The Rohingya genocide is a series of ongoing persecutions by the Myanmar government of the Muslim Rohingya people forcing 1 million to flee to other countries, including India, where they entered in 2017. However, now an affidavit, the Centre called Rohingyas “absolutely illegal migrants” who posed “serious threats to the national security” cannot assert the right to settle in India under the Constitution’s Article 21. The Centre has begun the process for deporting Rohingyas after receiving a confirmation from Myanmar regarding their nationality.
The military crackdown occurred from October 2016 to January 2017, and the second has been occurring since August 2017.
The crisis forced over a million Rohingya to flee to other countries. Most fled to Bangladesh, resulting in the creation of the world’s largest refugee camp, while others escaped to India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia.
The persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar dates back to the 1970s, persecuted regularly by the government and nationalist Buddhists. In late 2016, Myanmar’s armed forces and police started a major crackdown on the people in Rakhine State in the country’s northwestern region. The Burmese military was accused of ethnic cleansing and genocide by various United Nations agencies.
They estimated that 116,000 Rohingya were beaten, and 36,000 were thrown into fires, pregnant mothers had abdomens ripped open and baby fetuses were thrown into fires. A study from Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh estimated in January 2018 that the military and local Rakhine population killed at least 24,000 Rohingya people and women were gang-raped, and other forms of sexual violence conducted against 18,000 Rohingya women and girls.
International Criminal Court officials, human rights groups, journalists found evidence of wide-scale human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings; summary executions; gang rapes; arson of Rohingya villages, businesses, and schools; and infanticides.
With the military operations executed against the Rohingyas, they fled from Myanmar in 2017, the largest human exodus in Asia since the Vietnam War. According to UN reports, over 700,000 people fled or were driven out of Rakhine State, and took shelter in neighboring Bangladesh as refugees as of September 2018.
About 40,000 Rohingya, who face persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, had crossed the borders into India after a military-led crackdown in 2017. Several million have been displaced and live in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
The 2016 military crackdown on the Rohingya people drew criticism from the UN (which cited possible “crimes against humanity”), the human rights group Amnesty International, the U.S. Department of State, the government of neighboring Bangladesh, and the government of Malaysia.
The Burmese leader and State Counsellor (de facto head of government) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was severely criticized for her inaction and silence over the issue and did little to prevent military abuses. Myanmar was criticized for the prosecutions of journalists under her leadership. On 23 January 2020, the International Court of Justice ordered Myanmar to prevent genocidal violence against its Rohingya minority and to preserve evidence of past attacks.
The August 2017 persecution was in response to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacks on Myanmar border posts. The UN described the persecution as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. In late September 2017, a seven-member panel of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal found the Burmese military and authority guilty of the crime of genocide against the Rohingya and the Kachin minority groups.
While many of the Muslim Rohingya have been staying in India since 2017, now the Jammu and Kashmir administration under the BJP began the process of identifying undocumented immigrants on March 6. Approximately 150 of them were sent to the holding center under the Foreigners Act stating they did not have valid travel documents.
While UN Special Rapporteur, E. Tendayi Achiume appealed to stop the deportation appealing to the Supreme Court, on Friday, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on the plea seeking immediate release of 150 Rohingya refugees detained in Jammu and Kashmir.
While Prashant Bhushan, a well-known lawyer in the Supreme Court, petitioner Mohammad Salimullah’s counsel, said that Rohingya in Jammu were in fact ‘refugees’ fleeing persecution in Myanmar, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Centre, maintained that Rohingya are not ‘refugees’, but ‘illegal migrants’.
Supreme Court refused to hear United Nations Special Rapporteur after Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir objections.
Prashant Bhushan, representing the petitioner said that these people had to flee Myanmar fearing for their lives. He submitted a report stating, “”Mere fact that a country responsible for their fleeing wants back cannot be a ground to send them back when we know they will be subjected to risk. This is the principle of refoulement.”
“We are not the capital of refugees all across the world,” Mehta responded.
Adding to the complexity, a Jammu-based NGO, Forum for Human Rights and Social Justice has also filed an application before the Supreme Court stating that the plea to stop the Rohingya deportation must not be entertained since the settlement of the Rohingya in Jammu was “a part of a larger design” and an attempt to destabilize the country.
The Court after hearing all parties reserved its order in the interim application.
The controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed in parliament in 2019, which stirred protests over India, provides Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, or Christians. However, Muslims are not given citizenship, thus, the Rohingya, who are Muslims, are not eligible to seek Indian citizenship under the CAA.
It has to be noted that on depriving Rohingyas refuge, Article 21 of the Indian Constitution is directly violated, which states, “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to a procedure established by law.”
This right has been held to be the heart of the Constitution, the most organic and progressive provision in our living constitution, the foundation of our laws.
By deporting the Rohingyas, they will be put back in a dangerous territory open to torture and death in the dreaded land from which they had escaped.
Thus it is rightly said by the petitioner seeking the release of the Rohingya refugees that deporting them back violates the rights under Article 21 and would put them at serious risk of grave bodily harm.
Somewhere, it appears here, humanity has lost its way over the travesty of self-preservation, something old India is not familiar with, having given refugees in the past to Tibetans, Chinese, Bangladeshis, among others persecuted and no one has been deported back to unsafe territories until now.
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