Rohingya refugees: “India put us on the boat as captives

Norul Amen last spoke with his brother on May 9th. The call was short, but the news was detrimental.

He has learned that his brother Kairul and four other relatives are among the 40 refugees of Rochingia, who are said to be the Indian government in Myanmar, a country that has fled years ago.

Myanmar is in the midst of a brutal civil war between the junta – which seized power in a coup in 2021 and the forces of ethnic militias and resistance.

The odds that G -n Amen will ever see their family again have disappeared small.

“I couldn’t process the pain that my parents and the others who were taken,” said the 24 -year -old, told the BBC in Delhi.

Three months after being removed from the capital of India, the BBC was able to contact the refugees in Myanmar. Most remain with the BA HTOO (BHA) army, a resistance group that fights the military in the southwestern part of the country.

“We are not sure of Myanmar. This place is a complete area of ​​the war,” said soy Noor a video conversation made by the phone of a BHA member. He speaks of a wooden shelter with six other refugees around him.

The BBC gather testimonies from refugees and trash from relatives in Delhi and talk to experts, investigating the allegations to bring together what happened to them.

We have learned that they have flew from Delhi on an island in the Bay of Bengal, placed on a naval ship and are eventually forced in the Andaman Sea with life jackets. Then they made their way to the shore and are now facing an uncertain future in Myanmar, who escaped mostly the Muslim Community of Rojindja In a huge issue in recent years to escape the persecution.

“They tied our hands, covered our faces, and brought us as captives (to the boat). Then they threw us into the sea,” John, one of the men in the group, told his brother shortly after reaching the ground.

“How can anyone just throw human beings into the sea?” Asked G -n Amen. “There is humanity in the world, but I have not seen any humanity in the Indian government.”

Thomas Andrews, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, says there is “significant evidence” proving those allegations, which he presented to the Manager of India’s mission in Geneva, but has not yet received an answer.

The BBC has also contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in India several times, but has not heard back during publication.

Campaigns have often marked that the condition of Rochingia in India is uncertain. India does not recognize Rokhingia as refugees, but rather as illegal immigrants under the Law on Foreigners in the country.

India has a considerable population of Rochingia refugees, although Bangladesh, where more than a million live, has the largest number. Most escaped from Myanmar after a deadly army repression in 2017. Although they have lived there for generations, Rokhinggia is not recognized in Myanmar as citizens.

In India, 23,800 refugees of Roquingia were registered in the UNCC, the UN Refugee Agency. But Human Rights Watch estimates that the actual number is over 40,000.

On May 6, 40 refugees from Roheria, who had refugee maps of VKBOP and lived in different parts of Delhi, were taken to local police departments under the guise of collecting biometric data. This is an annual process imposed by the Indian government, where rhing refugees are filmed and printed with fingerprints. After a few hours, they were taken to the Inderlok detention center in the city, BBC told.

G -n Amen says his brother called him then and told him that he was taken to Myanmar and asked him to take a lawyer and warn the VKBA.

On May 7, refugees said they were taken to Hindon Airport, right east of Delhi, where they boarded planes to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal.

“After we got off the plane, we saw that two buses had come to accept us,” said the video call. He added that he could see the words “bhartiya nausena” written on the side of the buses, with the Hindi term referring to the Indian fleet.

“When we got to the bus, they tied their hands with some plastic material and covered our face with black muslin fabric,” he said.

Although people on the buses did not identify, they were dressed in war fatigue and spoke Hindi.

After a short bus trip, the group boarded a naval ship in the Bay of Bengal, which d -Noor said later After their hands were single and their faces were revealed.

They describe the court as a large two -storey warship, at least 150 m (490 feet).

“Many of the (people on the ship) wore t-shirts, black army trousers and boots,” said Mohammed Sajad, who was on a call with Mr. Noor. “They were not all of them carrying the same thing – some in black, others in Brown.”

G -Noor says the group was on the naval ship for 2pm. They were applied regularly, the traditional Indian tariff with rice, lentils and panel (cheese).

Some men say they have been subjected to violence and humiliation of the ship.

“We were treated very badly,” said G -Noor. “Some were beaten very badly. They were repeatedly captured.”

On the video call, Flash Ula showed the scars of his right wrist and described to be hit and hit his back and face repeatedly and attacked a bamboo rod.

“They asked me why I was in India illegally, why are you here?”

Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic community, but of the 40 people who forcibly returned in May, 15 are Christians.

Those who hold them during their journey from Delhi would even say, “Why didn’t you become Hindu? Why did you turn from Islam in Christianity?”, Said the Noor. “They even made us take off our pants to see if we were circumcised or not.”

Another refugee, Eman Hussein, said the military employee accuse him of being involved in Pahalgam slaughterReferring to an attack on April 22, with 26 civilians, mostly Hindu tourists, being shot dead by fighters in India administered Kashmir.

The Indian government has repeatedly accused the Pakistani citizens of attacking, denies a claim that Islamabad denies. It is not a suggestion that Rochinge has had a relationship with shooting.

The next day, on May 8, around 7:00 pm local time (12:30 GMT), the refugees were told to descend on a ladder from the side of the naval ship. Below, they described to see four smaller life boats, black and made of rubber.

The refugees were made to board two of the boats, 20 to each and accompanied by several of the people who transported them. The two other boats that led the road had more than a dozen staff on them. For more than seven hours, they traveled with their hands tied.

“One of the boats with military officials reached the seashore and tied a long rope to a tree. Then the rope was brought to the boats,” said G -Noor.

He said they were given life vests, their hands were untied – and they were told to jump into the water. “We held the rope and swimming more than 100 meters to get to the shore,” he said, adding that they were told that they had reached Indonesia.

Then the people who took them there left.

The BBC put these claims to the Indian government and the Indian Navy and did not receive an answer.

In the early hours of May 9, the group was found by local fishermen who told them they were in Myanmar. They let the refugees use their phones to call their relatives in India.

For more than three months, BHA has been helping stuck refugees by providing food and shelter in the Tanintarius area in Myanmar. But their families in India are terrified of their fate in Myanmar.

The UN says that the life of Roquingi refugees “is at the ultimate risk when the Indian authorities are forced (them) in the Andaman Sea.”

“I personally examined this very disturbing case,” said G -n Andrews. He acknowledged that the amount of information he could share was limited, but that he also “talked to eyewitnesses and managed to confirm these reports and to find that they are in reality.”

On May 17, another member of the Family Family, who were removed, submitted a petition calling for the Supreme Court of India to return them to Delhi, immediately suspend such deportations and to propose compensation to all 40 persons.

“This has become the country to the horror of the deportation of Rohergia,” says Colin Gonsalvs, a senior defender at the Supreme Court, who argued on behalf of petitioners.

“The fact that you could put a person into the sea with a rescue jacket in a war zone was something that people automatically chose not to believe,” said Gonsalvs.

In response to the petition, a judge of the Supreme Court on the two -colored bench called the accusations “fantastic ideas”. He also said that the prosecutor’s office did not provide sufficient evidence to justify their claims.

Since then, the court has agreed to listen to arguments on September 29 to decide whether Rohingya can be treated as refugees or whether they are illegal immigrants and are therefore subject to deportations.

Given that tens of thousands of Rokhingia refugees live in India, it is not clear why so much effort was devoted to the deportation of these 40 people.

“No one in India can understand why they did, except for this poison against Muslims,” ​​said Gonsalvs.

Treatment of refugees sent cold throughout the Roquery community in India. Last year, its members have claimed that there has been an increase in deportations by Indian authorities. There is no official data to confirm this.

Some have hidden. Others like G -n Amen no longer sleep at home. He sent his wife and three children to another place.

“There is only this fear in my heart that the Indian government will also bring us out and throw us into the sea at any time. And now we are afraid to even get out of our homes,” said G -n Amen.

“These are people who are in India, not because they want to be,” said the UN Andrews.

“They are there because of the horrific violence that happens in Myanmar. They are literally running for their lives.”

Additional reporting from Charlotte Grill in Delhi