13 July, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Shivnaryan Rajpurohit
Shivnaryan Rajpurohit
Another World Refugee Day
on June 20 was met with familiar indifference by host countries. Every
year, it is passed off as a necessary irritant when media air and
publish stories on refugees.
Well, this is another sordid tale of Rohingya
refugees--who fled Myanmar--in India, sheltering around 11000 Myanmarese
refugees (a figure obtained from the UNHCR). In June and October 2012,
Indian cities-- Jammu, Delhi, and Hyderabad-- and the state of Mizoram
saw the influx of Rohingya Muslims. The trickle still continues.
In Madanapur Kahdar locality of Delhi, around 200
Rohingyas, tortured and persecuted by military junta and Buddhists,
reside in a makeshift camp. They escaped death and violence in Rakhine
State, western coast of Myanmar. In the camp each family has lost at
least one person during anti-Muslim riots in Rakhine.
The low-lying Rhohingya camp-- owned by the Zakat
Foundation India which helped them last year when they protested outside
the UNHCR office for their refugee status-- is approached by dusty
lanes. Surrounded by drainage and mounds of boulders, the camp is no
less squalid than that of Haiti or Kenya. Propped by bamboos and covered
by tarpaulin sheets, every room is wobbly. Thatched roofs are
paper-weighted by big boulders. During early monsoon showers when Delhi
revelled the Rohingyas bucketed out water from the narrow passages of
the camp.
Dreary eyes and dropped shoulders of Rohingyas are
telltale signs of their hardship in India. This stateless
minority--since they are not recognised in the land of Aung Saan Suu
Kyi-- has been exploited not only in Myanmar but also in Bangladesh
which has recently said that it could not accommodate more people.
Fighting
his tears, differently-abled Abdul Karim, 28, recounts horrific tales
of genocide unleashed in Myanmar. Born to Myanmarese parents in India,
Abdul has been living in India for 28 years, but no citizenship for him:
he does not have birth certificate to prove because he was born in an
Indian jungle when his parents crossed over to India. Still coming to
terms with what happened to his parents--hacked to death by military
junta on their return journey in Myanmar--distraught Karim relives his
gory past every day.
“Nobody owns us,” he says on his stateless status
“Every time we cross the border we have to pay the
price in the form of money or woman to the army, stationed at borders.
We do not have any protection. We are born to tolerate everything
silently,” he adds.
“Recognition is the main thing. Our cries are listened
but not acted upon. We are born to see bloodletting. Now we have
resigned ourselves to torture and persecution,” he says as his eyes well
up.
After finding shelter in the camp, Abdul started
working in a tin factory which paid him partially after one month. “The
owner gives me the slip whenever I visit the factory,” he bemoans. Now
he runs a shop in the settlement.
The most vulnerable sections of the society during
riots and bloodletting are women and children. None of the children goes
to school. Fully aware of the role played by education , Abdul Kayoom
repents,“Today I am a hawker because I was not allowed to study in my
country. I do not want same thing to happen to my children.” “In India
we are at least safe and can practice our religion,” he adds.
In
addition to that, the camp houses around 10 destitute widows who are
ragpickers. One of them is a mother of one. Clad in a ragged vermillion
T-shirt and loosely-draped sari,Samjida Begum, aged 20, lost her husband
last year during the riots in Myanmar. She thereafter fled her country
and came to India by illegally crossing the Indo-Bangladesh border. She
is a ragpicker now, earning Rs 60-70 a day. Having learnt from her
harrowing stay in Myanmar, She is firm to have her baby educated and be
brought up in a peaceful environment. “I want to educate her so that she
should have a good life,” she pledges.
Most of the refugees work as daily-wage labourers, rickshaw pullers, factory workers, and vegetable hawkers.
Out of 5o families around 40 have so far received
temporary refugee cards from the UNHCR which provides them with
subsistence allowance of Rs 1000 to each employed family. However, this
allowance has not touched destitutes, like Samjida Begum, and
handicapped.
But the UNHCR, which has the mandate over 24000
refugees of various nationalities in India, differs on discriminating
against anyone. In an emailed reply, it says that the Rohingyas have
been treated at par with that of other countries. It assures that it can
do more but resources crunch has pushed them backwards on crucial
issues
Everyone
in the camp calls themselves refugees rather than migrants because they
fled to India not on their own volition but due to anti-Muslim violence
in Arakan state. They feared persecution and torture. Moreover their
property had been appropriated by the government and Buddhist hooligans
in Myanmar.
“We had enough to eat and lived happily in our
village, but Buddhists looted everything. We were intimidated there,”
Mohammad Haroon laments, another refugee who escaped from the wanton
killing of Muslims in northern Rakhine State of Myanmar.
When asked about their voluntary repatriation if Aung
Saan Suu Kyi comes to power, they raise their decibel and accuse Suu Kyi
of failing them.
On their expectations from the UNHCR and the
government of India, they contend that it has been satisfactory. They
meekly criticise the government of India and are appalled by
government’s indifference. “For the past one-and-a-half year, nobody
from the government has visited us,” says Mohammad Haroon.
However the UNHCR hails India in some regards. It
says, “Overall, India offers safe asylum to refugees and asylum seekers.
Despite the absence of a national legal framework for refugees, India
has traditionally been hospitable towards refugees.”
If seen in the context of the arrival of some Hindus
from Pakistan it becomes clear that the criterion vary as how to treat
asylum-seekers and refugees. Hindu refugees from Pakistan have afforded
an opportunity to our politicians to score brownie points. In Rajasthan,
the state government met all of them and paid heed to their sufferings.
The RSS and VHP hijacked this issue and shed brotherly tears for the
Hindus. It highlights that our response to refugees is shaped by
religion and ethnicities-- an abominable practice which thrives on
adhocism
Though
India has done next to nothing to Rohingyas but the principle of
non-refoulement has been complied with by India as none of the refugees
has been forcefully repatriated.
Now it seems that refugees’ not-so-troubled stay may face aberration once again
Zakat Foundation which temporary rehabilitated the
Rohingyas on the current location says that this land was granted for an
orphanage. “After securing procedural documents, we will start building
the orphanage. It might take around two months,” says Mumtaz Nazmi,
secretary of Zakat Foundation.
“It’s the turn of the government of India to bail them out,” he asserts
Nobody knows what is in store for the Rohingyas once
the Foundation starts removing them to build an orphanage. Their
trepidation is palpable as they know sooner or later they will have to
vacate the place for orphanage.
In broad strokes India’s laxity to frame a refugee law
is the culprit. It has been belaboured by intellectuals. They have
asked India to sign the Refugee Convention 1951 and Protocol 1967, and
to promulgate a legal framework for refugees. Despite these urges, the
cavalier attitude of the government has not caved in.
However, judicial intervention in this regard comes as
a breath of fresh air. The Supreme Court has declared that Article 21
and Article 14, among other constitutional rights, are applicable to
everyone residing in India. Judicial intervention notwithstanding,
government’s intransigence to frame a law is inexplicable. It is need of
the hour to pass a law when forced displacement has reached its peak in
18 years.
By framing a law, India will not only help itself but
thousands of refugees from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Myanmar and Bhutan.
Shivnaryan Rajpurohit is from Bikaner, Rajasthan and a graduate of the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. He blogs at akpushpa@wordpress.com
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