LEFT OF CENTRE
Mamata puts a spanner in New Delhi’s plan to deport the Rohingya ‘ sensitively’
When Shamima, a Rohingya refugee imprisoned at Dum Dum Central Jail in Kolkata, gave birth to a child in August 2016, she named him ‘ Azad’ ( free). As a refugee and prison inmate facing trial under the Foreigners Act, this note of hope was about all she could offer her baby boy. Just two months earlier, the young mother had been arrested while crossing into India to join her husband and in- laws, believed to be employed as wage workers in Hyderabad.
Azad, born in Kolkata, could claim to be Indian. But Shamima, like scores of others, is in legal limbo— Myanmar doesn’t acknowledge the Rohingya as citizens, while India is looking to deport 40,000 refugees like her. Strictly applied, the rules say Shamima would have to leave Azad behind if she were deported as Delhi desires.
Deportation after “engagement with Myanmar and with a sober and sensitive approach”, as foreign secretary S. Jaishankar describes it, is Delhi’s official line on the refugee crisis. The West Bengal government opposes this approach, insisting that the Constitution guarantees the right to life to everyone, not just Indian citizens.
Although prison records peg the official number of Rohingya refugees in West Bengal’s jails and shelter homes at just 55, officials say there is reason to suspect that many of
OFFICIALS SUSPECT THAT MANY OF THE 3,000 ‘ BANGLADESHIS’ IN JAILS ARE, IN FACT, ROHINGYA REFUGEES
the 3,000 Bangladeshis in jails are in fact Rohingya refugees. But despite instructions from the ministry of external affairs, Chief Minister Mam ata Banerjee isn’t in any hurry to identify and repatriate them.
West Bengal’s Commission for the Protection of Child Rights has moved the Supreme Court against Delhi’s bid to deport the Rohingya: “You cannot deport children and their mothers to a conflict zone. It goes against the principles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” says Ananya Chatterjee, the commission’s chairperson. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative ( CHRI) has also sought withdrawal of the Centre’s instructions to state governments on similar grounds.
Encouraged by her government’s stand, Madhurima Dhanuka, who heads the state’s prison reforms programme, says the Centre’s orders on deporting Rohingya refugees will be fruitless, since deportation requires that Myanmar first acknowledge them as its citizens.
In West Bengal, Banerjee’s government is doing all it can to comfort such refugees. The state child commission has arranged baby food, mosquito nets and blankets, besides a subsistence allowance for young mothers. And perhaps to underline the compassionate approach, at a press conference on September 19, Banerjee said: “Commoners are not terrorists. If commoners suffer, humanity will suffer.” Predictably, BJP state secretary Col. Diptangshu Chowdhury says this is simply more evidence of Mamata Banerjee’s “politics of [ Muslim] appeasement”.