THE WIRE
Umer Maqbool
18/Jul/2023
Srinagar: Clashes
broke out inside Jammu & Kashmir’s lone detention centre on Tuesday
(July 18) morning after incarcerated Rohingya refugees staged protests
to seek their release or repatriation to Myanmar.
Around
270 Rohingya refugees, including women and children, have been lodged
in the detention centre for more than two years and have been
intermittently protesting against their continuous detention.
Trouble
erupted in the Hira Nagar sub-jail, which was notified as a holding
centre in March 2020, when Rohingya refugees tried to step out of the
jail in protest seeking their release. “They tried to break open the
gate and come out, but we closed the gate,” Superintendent of Kathua
district jail and holding centre in-charge, Koushal Kumar told The Wire.
He said that a few persons also sustained minor injuries in the incident.
“I
cannot tell you the exact number of persons injured. I myself was hit
by a stone on the nose,” he said, adding that Rohingya’s pelted stones
on the prison authorities.
Koushal
said they have been frequently protesting in the detention centre to
seek their repatriation to Myanmar. “We have submitted their
representations to the higher-ups,” he said.
A
few videos of the incident have also been shared in some WhatsApp
groups. In one such video, a person can be heard saying that teargas
shells were fired upon them. “We have not eaten anything for the past 27
days. They fired teargas shells on us. Nobody has come to listen or see
us. They also beat up women and children,” the person can be heard
saying.
In
another such video, a young person can be seen lying on the ground
while men and women are returning presumably from the entrance gate of
the detention centre.
The Wire, however, has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of these video clips.
According to officials, police reinforcements were rushed to the detention centre after the incident.
In
May this year, the refugees went on a protest and refused to eat on two
occasions. They demanded that they either be deported to Myanmar or
released.
Officials
from the civil administration and the prison department had then
reached out to refugees and assured them that they would take up their
demand with senior officials.
Today’s
incident has left Rohingya families living in different parts of Jammu
worried about the well-being of their relatives lodged in the detention
centre.
“I
want to go to Kathua jail but I am scared. My sister and brother-in-law
have been there for the past two years. I am worried about them after I
came to know that teargas shells were lobbed in the detention centre,”
said Ataullah (name changed), a Rohingya refugee living in Jammu.
He said they are facing worse treatment here than in Myanmar.
“What
is our fault and crime? The authorities should tell us what wrong we
have done or which law we have broken. We came here to save our lives
but we had never thought that we would have to undergo this,” he said.
When
contacted, station house officer, Hira Nagar Police station, Amit
Sangra said that they have registered a First Information Report (FIR)
in the incident.
Detention of Rohingyas and rightwing campaigning for their ouster
In
March 2021, J&K authorities detained more than 150 Rohingya
refugees living in the Jammu region after the high court directed them
to spell out what measures were being taken to identify and act on
“illegal immigrants.” The court passed the direction responding to a
petition filed by Hunar Gupta, who is affiliated with the Bharatiya
Janata Party.
In
2017, Gupta had approached the court seeking directions to the state
government to shift all “illegal immigrants” from Myanmar and Bangladesh
from J&K to any other place.
His
petition also sought necessary directions to a former retired judge to
hold an inquiry to identify all the “illegal immigrants” from Myanmar
and Bangladesh living in J&K.
The rightwing groups in Jammu have been campaigning for the ouster of Rohingyas from the city.
Who are Rohingya?
The
Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority group who have lived for
centuries in a predominantly Buddhist Myanmar – formerly known as Burma.
The
Rohingya have suffered decades of violence, discrimination and
persecution in Myanmar and have been denied citizenship since 1982.
Thousands of Rohingya have fled to different countries to escape persecution in Myanmar.
Around 6,000-7,000 Rohingya have been living in Jammu after arriving in the city between 2012 to 2017.
Umer Maqbool is a Kashmir-based independent journalist.
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