Rohingya refugees in Jammu fear deportation after over 150 detained
On 6 March, the Jammu police detained 155 Rohingya refugees in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The refugees, who were living in camps in Jammu city, were sent to a sub-jail which had been converted into a holding centre in Hiranagar, a town in the Kathua district. They were first called to the Maulana Azad stadium in Jammu for the verification of their credentials and COVID-19 tests. Mukesh Singh, the inspector general of police of Jammu, told the Hindustan Times that those who were detained did not have “valid travel documents required in terms of section (3) of the Passports Act.” He added, “After sending them to the holding centre, their nationality verification will be done as per the prescribed norms. Following that, the process to deport these illegal immigrants will be initiated.”
On 11 March, the Delhi Police also detained 71 Rohingya refugees, who were protesting outside the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the capital, against the detentions in Jammu. According to a human-rights activist who works with Rohingya refugees, between 24 March and 31 March, the Delhi Police detained atleast 19 more refugees. The activist, who did not want to be named, said that 12 people were detained in Delhi on 24 March—six from Shaheen Bagh and another six from the Madanpur Khabar colony. Four days later, two people were detained from the Nizamuddin station. He added that in another round of detentions on 31 March, one person was detained from Shaheen Bagh and four people from the Madanpur Khabar colony.
The verification drive and detentions in Jammu came in the backdrop of an order from the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. The court was hearing a 2017 public interest litigation filed by Hunar Gupta, the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s law and legal affairs wing in J&K. The PIL had sought inquiry to “identify all illegal immigrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh.” In its order, the court asked the government to state what measures it is “taking or proposes to take to identify and to take proper action with regard to the illegal immigrants.” Gupta minced no words about why he filed the PIL. “I raised the concern of illegal Rohingyas living in sensitive Jammu area which is close to Pakistan border,” he told me. “These people should be deported or at least thrown out of Jammu and Kashmir. They were brought to Jammu and Kashmir to change the demography of the region.”
On 26 March, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on an interim plea which sought the immediate release of the Rohingya refugees detained in Jammu. The plea was filed on 11 March by Mohammad Salimullah, a Rohingya refugee in India, as part of a 2017 petition which sought a restrain on deportation of Rohingyas. During the hearing on 26 March, the solicitor general Tushar Mehta argued on behalf of the centre that Rohingyas are “not refugees” and are “illegal immigrants.” Mehta added that the government was verifying their nationality with Myanmar. “We are always in touch with Myanmar and if they confirm so then they can be deported,” Mehta said. “We cannot send an Afghan national to Myanmar.”
There are an estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees in India, living in camps in Jammu, Hyderabad and New Delhi. They crossed the border into India fleeing persecution in Myanmar. However, India is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, which details the rights of refugees, and the legal obligations on countries to protect them. As evidenced by Mehta’s statement in court, India views Rohingya refugees as illegal immigrants.
Since the detentions, a sense of fear pervades the Rohingya camps in Jammu. I visited a camp of Rohingya refugees in Jammu’s Kiryani Talab area and met the families of those who were detained. On the day of the detentions, Zahid Hussein, a 12-year-old, had spent the day in the camp, playing with four of his siblings. Later that night, he learnt that Jafar Alam, his 65-year-old father, and Dil Johar, his 45-year-old mother, had been detained by the Jammu and Kashmir authorities.
Zahid told me that the family had come to India in 2012. “The police picked up my parents from home,” he said, speaking in fluent Hindi. “My father is deaf and mute. He can’t even understand what people say. He can only understand things in signs, he could not even work. He used to beg.” Alam has eight children—three are married and live separately, while the five younger kids, including Zahid, 11-year-old Khalid, ten-year-old Farmeena, seven-year-old Yasmeen and six-year-old Nur, are dependent on his wife. Dil used to work as walnut cracker inside the encampment.
Several other couples have also been separated from their children. Ibrahim and Sazida Begum, also residents of the Kiryani Talab camp, were detained along with one of their daughters, nine-year-old Shamina. Sazida is seven-months pregnant and the couple’s two other daughters, ten-year-old Khalida and three-year-old Noora are still at the camp. Johra Bibi, Ibrahim’s sister, is taking care of the two children. “Noora spends her entire day looking for her mother,” Johra told me. “Sometimes she eats but on other occasions she refuses to eat anything. She says that she wants to see her father and mother. How can I bring her parents here?” She continued, “She misses her mother and cries the entire night. As I have to take care of her, I too don’t get to sleep.”
The police had also picked up Johra, but she said she managed to escape. Johra explained, “They took us to the stadium, made us fill forms and then tested us for Corona. In the evening, the police started putting people into trucks and took them to Hiranagar jail.” She added, “They took peoples’ mothers and sisters, and in some cases they left the kids but took their parents. What crime have we committed? Why are they putting us into prisons?” She told me that she is afraid and does not feel safe even at the camp anymore. Johra, who has two children, said a policewoman took pity on her and let her escape.
After the detentions, most residents have stopped stepping out of the camp for work. “They want to put all of us behind bars,” Noor Begum, a resident of the camp, told me. “We do hard work to fill our bellies but now they have created such a situation that we can’t even sleep at night. Due to fear, we don’t go outside or to work.” She continued, “We left Myanmar and came to India to save our lives. Now, we don’t feel safe here too. We will die out of fear.” With folded hands, Noor demanded that all Rohingya refugees should be released from the Jammu jail. “My daughter-in-law’s elderly mother has been detained,” Noor said. “She suffers from breathing problems and was on medication. Police took her away. Worrying about her mother, my daughter-in-law had stopped feeding her kids.”
The detentions have also disrupted the education of the children of the Rohingya community. Three madrasas, which were being run in different areas of Jammu for Rohingya students, have been temporary closed due to the fear of further detentions. These madrasas, which included one for girls, taught over 400 children.
I spoke to Mufti Mohammad Yaseen, who teaches at one of the biggest madrasas for Rohingya refugees, which is among those that have shut down. “This madrasa was set up around six years ago, and around 135 students study here,” he said. “Many people have been detained and we are hearing that more will be detained.” Yaseen told me that earlier, the students would stay in the madrassa for 15 days and go home for a day to meet their families. But after the detentions on 6 March they sent their students back. “We thought if the students stayed behind in madrassa and the police took their parents then they will get separated. So, we told the students to go to their homes.” Yaseen added, “We are waiting for the situation to improve so that we can open the madrassa and start teaching.”
Mohammad Faisal is a student at the madrassa where Yaseen teaches. His father is among those detained. According to Faisal, his father was called for the verification and subsequently detained. “Now, we are afraid they will arrest us too,” he said. “They are saying that they will deport us back to Myanmar. The situation is getting worse as my father has been detained and our madrassa has stopped teaching us. Before this it was closed down due to COVID-19 and now again our study has been disturbed.”
Mohammad Imran, a 10-year-old student at the same madrassa in Jammu, reiterated similar concerns. “Our teachers are telling us to go home and that we might get separated from our parents if we stay here,” he said. “But we are scared they will take us to jail.” Imran said that he wants to learn English and be a teacher. “I am passionate about learning English because it is an international language,” he said. “If I successfully learn English then I will teach other kids too.”
Many Rohingyas who escaped Myanmar saw India as a beacon of hope that will provide them safety and opportunities to study and flourish. But after the recent detentions, several have started questioning their future here.
In 2012, Abul Kalam, who was then 18 years old, dropped out of the tenth standard and moved to India from Myanmar. He believed he would be able to continue his education here. However, as Kalam did not have the documents needed to take admission in a government school in India, he taught himself English and Hindi. He told me that he used to watch Hindi movies then practice Hindi with his friends. According to Kalam, he has worked as an educator and community mobiliser with two non-profits in Jammu. In 2018, he resigned from the jobs and went to Bangladesh to meet his parents who had recently fled Myanmar due to the violence against the Rohingya community. At present, Kalam’s 82-year-old father and 70-year-old mother live with their four sons in Bangladesh.
In 2020, Kalam came back to India but could not find a job. He then started teaching English, Hindi, Urdu, Burmese and Mathematics to Rohingya students in a madrassa. He said that he is teaching the students in return for three meals a day as the madrasa does not have funds. I spoke to Kalam at a madrassa where he had arrived to collect his lunch tiffin. “After the detention of Rohingyas, I am afraid of going outside and looking for a job,” Kalam said, speaking in English. “They may detain me.”
In future, Kalam said, he hoped to work with the media. “When I went to Bangladesh, I saw international media and realised the importance of English,” he said. “I think if I learnt to speak English well, then I can work with international media and raise the voice of my people.” Talking about the detentions, Kalam continued, “India was 10 times better than the Bangladeshi refugee camp because we could move freely without fear.” He added, “But now we live with fear of being detained. We are called illegal immigrants and infiltrators who will be deported. But we don’t want go back to Myanmar as the situation there is getting worse.”
A BJP spokesperson and police officials have described these detentions as a precursor to deportations. “The process of deportation of Rohingyas has begun,” Anil Gupta, the Jammu and Kashmir BJP spokesperson, told India Today. “It was a long pending demand of the people of Jammu that Rohingyas must be deported.”
Mukesh Singh, the Jammu IGP, further told The Wire, “The list of those Rohingyas who have been sent to the holding centre will be sent to the Ministry of External Affairs, who will in turn hand it over to the Myanmar government, who will verify their identity. They will then be deported and sent back to their country.”
Ali Johar, a co-director at Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, an organisation that advocates for the rights of the community, told me, “As you know situation is getting worse in Myanmar after coup,” he said, referring to the recent military coup in the country. “Protestors have died and many are fleeing the country. In such a situation, verification and detention by Jammu police has created a fear among the Rohingyas. Indian government should look at this situation from the point of a humanitarian crisis.”
I reached out to Sridhar Patel, the senior superintendent of police of Jammu, but he refused to comment. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch, an international human-rights body, appealed to the Indian government to halt all forced returns to Myanmar. “Any plan to forcibly return Rohingya and others to Myanmar will put them back in the grip of the oppressive military junta that they fled,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the HRW’s South Asia director said in a statement on 10 March. “Myanmar’s long-abusive military is even more lawless now that it is back in power, and the Indian government should uphold its international law obligations and protect those in need of refuge within its borders.”
“We left our homeland, homes and business to come and live in shacks in India,” Salimullah told me. “Our purpose is not to live permanently in India but we are here to save our lives and to get justice.”