Hardeep Singh Puri’s statement sparked outrage and confusion because Rohingyas are illegal immigrants who need to be deported

*Paromita Das

The situation involving Muslims from Rohingya living in camps in India caused a significant uproar today. Hardeep Singh Puri, the union housing and urban affairs minister, asserted that the government has decided to relocate Rohingyas living in camps to Delhi EWS flats. The flats intended for the economically weaker section in Delhi’s Bakkarwala neighbourhood will have all essential amenities, police protection, and they will also be given UNHCR IDs, the union minister said, calling it a historic decision.

 

While left-liberals welcomed this announcement, the right wing, who make up the majority of the BJP’s support base, reacted with great outrage on social media. Because Hardeep Singh Puri’s remarks completely contradicted everything the government had previously said about Rohingya Muslims, people were not only outraged but also perplexed. The government has claimed that Rohingyas are illegal foreigners and security threats and that they will be deported in court, in parliament, and in press statements. A Supreme Court stay order has stopped the government from deporting them even though it had already begun.

 

The Modi administration has responded to calls for it to accept the Rohingyas as refugees by arguing that since India is not a party to the UN’s convention on refugees, it is not obligated to do so. The Rohingyas are classified as a security threat by the Home Ministry as well. As a result, when Puri mentioned respecting the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, he greatly increased confusion.

 

The Union Home Ministry, however, effectively asserted that the Union Housing and Urban Development Minister was providing false information, which calmed the storm. The MHA stated that it has not been instructed to provide EWS flats to the Rohingyas in a statement issued to further clarify the situation. The home ministry reiterated its position that the Rohingyas will be deported to their country of origin, Myanmar, calling them illegal foreigners.

The MHA further disclosed that it was the Delhi government that had suggested moving the Rohingyas, but the MHA had rejected this. The ministry has instructed the Delhi government to remain in place, and they will do so until Myanmar is contacted about the deportation issue.

 

The Home Ministry further disclosed that the Rohingyas would be housed in detention facilities until their deportation rather than EWS apartments. The Ministry has also requested that the Delhi government immediately designate the current Rohingya camps as detention facilities.

It is noteworthy that the Home Ministry referred to the Rohingyas as illegal foreigners rather than using the term to describe them. In spite of Minister Puri’s assertions, this shows that the Modi administration has no intention of granting them refugee status. The government made it clear that the Rohingyas would not be housed in apartments but rather deported to their country of origin.

 

The Rohingya issue

 

The Rohingya are a group of stateless people based in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, with the majority of them being Muslims. Most of them are originally from East Bengal/Bangladesh, but since Myanmar does not recognise them as citizens of that nation, they are stateless individuals who hold no nationality.

The Rohingya name for the community is not accepted by the Myanmar government; Bengalis are used instead. They were asked by the government to list Bengali as their ethnicity in the census in 2014, but almost all of them refused, saying they had been living in Rakhine for centuries. They were unable to present any supporting documentation, though.

 

The Rohingyas have been implicated in the genocide of Hindus in Myanmar, and the government of Myanmar also accuses them of participating in terrorist activities. As a result, the military began expelling them from their villages in 2012 on a variety of grounds.

Since that time, Rohingyas have begun to emigrate, primarily to Bangladesh, from their home country. The Rohingya genocide by the Burmese military in 2016–2017 was the culmination of their actions against the community. Although the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a Rohingya terrorist organisation, was the focus of the military crackdown, civilian Rohingyas were also targets.

Bangladeshi Rohingyas

It is interesting to note that the Bangladeshi government is moving refugees from the overcrowded Cox’s Bazar refugee camp due to ongoing violence, crime, and general lawlessness. The government has already begun the process of moving some of them to Bhasan Char, an uninhabited island in the Bay of Bengal that was formed only 20 years ago.

Millions of Rohingya fled to nearby nations as a result of the crackdown on them. The majority of them settled in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where they established the Kutupalong Refugee Camp, the largest refugee camp in the world.

On the island, the Bangladeshi government has constructed 1440 buildings to house about 1 lakh Rohingya refugees. Even though the remote island had better facilities, both the refugees and the international aid workers preferred to remain in Cox’s Bazar city.

Some Rohingya refugees left their home country and travelled to Malaysia, Thailand, India, and other nations in the area.

Approximately 40,000 Rohingyas are thought to be living in India at the moment, compared to Bangladesh’s estimated 9 lakh Rohingyas who have fled their country out of fear of persecution. While initially undetected and mostly concentrated in the north-eastern states bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar, they gradually began to appear in a number of other states, including West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala.

 

The Rohingyas in India are not refugees; they are illegal foreigners

The Indian government has been very clear that Rohingyas are illegal immigrants and that they must be expelled from the country. All foreign nationals residing in the country without valid travel documents, according to the government, are illegal immigrants who must be dealt with in accordance with the law.

 

To their political advantage, a number of political parties are attempting to halt deportations. The TMC is alleged to have relocated a significant portion of the group to West Bengal. Amanatullah Khan, an AAP legislator, and the Delhi government of Kejriwal are accused of systematically settling 300 illegal Rohingyas in Delhi. The MHA statement from today reveals that the AAP government intends to keep them long-term or permanently by removing them from the camps.

 

There are still obstacles in the way of the deportation of Rohingyas from India, despite the Supreme Court’s lack of a general stay order. Every time a group of Rohingyas is chosen for deportation, they petition the courts, and the judges issue a stay order, effectively postponing the deportation indefinitely.

 

The Myanmar government is generally unwilling to accept them back into the nation because they are an unwelcome community. The Junta government had categorically refused to accept them back in the early years following the crisis. Although the Myanmar government last year finally agreed to accept them back, they have insisted that all Rohingyas must be scrutinised before being allowed to enter the country, which has delayed the procedure.

 

Additionally, the Rohingya people themselves do not want to go back. The Rohingyas prefer to reside in refugee camps rather than go back to their country of origin because they are not granted citizenship and because they are afraid of further persecution. The Rohingyas are still able to live in India and other nations. Their estimated 40,000 official numbers in India are likely to be greatly underestimated because, as was the case with Bangladeshi immigrants, it is nearly impossible to keep track of unauthorised foreigners.

Indian policy regarding refugees and the UNHCR

India does take in refugees, such as the Afghans who fled their country last year after the Taliban took control, but the government still has the final say over who it sends back and who it lets stay.

 

Despite the fact that the UNHCR has registered about 20,000 Rohingyas and given them refugee ID cards, the Indian government maintains that this does not grant the Rohingyas any rights and that it is under no obligation to accept them as refugees. The Indian government’s position on the Rohingyas registered by UNHCR is that while it cannot stop UNHCR from registering the Rohingyas as refugees in India, the government is not required to accept them as refugees.

 

“They are all illegal immigrants, as far as we are concerned.” They don’t have a reason to be here. Any illegal immigrant will be deported, declared Kiren Rijiju, the then-Minister of the Interior, in 2017.

 

As the government has consistently stated that Rohingyas are illegal foreigners who will be deported, this demonstrates that the government’s position on the matter has not changed since the beginning. As a result, it is unclear what prompted Hardeep Singh Puri to make those remarks, which caused widespread outrage and confusion. People had assumed that because he oversees the housing and urban development ministry, his department may have been involved in plans to relocate Rohingyas to EWS apartments. However, it has since been made clear that no such plans are currently being carried out by the central government.

 

With the MHA’s clarification, it appears that Puri was misled by the media report. Puri had shared an ANI report from August 16th that claimed that the Rohingyas would be relocated to the flats. According to the report, senior representatives of the Delhi government, Delhi Police, and Ministry of Home Affairs were present when the decision was made. The MHA has since denied any involvement in the decision and asserted that it has given the Delhi government instructions to not relocate the Rohingyas.

 

It is noteworthy that, even according to the UNHCR, refugees are required to live wherever they are accepted. The Rohingyas came from Bangladesh, where the government is in charge of the refugee camps with assistance from international organisations. Therefore, the Rohingyas must return to the designated refugee camp in Bangladesh if they do not want to return to Myanmar.