Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi :India’s home ministry said on Monday it would confidentially share intelligence information with the Supreme Court showing Rohingya links with Pakistan-based militants, in a bid to get legal clearance for plans to deport 40,000 Rohingya Muslims.
The Supreme Court is hearing an appeal lodged on behalf of Rohingya against the deportation plan proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.
The ministry is arguing that the hardline stance was justified by the national security threat posed by illegal immigrant Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, from where many have crossed into India.
“It is submitted that continuance of Rohingyas’ illegal immigration into India and their continued stay in India, apart from being absolutely illegal, is found to be having serious national security ramifications and has serious security threats,” the ministry told the court in an affidavit.
It said the illegal influx of large numbers of Rohingya into India began four to five years ago, long before an exodus that saw more than 400,000 Rohingya flee to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 to escape a Myanmar military counter-insurgency offensive that the United Nations has called “ethnic cleansing”.
The home ministry went on to say the government had reports from security agencies and other authentic sources “indicating linkages of some of the unauthorised Rohingya immigrants with Pakistan-based terror organisations and similar organisations operating in other countries.”
The affidavit said there was also information on Rohingya involvement in plots by Islamic State and other “extremist groups” to ignite communal and sectarian violence in India.
Senior home ministry official Mukesh Mittal said the Indian government would privately show the court material gathered from “sensitive investigations” to substantiate the claims in its affidavit.
The court will next hear the matter on Oct. 3.
Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who filed the plea on behalf of two Rohingya men, will file a rejoinder to the government’s affidavit, his office told Reuters.
Rohingya in India voiced worries that they were being unfairly tainted by the allegations and sought more understanding for their plight.
“We feel helpless and hopeless,” said Rohingya youth leader Ali Johar, who came to India in 2012 and lives with his family in a Delhi settlement.
“The world’s largest democracy has given us shelter but they should handle this situation more empathetically.”
Modi’s government has been criticised by activists for not speaking out against Myanmar’s recent military offensive against Rohingya insurgents, and right-wing groups in India have begun vilifying Rohingya living there.
The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and regarded as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots that date back centuries. More than 800,000 Rohingya currently live in Bangladesh.
Earlier in the day, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju asked the International Human Rights Commissions to not spread false information against India on Rohingya Muslims matter. “It (Rohingya issue) is a sensitive matter. Whatever the Government of India does, it will be in the nation’s interest. I would like to request the International Human Rights Committee and Commissions to not spread anything wrong against India,” Rijiju said.
Rijiju’s comments came after the United Nations Human Rights Commission slammed India on its decision to deport Rohingyas. The UNHRC had said, “I deplore current measures in India to deport Rohingyas at a time of such violence against them in their country. Some 40,000 Rohingyas have settled in India, and 16,000 of them have received refugee documentation. The Minister of State for Home Affairs has reportedly said that because India is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention the country can dispense with international law on the matter, together with basic human compassion.”
They are the nowhere people — described by the UN as the most persecuted minority in the world — leading tenuous, uncertain lives in an alien country they are learning to call home.
And the thought that they may have to go back fills them with dread.
Even 12-year-old Noorul Islam, who talks with the wisdom of somebody much older when he says he would never want to go back to his homeland.
“I am happy here and I love going to school. I would never like to go back to my homeland because the military kills children there. I want to request the government not to send us back to Myanmar,” he said.
Home is a small makeshift tent next to huge piles of garbage in south Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh and school is the nearby government one in Jasola.
It was late one night in the summer of 2012 that his life changed for ever, sealing his family’s fate as refugees.
Noorul was then just seven, but remembers in detail how militants attacked their home in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. He also remembers their escape from death and the early days of struggle in Bangladesh from where they were turned out and made their way to India.
“We went hungry for days until we arrived in India and my father started selling fish to earn a living,” he said, tears welling up at the memory.
Noorul’s family is one of the 70 staying in the Shaheen Bagh camp. There are about 1,200 Rohingyas in the national capital, some in Shaheen Bagh and the others in a camp in Madanpur Khadar.
With hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, mostly Muslims, being forced to flee from Rakhine this month and take refuge in Bangladesh, their plight has hit global headlines. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said Rohingya Muslims face a catastrophic humanitarian situation.
Those in India face their own share of anxieties with the government threatening to deport them.
“I don’t want to live as a refugee my whole life. But even if I think of going back to my village in Myanmar, those nightmarish memories of military attacks haunt me,” said Sabikun Nahar, amongst those in the Shaheen Bagh camp.
“They burnt our house and forced us to follow Buddhism. We were even banned from going to the local mosque and we were so scared that we wouldn’t sleep at night,” she said.
The 21-year-old had left her village in 2012 and moved to Bangladesh with her relatives. She lived with her parents in the camp for a year but extreme poverty and no employment avenues drove her to India.
In 2013, Nahar found herself in Shaheen Bagh. She is now married to Mohammed Zubair, 30, a fellow refugee in the camp who works with an NGO in the city.
He earns about Rs 12,000 every month and the couple finds it difficult to make ends meet. But Nahar shudders at the thought of being sent back.
“The situation has worsened since 2012. I want the whole world to support us. I wanted to call my parents who are now in Bangladesh to Delhi but with the government here thinking of deporting us how will I call them,” she asked.
Constant worry — about their present, their future and the well-being of their families in Myanmar or in Bangladesh — is the subtext of all their lives.
Abdul Rahim, 35, who runs a small grocery shop in the camp and earns about Rs 300 a day, has been desperately trying to get in touch with his brother back home.
“There are many relatives who are still stuck in the country. I am worried about my brother and his family because they haven’t reached Bangladesh yet,” said Abdul, who fled from Myanmar nine years ago.
He said he is shocked by the government’s plan to deport them. “I would rather die here than go back to my country where people are facing atrocities and violence.”
Hoping for some intervention, Shabeer, who works with the Rohingyas Human Rights Initiative (ROHRIngya), has written to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
“We wrote a letter to the foreign minister on August 23 and are waiting for a reply. I want to ask the government here why they want to deport us,” he said.
The government told Parliament on August 9 that more than 14,000 Rohingyas, registered with the UNHCR, are at present staying in India.
Today, the Centre told the Supreme Court that Rohingya Muslims are “illegal” immigrants in the country and their continuous stay had “serious national security ramifications”.
According to the Centre’s affidavit, filed in the apex court registry, the fundamental right to reside and settle in any part of the country is available to citizens only and illegal refugees cannot invoke the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to enforce the right.
