'Separated and Detained': Will Biden and Modi Discuss the Plight of Rohingya Refugees in India?

The Wire
Priyali Sur and Dan Sullivan
21 June 2023 

Biden will likely talk to Modi about China, climate change, and human rights. But what may be absent from the discussion is the hypocrisy of India’s stance on refugees, particularly the Rohingya genocide survivors of Myanmar.

A boy looks on from a makeshift tent at the Rohinya refugee settlement area in Kalindi Kunj, New Delhi, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022. Photo: PTI/Ravi Choudhary

 

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi sits down with President Joe Biden for an official State dinner on June 22, the conversation will surely be filled with pleasantries about the mutually beneficial relations between the world’s oldest and largest democracies.

 

Why India is attacking the rights of Rohingya refugees

MIDDLE EAST EYE
Misbah Haqani
20 June 2023

The state's 'national security' discourse is being used as a weapon in service of Islamophobia

Members of the United Hindu Front hold a protest to demand the deportation of Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslims in New Delhi in August 2018 (AFP)

Over the past three decades, the borders of the concept and practice of security have expanded dramatically - and vaguely, inasmuch as anything and everything now embodies the potential to be constructed as a security threat.

Burma’s Displaced People in India and Bangladesh

Geneva, 5th April 2004

Paper presented by Chris Lewa

Burma’s borders with India and Bangladesh have received much less international attention than the Thailand-Burma border. A major reason is the difficult access to refugees in these border areas due to policies of the host governments. Nevertheless, outflows from Burma to India and Bangladesh are no less significant. More than 50,000, mostly Chin, have fled to India while up to 200,000 Rohingya are found in Bangladesh in and outside refugee camps.

An essential difference appears when comparing the overall situation along the eastern and western borders of Burma. In Chin and Arakan States, bordering India and Bangladesh respectively, there is little ethnic armed resistance and the military regime does not resort to ruthless counter-insurgency tactics to assert control, as is the case along the Thai-Burma border. Therefore, the worst forms of human rights violations such as massive forced relocation, torture, summary executions, are less frequent, but this does not mean that the situation is noticeably better. Over the last decade, the Burma Army’s presence has rapidly expanded along the western border. The establishment of new battalions has resulted in two significant consequences:

India Faces a Two-Front Challenge From Post-Coup Myanmar

THE DIPLOMAT
By Niranjan Marjani
April 26, 2023

Myanmar’s deteriorating situation risks destabilizing India’s Northeast, while the junta’s embrace of China poses threats in the Indian Ocean.

 

 The military coup in Myanmar in February 2021 has altered India’s engagements with the Southeast Asian nation. Myanmar has been an integral part of India’s Act East Policy, with India developing connectivity projects like the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project linking India’s Northeast region to Southeast Asia. India has thus moved cautiously with regard to Myanmar since the coup, avoiding a confrontational approach with the military government.

How India Betrayed the Rakhine People – And Why It Matters Today

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Kyaw Hsan Hlaing
February 10, 2023

25 years ago this week, India’s army crushed an incipient Rakhine separatist force in the Andaman Islands. In western Myanmar, memories of the incident linger.

Twenty-five years ago this week, India’s government betrayed the people of Rakhine State in western Myanmar, when its armed forces smashed a nascent Rakhine revolutionary group in a remote part of the Andaman Islands. In the years since, the Indian government has never referred publicly to the incident, but it continues to resonate among the Rakhine people, who remember it as Gen. Khaing Raza’s Day, or Betrayal of India over Rakhine Revolution Day. In a 2009 book, the prominent Indian human rights lawyer Nandita Haksar described the incident as “infamous.”

Six Rohingyas Detained In Poll-Bound Tripura

NET
Northeast Today
Abhijit Nath, NET Correspondent, Tripura
25th January 2023 

Agartala, January 25, 2023: In the poll-bound Tripura, six Rohingyas have been detained at Matinagar area under 15-Kamalasagar assembly constituency in Sepahijala district on Wednesday morning which has triggered tension.

It is learned that the six Rohingya youths have been staying in an abandoned house of Moti Miah at Matinagar area for about a week. They were cooking and eating in that room. Although the owner of the house, Moti Mia, is not at home for the past few days.

Release five Rohingya: HC

THE HINDU
HYDERABAD 

September 15, 2022
Marri Ramu

 

 

Condition of Rohingya in Myanmar is not conducive for deportation: counsel


Telangana High Court on Thursday directed the State government to release five Rohingya (who are Myanmar nationals) who were detained in Cherlapally central prison immediately, observing that the State government had no power to detain them.

Pronouncing judgment in a batch of five writ petitions filed by relatives/families of Rohingya, a bench of Justices Shameem Akther and E.V. Venugopal set aside orders issued by DGP M. Mahender Reddy detaining the five Rohingya. Their detention is “wholly unjustified, ex facie illegal and without specific delegation of power under section 3 (2) (g) of the Foreigners Act”, the bench said. 

ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ဒုက္ခသည်အရေး တိုင်းပြည် ‘ဝန်ထုပ်ဝန်ပိုး’ ဖြစ်နေ (ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်ဝန်ကြီးချုပ်)

VOA
ဗွီအိုအေမြန်မာပိုင်း
၀၅ စက်တင်္ဘာ၂၀၂၂
Reuters

 ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်အရေးဟာ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံအတွက် ကြီးမားတဲ့ ဝန်ထုပ်ဝန်ပိုးတခု ဖြစ်နေတာကြောင့် နိုင်ငံတကာ အသိုင်းအဝိုင်းက ကူညီဖြေရှင်းကြဖို့ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်ဝန်ကြီးချုပ် တိုက်တွန်းလိုက်ပါတယ်။

“ရိုဟင်ဂျာပြဿနာဟာ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်အတွက်ကြီးမားတဲ့ဝန်ထုပ်ဝန်ပိုးတခုဖြစ်နေပါတယ်။နိုင်ငံကြီးတခုဖြစ်တဲ့ အိန္ဒိယက လက်ခံထားလို့ ရပေမဲ့ သိပ်များများစားစား မရှိပါဘူး။ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်မှာတော့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၁ ဒသမ ၁ သန်းကျော်ရှိနေပါတယ်။ ဒါကြောင့် ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေ နေရပ်ပြန်နိုင်မယ့် အစီအစဉ်တွေ လုပ်ကြဖို့ နိုင်ငံတကာအ သိုင်း အဝိုင်းနဲ့ရော၊ အိမ်နီးချင်းနိုင်ငံတွေနဲ့ပါ တိုင်ပင်ဆွေးနွေး နေရတယ်။” လို့ ANI သတင်းဌာနနဲ့တွေ့ဆုံ မေး မြန်းစဉ် ဝန်ကြီးချုပ် Sheikh Hasina ကပြောဆိုသွားတာပါ။

Rohingya Issue May Find Prominence in Modi-Hasina Talks; Bangladesh Keen on Cooperation on Energy & Food Security with India

NEWS18

Abhishek Jha
September 04, 2022, 

An important issue that the Bangladesh PM is expected to discuss with PM Modi is regarding the Rohingya refugees. (File Twitter Photo)

During her visit, Hasina will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 6th September at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. She will also call on President Droupadi Murmu and Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar the same day.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will be on a four-day state visit to India from September 5-8. She will be accompanied by a high-level delegation, including a number of ministers and industrialists.

During her visit, Hasina will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 6th September at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. She will also call on President Droupadi Murmu and Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar the same day.

‘It’s a nightmare, every day’: Rohingya in India live in fear

Aljazeera
By Rifat Fareed
Published On 25 Aug 2022

Some 40,000 Rohingya refugees live in India where fears are growing as calls for deportations to Myanmar increase.

Rohingya refugees in New Delhi say they live in fear of deportation back to Myanmar [Suhail Bhat/Al Jazeera]

New Delhi, India – On the fifth anniversary of the start of military atrocities against the Rohingya in Myanmar, those of them living in India find themselves caught in a web of uncertainty and fear as the Indian government tightens restrictions on refugees in the country.

Rohingya: ‘Kill us, but don’t deport us to Myanmar’

 B B C

Rajini Vaidyanathan
BBC South Asia Correspondent

Yasmin is one among thousands of Rohingya children who are unable to get proper education

In her four fragile years, Yasmin has lived a life of uncertainty, unsure where she belongs.

Born in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, she is unable to return to her ancestral village in Myanmar. At the moment, a dingy room in India's capital, Delhi, serves as home.

Like hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people - an ethnic minority in Myanmar - Yasmin's parents fled the country in 2017 to escape a campaign of genocide launched by the military.

Rohingya issue: Problem of ‘illegal foreigners’ in India

THE TIMES OF INDIA
August 21, 2022,
SD Pradhan in Chanakya 

The recent debate in the media on the status of Rohingyas have brought their intractable problem to the forefront. A look at the facts is relevant to the issue to understand its legal and security dimensions as also deep-seated hatred between the Burmese and Rohingyas.

The Rohingyas claim that they constitute an ethnic Muslim minority (predominantly Sunnis), who lived in Rakhine (earlier Arakan), speaking a distinct language since the 8th AD. There is evidence available that between 9th and 14th Century, they came into contact with Arab traders and got converted to Islam and the Mrauk U kingdom from 1429 to 1785, encouraged the settlement of Muslims in the Arakan area. According to Dr Francis-Buchanan a British geographer and physician, in 1785 Bamar- the ethnic Burmese group- occupied Rakhine and pushed out about 35,000 Rohingyas, who migrated to Bengal in British India to escape atrocities, while some others continued to stay there.

Rohingya Repatriation To Be On Agenda During Bangladesh PM's India Visit

NDTV
All IndiaAsian News International
June 29, 2022

PM Sheikh Hasina will raise the issue of problems arising from the illegal migration of Rohingyas to Bangladesh from Myanmar. 

Dhaka:Repatriation of Rohingyas are likely to figure on the agenda of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during her upcoming visit to India, scheduled in September this year.

Bangladesh Foreign Secretary, Masud Bin Momen in an exclusive interview with ANI said that PM Hasina, who will arrive in India on a bilateral visit on the invitation of PM Narendra Modi, will raise the issue of problems arising from the illegal migration of Rohingyas to Bangladesh from Myanmar, like the growth of radicalization, drug trafficking, as well as, human trafficking of women and children.

Bangladesh to raise Rohingya issue during PM’s India visit

PRESS XPRESS
June 29, 2022

The issue of repatriation of Rohingya refugees is to be on the agenda during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s upcoming visit to India. This information was given by the Indian news agency ANI in a report today (on June 29). PM Hasina is scheduled to visit the neighbouring country in early September this year.

According to the report, Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Masood bin Momen said in an exclusive interview with ANI that PM Sheikh Hasina will pay an official visit to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There, she will raise various issues arising out of the illegal migration of Rohingyas from Myanmar to Bangladesh. These include the rise of fundamentalism, drug trafficking and human trafficking including women and children. “The only possible solution for us is the repatriation of the Rohingya to Rakhine State (Myanmar),” said Momen. I am sure that when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she will also raise the issue of how India can help us in this repatriation effort.

Why Are Rohingya Refugees Returning From India To Bangladesh?

THE I DIPLOMAT 

By Rajeev Bhattacharyya
June 03, 2022

India’s plans to put them in detention centers before deporting them to Myanmar is driving the reverse exodus.

Over the past several years, Rohingya refugees have been apprehended on many occasions while crossing the border illicitly from Bangladesh to India. Last month, two batches were arrested in Assam and Tripura in India’s northeast. But their travel itinerary was different from the past.

This time around, their plan was to return to Bangladesh instead of settling in India.

Why Delhi BJP blames Rohingya and illegal Bangladeshi immigrants for Jahangirpuri violence?

TIMES NOW
TN National Desk
Updated Apr 17, 2022

Delhi BJP leaders called the clashes during a Hanuman Jayanti procession in northwest Delhi’s Jahangirpuri a “conspiracy” and demanded a probe into the role of “illegal immigrants” in the incident. Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta and party MP Manoj Tiwari said the attack on the procession was not a spontaneous incident, but a conspiracy.

 

Clashes broke out between two communities during the procession in Jahangirpuri on Saturday

 

New Delhi : After communal clashes broke out in Delhi ’s Jahangirpuri on Saturday evening, the BJP has pinned the blame on illegal immigrants.

Calling the clashes during a Hanuman Jayanti procession in northwest Delhi’s Jahangirpuri a “conspiracy”, Delhi BJP leaders have demanded a probe into the role of “illegal immigrants” in the incident.

Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta and party MP Manoj Tiwari said the attack on the procession was “not a spontaneous incident, but a conspiracy”.

Deportation of Rohingya woman from India sparks fear of renewed crackdown

THE GUARDIAN
Aakash Hassan
Thu 14 Apr 2022 

Hasina Begum was separated from her family and forced to return to Myanmar despite her refugee status. Hundreds of others now face expulsion  

Rohingya refugees at a makeshift camp on the outskirts of Jammu, India, last year. Photograph: Channi Anand/AP

The deportation of a Rohingya woman back to Myanmar has sparked fears that India is preparing to expel many more refugees from the country.


Hasina Begum, 37, was deported from Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago, despite holding a UN verification of her refugee status, intended to protect holders from arbitrary detention. Begum was among 170 refugees arrested and detained in Jammu in March last year. Her husband and three children, who also have UN refugee status, remain in Kashmir.

India, China and the Rohingya issue

ASIA TIMES
by Pema Tseten
March 24, 2018 

Rohingya refugees stretch their hands to receive aid distributed by local organizations at Balukhali makeshift refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 14, 2017. Photo: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

Myanmar occupies a pivotal position in India’s strategic calculus as New Delhi establishes a connection with Southeast Asia through its “Look East” or “Act East” policy. The region has received the highest level of patronage under different Indian administrations. This was  intensified under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his “Neighborhood First” policy with an active focus on improving ties with India’s immediate neighbors.

China and India's game on Rohingya

the Independent

Md. Tareq Hasan
1 March, 2021

The biggest thing is that the Rohingyas were forced to flee from Myanmar 3 years ago, but Aung San Suu Kyi could not take any initiative to talk to the Bangladeshi authorities and take them back.

A military coup in Myanmar on February 1 could hamper the repatriation and resettlement of Myanmar's Rohingya population. The international community and world leaders are currently keeping a close eye on the situation in Myanmar and the Rohingya, but China and India, Myanmar's trusted allies, have a key role to play in this issue. But neither China nor India has yet commented on the Myanmar coup. What kind of impact the military coup in Myanmar could have on the Rohingya has given rise to a surprising question.

Indio- Myanmar Borderlands Ethnicity, Security and Connectivity Edited By Pahi Saikia and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhary