bangladesh, and ethnically, linguistically and religiously differ from the Buddhist majority in Myanmar, which does not recognize the Rohingya as citizens though they have lived in the country for many generations. Most of those fleeing settled in Bangladesh, but some sought refuge in India, Thailand and Malaysia. International human rights bodies, including those from the United Nations, have described the Myanmar army’s actions against Rohingyas as ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Of the estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees living in India, about 10,000 live in Jammu and Kashmir, a region that acceded to India rather than join the Muslim-majority Pakistan in 1947. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration revoked the region’s semi-autonomous rule in 2019, sparking fears of demographic change and a Hinduization of the area that has experienced episodes of conflict between separatist groups and Indian security officials since the 1990’s.

In 2017, the BJP government in Delhi had asked states to identify Rohingya refugees living illegally and initiate their deportation. The UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, has registered Rohingyas as refugees and asylum seekers and provided them with identity cards, but India is not a signatory to any international accord on refugees. The Rohingyas in Jammu are hoping their UNHCR cards will prevent their deportation, but police sources told Religion Unplugged that UNHCR cards are not a valid document for their stay in Jammu and Kashmir.

 “The issue of deportation of Rohingyas has been on the BJP agenda but that process has started now,” said Kavinder Gupta, BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. He said the counting and registration of the Rohingyas was started in 2018 when the BJP was in power in the region.

“Whatever BJP had promised, has been implemented, be it building a Ram Temple or the revocation of Article 370, now the time has come to send Rohingyas back to Myanmar,” he said. “A beginning has been made; a jail has been emptied of its prisoners, so that Rohingyas can be kept there. Some activities which they were involved in were the reason to expedite their deportation.”

Rohingya refugees leave their camp as authorities in Jammu have sent at least 168 Rohingya refugees to a holding center in Hiranagar jail. Photo by Basit Zargar.

The government has not elaborated on what activities the Rohingya were allegedly involved in.

“These allegations that we are involved in criminal activities are baseless,” said Zia ur Rehman, a Rohingya refugee in Jammu. “After some members of our community were picked up by the police their family members haven’t eaten anything.”  He said they have already suffered a lot in Myanmar.

Police sources who spoke under condition of anonymity told Religion Unplugged that the Rohingyas don’t have the legal documents required under India’s Passports Act to stay in Jammu and Kashmir. They said after the completion of a nationality verification, the process of deportation of the “illegal immigrants” will begin.

The BJP has worked to revive a National Register of Citizens meant to expel people as illegal immigrants if they came to India after Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, particularly Muslims. In 2019, the government’s list excluded 1.9 million people in India, including many Hindus who have lived in India for decades—the burden to prove citizenship with documents dating back the 1970s was too much for many.

Relatedly, India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed in December 2019, fast tracks Indian citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christian religious minorities fleeing persecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan but leaves out Muslims. The act was an important election plank for the BJP in the northeastern states of Assam and West Bengal which have sizeable Muslim populations and border Bangladesh. The act sparked nationwide protests before the COVID-19 pandemic ended them.

While addressing an election rally in West Bengal last month, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah reportedly said that the government would implement the CAA once the COVID-19 vaccination program was completed.

BJP leader Ravinder Raina said the Indian government’s detention of Rohingyas in Jammu and their planned deportation has been taken at the request of the Myanmar government.

“The foreign ministry of the government of Myanmar has asked the government of India that all those people from their country living in India and in other countries must be returned, so they can live again in Myanmar,” Raina said. “If somebody has been uprooted and wants to go back to his country, then it is obvious that the person should be very happy. Even when a bird is taken out of its nest it wants to return, these are still human beings, so if the government of Burma has made a decision to take them back under UN monitoring, it is a good thing.”

Human rights experts believe since the deportation of Rohingyas to Myanmar is a long and cumbersome process, not many Rohingyas have been deported to Myanmar since they came to India.

“In the past few years, Myanmar has accepted some Rohingya refugees, but it is difficult to say if the country would be willing to take a large number,” said Rajeev Bhatacharyya, a senior journalist and analyst based in Assam said. “The process of deportation is long and complicated which begins from the details of the residence furnished by the refugees which are then verified by the host country.  This could take many months.”

He added that there is no specific detention center for Rohingya refugees in northeast India.  In this region, very few Rohingya refugees have been apprehended. Some of them have been sent back to Myanmar and there are some that are waiting to be deported to Myanmar.

The Indian government has not elaborated on a timeline for the deportation process or how long it expects to detain Rohingya in Jammu.

Zaffar Iqbal is a journalist based in Kashmir, India. He has reported for 18 years on armed encounters, environmental issues, crime, politics, culture and human rights. He’s formerly the bureau chief of Jammu and Kashmir for NDTV.