Barred By Muslim Countries, Rohingya Muslims Sneaking Into India

[INDIC]

BBC News - Stateless Burmese Rohingyas lament India 'hardships'

Since last week, more than 1,000 Rohingya people displaced from Burma have been camping in the Indian capital, Delhi, seeking refugee status from the UN refugee agency. Over the years, thousands of Rohingyas - a Muslim minority group in Burma - have fled to India to escape persecution. Avinash Dutt of the BBC Hindi service speaks to some to them to find out about their problems.

MOHAMMED ALAM

I live in Jammu in Indian-administered Kashmir along with my wife and seven children. To make ends meet, I deal in scrap plastic.

I had come to Delhi to seek refugee status from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but we didn't get it. Now we are going back. Unlike in Burma, my life is safe in India, but there is nothing else.

Here, our children don't get admission in schools and we are not allowed to bury our dead in graveyards.

I believe if I have refugee status, my life will be better. If I have a refugee card, we would be entitled to some monthly allowances and our children would get to see school from the inside and our dead would become eligible for a grave.

Whatever happens, I will not go back to Burma. There they will imprison me or bury me alive.

MOHAMMED YASIN

People talk about democratic reforms in Burma, about [opposition leader] Aung San Suu Kyi. But I tell them that we will go back to Burma when we feel that it is safe to return.

The military still rules Burma. You have to pay a tax on every egg that your hen lays. I fled Burma because I was asked to pay a large sum as tax to get married.

Here, you can move around till 10pm but in Burma you cannot venture out after 6pm. We cannot even stand in front of our homes.

In India, I have no identity so my 11-year-old son cannot get admission in a school. The asylum seeker card the UNHCR has given me is useless; it does not even bear my father's name.

If the UNHCR grants me refugee status, I will have a card that will have my father's name on it. My son will get admission in some school then.

MOHAMMED NOOR

My family used to own a cloth shop in Burma. Last year, I had a fight with the owner of an adjoining shop who is Buddhist. My entire family was attacked.

I ran away, crossed mountains and swam across a river to reach India.

I went to Calcutta first. There, I did some odd jobs, saved some money to reach Aligarh [in Uttar Pradesh] where I had heard that a few of my relatives lived. I don't know where the rest of my family is.

Like us, many non-Muslims have also fled Burma for India. Buddhists and other non-Muslims have been given refugee status here. So they get monetary assistance and other facilities, but because we are not recognised as refugees, we don't get anything.

I cannot think of going back to Burma. They will shoot me there. I still have bullet marks on my body.

MOHAMMED HAMID

In India, I have been living in Aligarh town for the last couple of years. The card that the UNHCR has given us is useless.

Many of the people who got refugee status earlier have gone abroad, many of them are getting monthly allowances.

I am told that if I get refugee status, I can get an identity card, I can get a passport as well.

Without the refugee status my life is very tough. If we get sick, we cannot get treatment in a government hospital unless we pay.

I ran away from Burma because I was not allowed to go to school or do the trade of my choice. Life here is not easy either, but it is safe.

MONTESERAT FEIXAS VIHE, UNHRC CHIEF OF MISSION

While Rohingya people are concerned about their security and safety in India, the government of India has assured us that they will not deport them.

On the basis of the asylum-seeker card issued by the UNHCR, the government has agreed to grant them long-stay visas.

The long-stay visas will give them a legal validity and will also entitle them to all the basic facilities like schooling and health.

We are totally satisfied with what the Indian government has done for them.

 

[INDIC]

I think being impoverished is not the real issue.

Being traitor is.

Tibetan refugees sell winter garments to Indians and illegal Bangladeshis formed MULTA to terrorize Indians.

 

[Alfa-Fighter]

we should deport them to either PAK, Bangladesh and SA , because these country are self styled protector of muslims , so why dont they shy away to accept them? lol hypocrites....

 

[INDIC]

No place to go, Myanmarese seek refugee status in India - Rediff.com News

Priyanka in Delhi
Living in tattered tents in Delhi, Myanmarese refugees from the Rohingyas community have been demanding refugee status in India, as they seek jobs and education for their children. Priyanka reports

A group of 2,500 Myanmarese refugees were on Tuesday chased out of a barren land near the Sultan Garhi Dargah in South Delhi.

The group belonging to the Rohingyas community, an ethnic minority in northern Myanmar who had been camping near the dargah for a week, was driven out by the police. They now have scattered across the city, mainly near the Old Delhi railway station, Kashmeri Gate and Ajmeri Gate.

"We had a meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and they asked us to go back to our country. They said they cannot do anything for us," one of the refugees, Masood Mohammad said.

Meanwhile, at a makeshift refugee camp near Pir Baba, women lay under tattered tents, or, as in most cases, under bed sheets held up by four bamboo sticks, an unlikely respite from the summer heat in the capital. Young children and men roamed around aimlessly.

At first, the refugees camped at a small open area opposite the United Nations office in Vasant Vihar where they cooked, ate and slept out in the open for almost 30 days.

"We have been demanding refugee status in India," said Zia-ur Rehman, one of the refugees. "Only a few of us have an asylum-seeker card, which does not give us any benefits. There is no ration, no food, no job, nothing," he said.

People belonging to the Rohingya community are Muslim natives of the Arakan region in Myanmar. According to the United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the origin of the name 'Rohingya' comes from 'Rohang' or 'Rohan', a name popularly assigned to the Arakan region in the ninth and tenth century.

However, these are different and should not be confused with 'Rakhine', another community that resides within the same region. The latter form an ethnic majority, and are of mixed Hindu and Mongolian ancestry.

A Human Rights Watch report says that the Rohingyas community has been subjected to abuse, exploitation and discrimination and they have been fighting to gain recognition as a 'distinct ethnic group' in Myanmar, and for equal opportunities in education and earning livelihood.

The Rohingyas community has also gone through many phases of forced exoduses from Myanmar, cites the report. The report chronicles their tale of mass migration from Mayanmar, first after the military coup in 1962, and for a second time in 1991-92.

The Human Right Watch report says that all efforts of the Rohingyas community to assert their identity post the 1962 coup was disheveled by the new government. As an Emergency Immigration Act was imposed in the country during the 1970s, all citizens were given National Registration Certificates. However, the Rohingyas were given Foreign Registration Cards, which were duly rejected by their local employers and authorities.

The discrimination prevailed even during when the Rohingyas were forced to migrate in large numbers to neighboring Bangladesh and India. Even with a new military government in 1988, the Rohingyas were collectively denied citizenship in Myanmar, and hence could not vie for basic rights of education, shelter and employment.

As a result, close to 260,000 Rohingyas people were already living in refugee camps in Cox Bazaar, their first point of entry into Bangladesh, by 1992.

The Rohingyas have now been coming to India to find refuge and wants a refugee status.

Sheikh Ahmed, a young 24-year-old refugee, came to India a month back. After staying in Aligarh for a while, he joined the protests in Delhi, and is now a part of the refugee group camped in the middle of nowhere.

Most of the people, women mostly, are unable to speak in Hindi or English.

Most of them have had no formal education, while some have been able to study up to class ten. They now work as rickshaw pullers or rag pickers in the city.

"We face lot of exploitation in Myanmar, as we are not allowed to study. They also took our lands," said 26-year-old Amir Khan. "I too wanted to study, but we came here to India for better prospects, hoping our children will be educated and we might be able to find jobs."

Khan works in a bangle factory nearby, and has been living in the capital on a meager monthly salary of Rs 3,000.

Ravi Nair of South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center in Delhi explains the Indian government's stand on the refugee status of the Rohingyas.

"The government of India is not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention, and the office of UNHCR located in Delhi is only because out a Memorandum of Understanding between the two," said Nair.

On the police action of forcing the Rohingyas to leave Vasant Vihar, and then Sultan Garhi Dargah, Nair said, "The government of India can just bundle them and send them back where they came from; it has done so many times in the past."

Having followed the migration of Rohingyas refugees into India, he said, the influx into India territory is not a new concept.

"The Rohingyas have coming to India since 1992," Nair says.

He explains, "Technically, Bangladesh is their first point of entry. They enter Bangladesh through the Cox Bazaar, which is very close by to Chittagong."

Unlike the ethnic Myanmarese who prefer to enter India through the state of Mizoram, as they can easily blend with the local population, the Rohingyas population usually takes the Bengal border or the Bihar-Kishangarh border to enter into the country, Nair said.

"Many of them would want to go to Pakistan and merge with the Muslim population there, but the LoC has become very stringent now. Hence, you will find many Rohingyas refugees who have lived in Jammu for a while and have now come to Delhi," he added.

There are about a dozen police personnel stationed, but they say that they are not responsible for the safety of the refugees, and are only there to maintain law and order.

"We are here just to see that there is no law and order problem," said Anil Sharma of Vasant Vihar police station. "Their safety has been taken up by the Jamiat Ulema," he added.

Jamiat Ulema leader, Mahmood Madani, who is also a member of the Rajya Sabha, has written to Home Minister P Chidambaram to intervene and provide some assurance to the refugee status seekers from Mayanmar.

 

[harpoon]

Tibetan refugees sell winter garments to Indians and illegal Bangladeshis formed MULTA to terrorize Indians.

Its funny how some self styled 'secularists' here wants open borders with BD just as we have with Nepal. Nepal which has not done any harm to India and supplied thousands of their young men to fight our wars and secure our borders and BD which separated from India on the basis of TNT causing much death and destruction on the way.

 

[Kesang]

Tibetan refugees sell winter garments to Indians and illegal Bangladeshis formed MULTA to terrorize Indians.

And more Important than that tibetian has lowest crime rate and those bangladeshis has highest crime rate( by huge margin ).

Tibetian makes very testy food and bangladeshis increase size and number of slums.

 

[harpoon]

I live in Jammu in Indian-administered Kashmir along with my wife and seven children. To make ends meet, I deal in scrap plastic.

I had come to Delhi to seek refugee status from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but we didn't get it. Now we are going back. Unlike in Burma, my life is safe in India, but there is nothing else.

Here, our children don't get admission in schools and we are not allowed to bury our dead in graveyards.
l

Don't have enough to survive, is a refugee in a foreign land, dirt poor yet will have children adding to the burden of the foreign country. This is where I support China's forced abortion policy.

And more Important than that tibetian has lowest crime rate and those bangladeshis has highest crime rate( by huge margin ).

Tibetian makes very testy food and bangladeshis increase size and number of slums.

A group of BDs was arrested some months back in Kerala for distributing fake Indian currency.

 

[Developereo]

Indians seem to reserve extra special bigotry for Bengali speaking Muslims.

The Indian hypocrisy is evident in this thread itself. On the one hand, there is self-aggrandization for 'accepting persecuted minorities' and yet, on the other hand, we see complaints about people being 'given official documents for vote bank politics'. For people who miss the point, when someone is given official rights to vote, they are, by definition, not illegal.

The extremist agenda is to portray all Muslims in India as suspects -- whether as terrorists, illegal migrants or some other, as yet dreamed up, new category of marginalization.

 

[Bhairava]

Indians seem to reserve extra special bigotry for Bengali speaking Muslims.

Indians don't have any extra sympathy for the Rohingyas when even their own ummah mates/co-ethnics BD have closed their door upon them. India is not a satra for everyone to come and settle.

If your heart bleeds that much take in the Rohingyas into Pakistan. Talk is cheap.

And genius, they have been given ration cards through illegal means, through fake papers..thats why illegal.

 

[INDIC]

And more Important than that tibetian has lowest crime rate and those bangladeshis has highest crime rate( by huge margin ).

Tibetian makes very testy food and bangladeshis increase size and number of slums.

I have rarely heard of crime by Tibetan refugees and yes they make tasty food, my cousin once visited their kitchen in their Winter Market.

 

[kumarkumar1867]

Indians seem to reserve extra special bigotry for Bengali speaking Muslims.

The Indian hypocrisy is evident in this thread itself. On the one hand, there is self-aggrandization for 'accepting persecuted minorities' and yet, on the other hand, we see complaints about people being 'given official documents for vote bank politics'. For people who miss the point, when someone is given official rights to vote, they are, by definition, not illegal.

The extremist agenda is to portray all Muslims in India as suspects -- whether as terrorists, illegal migrants or some other, as yet dreamed up, new category of marginalization.

Just like Abu Jundal given Pakistani passport doesnt make him Pakistani, Illegal immigrants provided with fake VOTE IDs by a$$holes political leaders to create vote bank politics doesnt make them legally Indian.

 

[Developereo]

Indians don't have any extra sympathy for the Rohingyas when even their own ummah mates/co-ethnics BD have closed their door upon them. India is not a satra for everyone to come and settle.

If your heart bleeds that much take in the Rohingyas into Pakistan. Talk is cheap.

My comment was about ethnic Bengalis in general, whether they are allegedly Bangladeshi migrants or Rohingyas.

And genius, they have been given ration cards through illegal means, through fake papers..thats why illegal.

Uh no!

The rants are about 'vote bank politics', which means the individuals are able to vote. Duh!

How can someone who is officially entitled to vote be called an illegal migrant?

 

[Shardul.....the lion]

Its so logical to India's secular credentials that, both Hindus and Muslims (jews and parsis from earlier times) from foreign countries seek refugee status in India.

Long live Indian republic......................

We will provide humanitarian assistance to oppressed people provided they do not create trouble in their adopted land and they should migrate back to their countries once the atmosphere is returns to normal.

 

[ajtr]

Indians seem to reserve extra special bigotry for Bengali speaking Muslims.

The Indian hypocrisy is evident in this thread itself. On the one hand, there is self-aggrandization for 'accepting persecuted minorities' and yet, on the other hand, we see complaints about people being 'given official documents for vote bank politics'. For people who miss the point, when someone is given official rights to vote, they are, by definition, not illegal.

The extremist agenda is to portray all Muslims in India as suspects -- whether as terrorists, illegal migrants or some other, as yet dreamed up, new category of marginalization.

Not Indians but only some special breed of PDF indains.You will be feted by these breed if you bash muslims and pakistan but then you yourself get targeted by this breed for criticizing india.this thread is perfect example of this breed's hypocrisy.

 

[INDIC]

Indians seem to reserve extra special bigotry for Bengali speaking Muslims.

Indian Bengali Muslims are different from illegal Bangladeshis. And Rohingyas and Bangladeshis are also known for crimes in Gulf countries, you can consult Imran for that.