Arakan News Agency
India is in talks with Bangladesh and Myanmar on a plan to deport some 40,000 Rohingya Muslims, who say they live on its territory illegally, a government spokesman said on Friday.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled persecution in Myanmar, which has a Buddhist majority, to neighboring Bangladesh since the early 1990s. Some of them flee across the border into Hindu-majority India.
New Delhi says only 14,000 Rohingyas living in India are registered on UNHCR’s lists, which means that the rest is illegal and makes them vulnerable to deportation.
India has not signed any United Nations treaties on refugees and has no relevant laws.
“These matters are being discussed at the diplomatic level with both Bangladesh and Myanmar,” Indian Interior Ministry spokesman Datawalia said.
and further added “More things will be clear in time.”
Amnesty International said the deportation and abandonment of the Rohingya would be “unscrupulous.”
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in India said it was “looking for facts” about New Delhi’s plans to deport the Rohingya.
Rohingya is generally not welcome in India, whose 1.3 billion people are struggling for a share of resources and jobs. Nationalists and anti-Islamic sentiments angered them.
More than 75,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since October 9 after a rebel group launched an attack on border guard posts in Myanmar. Following the attack, the authorities launched a security crackdown and the troops involved charged with murder and rape charges against the Rohingya.
A senior government official in Bangladesh, who complains of burdening the flow of many refugees, said India was helping his country resolve the crisis.
