Rohingya refugees flee India fearing mass deportation ahead of election

Persecuted Muslims say data campaign is first step in their expulsion to Burma

ROHINGYA refugees are fleeing India and going into hiding, fearing that a government campaign to collect personal information is a prelude to mass deportation.

The data-gathering, which includes biometric information, follows the Indian government’s transfer of seven Rohingya back to Burma last month.

Critics say the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is targeting the persecuted Muslim community ahead of a general election due in May.

“We are sure the Indian government is preparing to send us back to Burma,” said Abul Foiz, who fled a refugee camp in the northern city of Jammu last week.

Intelligence officers had visited the camp and asked him to write down the date when he entered India and his original address in Burma.

“In the past few days more than 200 Rohingyas have disappeared from Jammu,” Mr Foiz said. “No one wants to return to Burma where we are still facing violence and persecution.”

Abu Hossain, 65, told The Daily Telegraph how he fled a camp in Jammu after six years and entered Bangladesh last week. “Our camps were set alight by people we suspect were from the Hindu groups. Police said they could not help us… the situation was turning very hostile,” Mr Hossain said from his new home in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, across the border in Bangladesh.

Rohingya in Buddhist-majority Burma have faced discrimination for decades and last year the United Nations accused the government in Rangoon of “genocidal intent” after a military crackdown forced 700,000 to flee.

The Indian home ministry refused to discuss deportation of Rohingya with The Telegraph.

Because it has not signed the 1951 UN refugee convention, India treats the roughly 40,000 Rohingya in the country as illegal immigrants rather than refugees.

About 18,000 Rohingya registered with the UNHCR, the world body’s refugee agency, which issues ID cards to help them avoid arrest, detention and deportation. However, many are still scared of deportation, said Ko Ko Linn, a Bangladesh-based Rohingya activist.

Many are now “on the run”, he said.

The UNHCR in New Delhi said it was “concerned about the anxiety in the Rohingya community”.

Although Rohingya lived in India without much trouble for decades, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP has fanned resentment since it won power in 2014. Last year, it ordered all states to identify and deport Rohingya, saying they were “more vulnerable” to recruitment by terrorist groups.

Kolkata-based human rights activist Ranjit Sur said: “Rohingya human rights have been sacrificed at the altar of electoral and communal politics.”