SC to hear PIL seeking release, protection of Rohingyas

BIG NEWS NETWORK

ANI

8th April 2021,

New Delhi [India], April 7 (ANI): The Supreme Court will pass its order on a petition seeking release and protection of over 150 Rohingya refugees in Jammu and Kashmir.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde will pronounce the order on the intervention application filed by Mohammad Salimullah, a Rohingya refugee, through advocate Prashant Bhushan.

Fire becomes new fear for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

DW
Author Arafatul Islam
07.04.2021

Several deadly fire incidents in overcrowded Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh over the past several weeks point to a "very worrying trend," say experts.

A Rohingya refugee stands among the remains of burnt materials after a fire broke out recently at a camp in Cox's Bazar

Three Rohingya men died after a fire gutted shops at a makeshift market near the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh's southeastern Cox's Bazar district on Friday.

Their bodies were found in one of 20 shops burned after the fire broke out before dawn at the market near the Kutupalong refugee camp.

Thousands of Rohingya Refugees in Northwest India Live in Fear of Deportation

VOA

VOA News

06 April 2021

 Thousands of Rohingya refugees live in temporary camps in India’s northwestern Jammu and Kashmir region, where they fear deportation back to Myanmar. VOA Urdu Service’s Zubair Dar visited a camp of people in Bathindi Narval who said they fled abuses and do not want to go back. Roshan Noorzai narrates the story. VOA Khmer's Leakhena Sreng narrates the story in Khmer. 

Link : Here

Desperate Burmese refugees flee to Thailand and India to escape crisis

The Guardian

Amrit Dhillon in New Delhi and Emma Graham-Harrison
Sat 3 Apr 2021 

Tensions rise on borders as thousands seek safe haven from military crackdown

Karen villagers being carried by refugees and Thai paramilitaries after crossing border at a Thai-Myanmar border in Mae Hong Son province. Photograph: Royal Thai Army Handout/EPA

Myanmar’s escalating crisis is spilling across its borders, as thousands of refugees seek safe haven in India and Thailand in the wake of the military coup and bloody crackdowns on anti-coup protesters.

Authorities in both countries have tried to block new arrivals, fearing that a steady flow may become a flood, if unrest spreading through Myanmar worsens. A top UN official warned last week that the country is “on the verge of spiralling into a failed state” if action is not taken soon to stem the bloodshed.

The catastrophic human costs of the regime’s brutal policies is visible in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees are living. Most fled after a military campaign that began in 2017, and have lived in limbo ever since.

India: Rising detentions spark panic among Rohingya

AA

Ahmad Adil 

NEW DELHI

01.04.2021

4 more Rohingya held by authorities in Indian capital, community says more than 12 detained over past week

At least four Rohingya refugees were detained in New Delhi on Wednesday for not having “proper documents,” giving rise to further apprehensions among community members living in India’s capital.

“There were four of them and they were sent to the Foreigner Regional Registration Office,” Rajendra Prasad Meena, a senior police officer, told Anadolu Agency, without sharing any further details.

Another cop, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also gave a short response, saying the Rohingya refugees were detained because they did not have “valid documents.”

'How Can a Human Being Be Illegal?': Lawyer for Rohingya Questions India's Deportation Plans

THE WIRE
Ismat Ara
01/APR/2021

A large number of Rohingya refugees have been detained over the last month and the threat of deportation looms over them.

Rohingya children playing in a camp in Delhi. Photo: Ismat Ara

New Delhi: Indian authorities are preparing to deport Rohingya refugees currently lodged in detention centres made for undocumented migrants. Close to 300 Rohingya were detained across India just in the month of March 2021.

In 2017, thousands of Rohingya people had fled Myanmar, either by foot or sea, after the Myanmar army’s targeted violence against the community. However, the Rohingya had been fleeing Myanmar to take shelter in neighbouring countries including India for years before that too.

Column by Mahfuz Anam: The trouble with our only other neighbour

The Daily Star
Mahfuz Anam
April 02, 2021

Global response focuses on the coup, ignoring the Rohingya problem

File photo of demonstrators protesting the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar. Photo: Reuters/Stringer

Myanmar is our only other neighbour, with India being the overwhelming first. To the credit of our policymakers, we have tried our best to maintain good relations with Myanmar notwithstanding their treatment of Rohingyas, forcing nearly 300,000 of them upon us thirty years ago, in the early nineties.

We really wanted to have a cordial relation, if not a warm one, with them. We thought if the whole world could trade with them, why couldn't we (especially after the withdrawal of western sanctions)? Thus, we reacted to the Rohingya influx of the nineties very softly. The tactics appeared to work when more than 230,000 of the 250,000 refugees from the first influx were repatriated, with the UNHCR playing an active role in the process. With about 20,000 remaining, we heaved a sigh of relief hoping that the rest would also be repatriated in time.

Rohingya: Dhaka asks Delhi to play strong role in UNSC

Dhaka Tribune

UNB
March 28th, 2021

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina receiving her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi at her office ahead of the Bangladesh-India bilateral talks on Saturday, March 27, 2021 PID

Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation deal on November 23, 2017

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has requested that India, as a member of the United Nations Security Council, play a “strong role” in the early repatriation of the displaced Rohingyas to Myanmar.

Prime Minister Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi recently reiterated the importance of the safe, speedy, and sustainable return of Rohingyas to their homeland for the greater security of the region.

The secret network helping hundreds of Myanmar police flee to India

WHBL

Sheboygan, WI, USA / 1330 & 101.5 WHBL
By Devjyot Ghoshal
Syndicated Content
Mar 25, 2021

AIZAWL, India (Reuters) - Strung across remote mountain settlements, a secret network of activists and volunteers is helping spirit hundreds of defecting Myanmar policemen away from the military’s brutal crackdown on dissent and into relative safety in a small northeastern Indian state.

Their escape - by car, motorcycle and on foot through densely forested terrain - is often guided by volunteer-led groups on both sides of the border, according to accounts from at least 10 people who are involved in the loose-knit network or have used it to cross the border. Once in India, local activists and residents provide food and shelter in safe houses, the people said.

India Burma

India Burma by Bob Andrepont

Supreme Court to hear plea for release of detained Rohingya refugees on March 25

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

PTI
March 18 2021,

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Thursday said it would hear on March 25 a fresh plea seeking immediate release of detained Rohingya refugees in Jammu and restrain the Centre from implementing any order deporting them to Myanmar.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, which initially observed that there was no urgency, took note of the submissions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan that the detained Rohingyas may be deported to Myanmar where the Army has taken over and violence is taking place.

"Ok, then we will hear the Rohingya matter on Thursday," said the bench which also comprised justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian.

On March 11, an interim plea was filed in a pending PIL seeking immediate release of detained Rohingya refugees in Jammu and restrain the Centre from deporting them.

Tripura police detain Rohingya migrant

THE NORTHEAST TODAY

TNT Bureau
AGARTALA:
18 Mar, 2021 ,

Tripura police, on Tuesday, detained a Rohingya migrant while he was returning to Delhi after visiting his mother in Bangladesh.

The Rohingya migrant has been identified as Sona Mia from Myanmar.

According to the police, Mia left his country and fled to Bangladesh in 2009. In 2010, he entered India through the Malda district of West Bengal.

Mia was living in Delhi for the past 11 years and had set up a small business with a Rohingya group.

Rohingya youth lands in Tripura jail on his way to Delhi

THE NORTH EAST AFFAIRS

NEA News Service
March 17, 2021

The accused was identified as Sona Mian (40) has been doing business in New Delhi for over a decade and his family is living in Chittagong of South Bangladesh.

Agartala: A local court of Sepahijala district in West Tripura has sent a Rohingya youth to jail yesterday for illegally crossing the border from Bangladesh.

The accused was identified as Sona Mian (40) has been doing business in New Delhi for over a decade and his family is living in Chittagong of South Bangladesh.

‘Death sentence awaits us’: Coup-hit Myanmar officers in India

AlJazeera
Sadiq Naqvi
17 Mar 2021

  Dozens of Myanmar police officers and citizens who fled February 1 coup to India now face an uncertain future and fear for their families back home.

Kunga (name changed) at an undisclosed location in Mizoram where Myanmar citizens are taking shelter [Sadiq Naqvi/Al Jazeera]

Mizoram, India – Weeks after the February 1 military coup in Myanmar, Kunga, a 24-year-old low-ranking member of the Myanmar army, was ordered a new set of duties: to spy on the civil disobedience movement (CDM) protesters in Tonzang town of Chin state.

Soon after, he deserted the military, joined the CDM and escaped to neighbouring India.

KEEP READING

• More protesters killed in Myanmar as military tightens grip
• On the front lines of the Myanmar military’s crackdown
• In Myanmar, rising food and fuel prices endanger the poor: UN
• Envoy of Myanmar civilian gov’t defiant after treason charge

Kunga is among dozens of Myanmar security officials and citizens who have escaped to the northeastern parts of India amid a military crackdown on anti-coup protesters. Reports say at least 180 people have died in the violence in Myanmar.

Rohingyas worst victims of state terror, deserve humanitarian approach: Anjuman Sharie Shian

News Desk
11 Mar 2021

J-K Anjuman Sharie Shian has urged the state and central government to take a humanitarian look at the Rohingya issue who are the worst victims of state terror of Burma .

In a statement, J-K Anjuman Sharie Shain’s Aga Syed Mujtaba Abbas Mosavi said the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis is epitome of inhuman approach of the forcible displacement of Muslim Myanmar nationals from the Arrakkan and Rakhine state of Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand in 2015, collectively dubbed “boat people” by sane voices .

Dozens of Rohingya camping outside UNHCR office in India detained

Aljazeera
Bilal Kuchay
11 Mar 2021

At least 88 Rohingya detained in New Delhi while camping outside the UN refugee body’s office in second such move in a week.

Rahima Kato, a Rohingya woman, displays identity cards of her family members issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at their makeshift camp on the outskirts of Jammu [File: Channi Anand/AP]

New Delhi, India – Dozens of Rohingya refugees have been detained while they were camping outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in the Indian capital, New Delhi – the second such move in a week.

“A total of 88 people have been detained,” an officer at Vikaspuri police station in the capital’s southwest told Al Jazeera over telephone on Thursday.

India police detain more than 150 Rohingya refugees, begin process for deportation

JURIST
Ananaya Agrawal | National Law U. Delhi, IN
MARCH 9, 2021

The Indian police on Saturday apprehended at least 168 Rohingya refugees living in the northern territory of Jammu valley under the directions of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) administration. The detained Rohingya, including the elderly and children, have been taken to a makeshift holding centre near the Hira Nagar jail in Kathua district of Jammu where local authorities have begun the identity verification process using biometrics and other documents-based verification, such as place of stay.

The drive aims to trace Rohingyas residing without legal documentation in Jammu and comes after the Home Department of the J&K administration issued a notification last Thursday under Section 3(2)(e) of the Foreigners Act, 1946.

Separated from families, uncertainty looms over deportation in Rohingya settlements

Hindustan Times

Ravi Krishnan Khajuria, 

Jammu
UPDATED ON MAR 09, 2021 

Over the weekend, police rounded up the 169 people from the city and took them to the Hiranagar jail detention centre

Rohingyas at Kiryani Talab in Jammu on Monday (HT Photo)

The family members of the 169 Rohingya community members who were taken to a detention centre at a prison in Jammu have now been confined to their settlement clusters in the city’s Kathua district, where many described a sense of dread since the detentions and repeated appeals to the government of India not to deport them to Myanmar.

Rohingya Muslims fear deportation in India after dozens detained by police

THE PRESS TV
Sunday, 07 March 2021 

Rohingya refugees carry their belongings as they leave a Rohingya refugee camp in India's northern region of Jammu on March 7, 2021. (Photo by AFP)

Dozens of Rohingya Muslims, who had fled to India from death and violence in Myanmar, have been detained and facing possible deportation.

Media reports said Sunday that Indian police arrested more than 150 persecuted Rohingya refugees found living illegally in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir and a process had begun to deport them back to Myanmar.

Dozens of Rohingya were now living in a makeshift "holding center" at Jammu's Hira Nagar jail after local authorities conducted biometric and other tests on hundreds of people to verify their identities.

Panic grips displaced Rohingyas in Jammu

THE HINDU

Peerzada Ashiq
JAMMU, MARCH 07, 2021

SecSecurity personnel stand guard outside the central jail in Srinagar. File | Photo Credit: NISSAR AHMAD

150 immigrants rounded up during “verification drive”

Panic gripped the displaced Rohingya population in Jammu on Sunday, a day after the J&K administration rounded up over 150 immigrants as part of “a verification process”.

“We will go one day. It’s just that the situation in Myanmar is not safe for us. The police are summoning our people [in Jammu]. Thirteen men who were asked to visit the police stations on Saturday have not returned,” Salamtullah, a Rohingya Muslim who escaped the genocide in Myanmar between 2016-17, said.