Rohingya could face expulsion
NEW DELHI — India’s government said Monday that it has evidence there are extremists who pose a threat to the country’s security among the Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar and settled in many Indian cities.
India’s Supreme Court was hearing a petition filed on behalf of two Rohingya refugees challenging a government decision to deport the ethnic group from India.
The lawyer representing the Rohingya said the decision was discriminatory.
“This is clearly a case of religious discrimination and an attempt to arouse an anti-Muslim feeling,” Prashant Bhushan said.
He said the government had evidence of the presence of militants among the refugees who fled a crackdown by the Myanmar government.
The government said the decision on whether Rohingya refugees should be allowed to remain in the country should be made by the government.
“The court has no business to interfere in such matters of what they call illegal immigrants or illegal migrants,” the government said in an affidavit.
Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that the government will provide evidence of Rohingya links with extremist Islamic groups and illegal transfer of money at the next hearing.
A Rohingya insurgent group in Myanmar which claimed responsibility for recent attacks on police posts, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, says it has no links to outside jihadi organizations.
The petition was filed after India’s junior home minister, Kiren Rijiju, said last month that state governments had been ordered to identify and deport illegal immigrants, including Rohingya Muslims.
Rijiju said India would even deport all Rohingya refugees, including some 16,500 who have been registered by the UN refugee agency as refugees.
Many Rohingya living in India fled persecution in Myanmar in 2012. According to the UN, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar since a renewed military crackdown began on Aug. 25.
About 412,000 fled to Bangladesh, but some have also reached India, Nepal and Pakistan in recent weeks.
The next hearing in the case is set for Oct. 3. The Associated Press
U.S. President Donald Trump made his debut at the UN on Monday, using his first moments at the world body to urge the 193-nation organization to reduce bureaucracy and costs while more clearly defining its mission around the world.
But while Trump chastised the UN — an organization he sharply criticized as a candidate for president for its spiralling costs — he said the U.S. would “pledge to be partners in your work” in order to make the UN “a more effective force” for peace across the globe.
“In recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential due to bureaucracy and mismanagement,” said Trump, who rebuked the UN for a ballooning budget. “We are not seeing the results in line with this investment.”
The president pushed the UN to focus “more on people and less on bureaucracy” and to change “business as usual and not be beholden to ways of the past which were not working” while also suggesting that the U.S. was paying more than its fair share to keep the New Yorkbased world body operational.
But he also complimented the steps the UN had taken in the early stages of the reform process. His measured tone stood in stark contrast to his last maiden appearance at a global body, when he stood at NATO’s Brussels headquarters in May and scolded the member nations for not paying enough and refusing to explicitly back its mutual defence pact.
While running for office, Trump labelled the UN as weak and incompetent, and not a friend of either the U.S. or Israel. But he has softened his tone, telling ambassadors from UN Security Council member countries at a White House meeting this year that the UN has “tremendous potential.”
Trump more recently has praised a pair of unanimous council votes to tighten sanctions on North Korea over its continued nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests.
Trump’s big moment comes Tuesday, when he delivers his first address to a session of the UN General Assembly. The annual gathering of world leaders will open amid serious concerns about Trump’s priorities, including his policy of “America First,” his support for the UN and a series of global crises. It will be the first time world leaders will be in the same room and able to take the measure of Trump.
The president on Monday praised UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who also spoke at the reform meeting and said he shared Trump’s vision for a less wasteful UN to “live up to its full potential.”
The U.S. has asked member nations to sign a declaration on UN reforms, and more than 120 have done so.
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said Trump’s criticisms were accurate at the time, but that it is now a “new day” at the UN. An organization that “talked a lot but didn’t have a lot of action” has given way to a “United Nations that’s action-oriented,” she said, noting the Security Council votes on North Korea this month.
Guterres has proposed a massive package of changes, and Haley said the UN is “totally moving toward reform.”
Trump also planned to hold separate talks Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Emmanuel Macron. U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the conversations would be wide-ranging, but that “Iran’s destabilizing behaviour” would be a major focus of Trump’s discussions with both leaders.
Breakthroughs on a Middle East peace agreement are not expected. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-inlaw and senior adviser on the issue, recently returned from a trip to the Middle East.
The U.S. is the largest contributor to the UN budget, reflecting its position as the world’s largest economy. It pays 25 per cent of the UN’s regular operating budget and more than 28 per cent of the separate peacekeeping budget — a level of spending that Trump has complained is unfair.
The Trump administration is conducting a review of the UN’s 16 far-flung peacekeeping operations, which cost nearly $8 billion a year. Cutting their costs and making them more effective is a top priority for Haley.