India deports seven Rohingya to Myanmar after SC go-ahead
guwahati — India on Thursday deported its first group of Rohingya Muslims since the government last year ordered the expulsion of members of the Myanmar minority group and others who entered the country illegally.
The deportation was carried out after the Supreme Court rejected a last-minute plea by the seven men’s lawyer that they be allowed to remain in India because they feared reprisals in Myanmar. They were arrested in 2012 for entering India illegally and have been held in prison since then.
“Seven Myanmarese nationals have been deported today. They were handed over to the authorities of Myanmar at Moreh border post in Manipur,” Assam Additional Director General of Police (Border) Bhaskar J Mahanta told PTI over phone.
The Supreme Court said it would allow their deportation because Myanmar had accepted them as citizens. Government attorney Tushar Mehta told the judges that Myanmar had given the seven certificates of identity and 1-month visas to facilitate their deportation.
Defence attorney Prashant Bhushan said the government should treat them as refugees, not as illegal migrants, and send a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to talk to them so they would not be deported under duress.
The Centre told the apex court that the seven Rohingya illegally migrated to India in 2012 and were convicted under the Foreigners
Act. The Centre also informed the court that Myanmar has issued a certificate of identity to the seven immigrants along with one-month visa to facilitate their deportation.
Those who were deported include Mohammed Jamal, Mohbul Khan, Jamal Hussain, Mohammed
Yonus, Sabir Ahmed, Rahim Uddin and Mohammed Salam and are in the age bracket of 26-32 years.
Most Rohingya Muslims in Buddhist-majority Myanmar are denied citizenship and face widespread discrimination.
Human rights group Amnesty International has blamed Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and the country’s government for “burying their heads in the sand over the horrors unfolding in Rakhine State”.
About 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017 to escape a brutal campaign of violence by Myanmar’s military. An estimated 40,000 other Rohingya have taken refuge in parts of India. Less than 15,000 are registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Many have settled in areas of India with large Muslim populations, including the southern city of Hyderabad, the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, New Delhi, and the Himalayan region of Jammu-Kashmir. Some have taken refuge in northeast India bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar. —