New York Times (May 18, 2012)
Thousands of Myanmar Rohingyas Struggle for Refugee Status in India
By PAMPOSH RAINA
Adnan Abidi/Reuters
A family that belongs to the ethnic Rohingya community from Myanmar
gathered at a makeshift camp in New Delhi on May 14, 2012.
Since descending upon New Delhi more than a month ago, ethnic Rohingyas
from Myanmar have been rounded up twice by police and ordered to leave,
but the stateless group is determined to get the Indian government to
recognize them as refugees.
“India is a great democracy, and that is why we want to stay here,”
said Ziaur Rehman, who heads the group of Rohingya asylum seekers who
have been camping in India’s capital since April 9 to lobby the
government for refugee status.
Mr. Rehman spoke to India Ink on Wednesday from the Okhla neighborhood
in south Delhi. Until Tuesday morning, he, along with an estimated
2,500 people originally from the Rakhine state in Myanmar, had been
living in a makeshift camp near Vasant Kunj in southwest Delhi.
The deserted piece of land upon which they had pitched their tarpaulin
tents in Vasant Kunj belonged to the government, but their presence
raised the ire of the local residents in the wealthy South Delhi
neighborhood and resulted in the asylum seekers’ eviction. The police
packed them into trucks and dropped them off at several locations,
including the Delhi railway station and the main interstate bus
terminal in Kashmiri Gate in north Delhi, Mr. Rehman said.
This was the second time that the Rohingya had been forced to move
since they arrived in the capital. Initially, they had squatted outside
the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the
upscale Vasant Vihar area for nearly a month. They were demanding
“refugee status, help with access to health care, school admissions for
their children, resettlement and financial assistance,” said Nayana
Bose, associate external relations officer for the organization in New
Delhi.
India is not a signatory to the United Nations convention relating to
the status of refugees, which defines who qualifies as a refugee and
refugees’ rights in their host country. Since there is no national law
that deals with foreign refugees, the government will decide whether or
not to grant the Rohingyas refugee status on a case-by-case basis.
Asylum seekers can be given the United Nations refugee cards, but only
at the discretion of the UN agency. The Rohingyas said that the agency
told them that the process of granting such cards could take time.
The Muslim minority group has suffered persecution for decades in
predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. A large number of Rohingya have fled to
neighboring countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh,
and several thousand have entered India through Bangladesh.
Some of these people who gathered in the Indian capital have been
living in the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Hyderabad and
Rajasthan, for several years. “They first approached the UNHCR in
2009,” Ms. Bose said, referring to the refugee agency, “but many have
lived for longer periods of time in India.”
The Rohingya presence in India is not officially documented, as they
have not officially registered with the government’s foreigner offices.
Only 1,800 Rohingyas have registered with the United Nations, while
several thousand are estimated to be living in India.
A spokesman from the Ministry of External Affairs, Syed Akbaruddin,
said that unlike people from other nationalities, like the Afghans or
Tibetans, who have been living in India, the Rohingya are stateless.
“They are not accepted as citizens in Myanmar,” he said.
Pamposh Raina for The New York Times
Yasmin Ara, 21, and her husband, Mohammad Zakaria, 22, pose with their
UNHCR issued asylum seeker cards and the Myanmar government issued
white colored “state guest” card, at a makeshift camp in New Delhi on
May 11, 2012.
When India Ink visited the Rohingya camp last week near Vasant Kunj,
several people flashed laminated white cards, which they said had been
issued by the Myanmar government, that described the cardholders as
“state guests” – meaning they were not entitled to any citizens’ rights
in Myanmar.
Mr. Rehman said the Rohingyas had been imported as laborers from across
the world during the British colonial rule in then-Burma, but they have
never been recognized as citizens by the country.
Like many others in the camp, he landed in the northern Indian city of
Jammu in 2011 after he crossed the border from Bangladesh, where
several other Rohingyas worked as day laborers. After working as a
medical assistant at a hospital in Jammu for three months, he moved on
to Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh and taught at madrasas, or schools
where instruction is based on the teachings of the Koran.
Other Rohingyas call the popular Mr. Rehman “doctor” even though he
attended school only up to grade 10 in Myanmar. “They did not let us
study any further,” he said, referring to the government.
The Rohingyas who approached the United Nations refugee agency have
been issued asylum-seeker cards, which are valid for only four years
from their date of issue. While that is the only proof of
identification that they have in India, many of them say that it is
useless.
Nazeer Hussain, 28, who worked as a laborer in Jammu, said, “Police in
the state harassed me, asking me what my father’s name was, as this
card does not have his name written on it.”
He said he was not paid for his work and that the United Nations asylum
seeker card did not help resolve anything. “We will not leave till we
get the refugee card,” he said.
The United Nations agency’s chief of mission, Montserrat Feixas Vihe,
who met with representatives from the Rohingya community on Tuesday,
said in a statement that the Indian government will be issuing
long-term stay visas for asylum seekers from northern Rakhine state who
are registered with the agency.
But G.V. Venugopala Sarma, the joint secretary in the Ministry of Home
Affairs who deals with foreigners, said the Rohingyas need to go back
to the Indian cities in which they were residing and register with the
foreign regional registration office. The superintendent of police in
their city, who serves as the foreign registration officer, will
conduct a thorough verification based on the internal guidelines of the
government of India, he said.
“Only after such a verification, a case-by-case assessment will be made
whether the person has a well-founded fear of persecution or it is
purely for economic reasons they want to seek the refugee status,” Mr.
Sarma said. After that, a decision will be made on whether or not they
will be granted a long-term visa, he added.
He defended the way the Indian government has dealt with refugees in
the past, saying, “India has always had an impeccable record of taking
care of refugees of all kinds in a humane manner.”
The Rohingya presence in New Delhi has not gone unnoticed by
politicians. On Wednesday, the home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram,
was questioned in the Rajya Sabha, or upper house of the Parliament, by
a fellow member, Balbir Punj, about the Rohingya camp in the capital.
“They demanded that they should be given refugee cards by the UNHCR,”
said Mr. Chidambaram, “under the mistaken impression that the UNHCR
will give a refugee card to anyone, who has come from any other
country, and that the card will give them access to a number of
benefits. Perhaps, they were misguided by some people. They have all
been persuaded to go back to the places from which they came.”
Another member of Parliament, Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of
India (Marxist), told the home minister: “If people from other
religions have been allowed and Muslims have been denied, then it is
very unfair.”
Mr. Chidambaram denied that there was any discrimination against the
Rohingya asylum seekers on religious grounds.
As the politicians debate the plight of the Rohingyas’, the Rohingyas
have defied the authorities as they continue to stay put in New Delhi,
at least for now.
Asad Ghazi Ansari, the president of the nongovernmental organization
Nawa-e-Haque, which has been helping the Rohingyas with food and
medicine, said that most of the Rohingyas returned from where the
police had left them.
On Wednesday, about 500 of them had assembled in Batla House, in the
Okhla neighborhood in south Delhi, on what Mr. Ansari called “community
land,” which meant that the land belonged to members of the Muslim
community.
He said that his organization is making arrangements to get the other
Rohingya together and set up another makeshift camp for them at Batla
House.
“The issue was discussed in the Parliament today,” Mr. Ansari said. “As
the movement is gaining momentum, we won’t let it die.”
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