Many Rohingya refugees hold a refugee card issued by the United Nations High Commission, but they think a detention center for illegal migrants will at least have toilets and potable water, unlike their camp on the Yamuna bank. “It’s almost like we’re living on one street. We can’t go back to Burma and we can’t run to another place,” sighs Mohd Salimullah, who came to Delhi in 2013. “My family of five lives in a 10ft x10ft tent, which is our bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, everything. Women and children suffer a lot due to lack of toilets.
The Rohingya have been living in the camp on the banks of the river since 2013, having been relocated to a nearby location in 2018 after their temporary residences were burnt down by a fire. After another fire broke out in their huts last year, they returned to their old place.
a disappointed Mohammad Johar, 27, says he stopped worrying about the future because it was pointless to think that life would improve. Freshly disappointed for their status as refugees, he says, “We have no home, no country and no nationality. We have nothing in Delhi and nothing to lose now. How bad could it be?”
After Jauhar’s father, a businessman in Myanmar, was arrested, his family was forced to seek refuge in Bangladesh in 2008. “After the riots in that country, I came to Delhi in 2012 on a long-term visa because we heard that there was peace. India and we may get citizenship after a few years,” says Johar. “Not only have I got Indian citizenship, but I have spent half my life as a refugee in terrible conditions. Under normal circumstances, I would have been living a comfortable life as a businessman in Myanmar.” Johar earns some money as a daily wage labourer, but he claims that due to his refugee status, he gets work for only 12 days a month.
Maryam, 27, a single mother of three children, has perhaps the most difficult life among the Rohingyas. “Our tents often get flooded during the rains. Both the ration and our clothes get wet,” she murmurs. She is a garbage picker, the only option she has is to earn some money. Like the others in his camp, Mary Most residents express their dismay at the lack of facilities at the camp, despite having UNHCR refugee cards.
“Myanmar will not accept us if we are deported from India,” the carpenter shouts. Kabir Ahmed, “We were forced to flee our country when we faced genocide. Hundreds of villages where the Rohingya lived were burned and children were set ablaze. Women were gang raped and men were killed,” Ahmed said.
Terming the Rohingya as “illegal foreigners” by the Union Home Ministry who should be detained and deported to Myanmar, Sabbar Kyaw Min, a representative of the Rohingya community in India and director of the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, says, “At a time when As the world recognizes Myanmar’s war crimes against the Rohingya, India must stand in solidarity with the community that has been left stateless and has no recourse to justice rather than detain and deport us.
Min claims that since 2018, Indian authorities had deported at least 17 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar even though they had refugee cards or documents of interest issued by UNHCR India. At least 270 Rohingya asylum seekers and refugees are in custody in Jammu and Kashmir and 24 in Delhi, including four children.
“In January 2020, the International Court of Justice acknowledged the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and ordered the country to take all measures to prevent the killing of Rohingya or causing physical or mental harm to members of the community,” says Min. “But we continue to face persecution in Myanmar. As a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council and as a country that has taken persecuted refugees to their home countries, we urge India to give the Rohingya the necessary tools to claim their right to life. This will be in line with India’s long history of kindness.”