Rohingya

Rohingya are an ethnic group, largely comprising Muslims, who predominantly live in the Western Myanmar province of Rakhine. They speak a dialect of Bengali, as opposed to the commonly spoken Burmese language.
Though they have been living in the country for generations, Myanmar considers them as persons who migrated to their land during the Colonial rule. So, it has not granted Rohingyas full citizenship.
Since they are not citizens, their movements are restricted within the Rakhine state.

In 2017, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a Rohingya insurgent group, attacked police posts and an army base in Rakhine state.
The response by the Myanmar security forces has sent over 7,00,000 Rohingyas fleeing into Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries including India. Reports of villages being torched and civilian deaths have followed the militant attack.
The UN termed the Rohingya’s situation as the “world’s fastest growing refugee crisis”.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, there are approximately 40,000 Rohingyas living in India. They have reached India from Bangladesh through the land route over the years.
The government had previously informed that all the Rohingyas in India were “illegal immigrants” and they will be deported soon.

- India doesn’t have a specific law regarding refugees.
- India is not a signatory of the 1951 UN Convention or the 1967 Protocol – both relating to the Status of Refugees and included in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) statute.
- However, UNHCR had earlier stated that the ‘principle of non-refoulement’ is considered part of customary international law and therefore binding on all states whether they have signed the Refugee Convention or not.

Non-refoulement is a principle in international law that stops a country from returning a person to a place where they would be at risk of persecution.

In addition, India is party to major international human rights instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A foreigner is considered to be an illegal immigrant under two circumstances.
- One, if they come into India without valid travel documents, or
- two, having come in legally, they stay beyond the time period permitted to them under their travel documents.

The Bhashan Char, also known as Thengar Char is an island located at the Meghna river estuary. It belongs to Bangladesh.
It is an uninhabited island which formed in the Bay of Bengal about two decades back. The environmentalists say that the Bhashan char falls in an ecologically fragile area prone to floods, erosion and cyclones.

Continuing with the process of relocating Rohingya refugees from the crowded camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, a batch of 2010 Rohingyas were sent to the newly developed facility at Bhashan Char. With this, close to 8700 Rohingya refugees have been sent to Bhashan Char from the camps of Cox’s Bazar.
The Government of Bangladesh started relocating the Rohingya refugees from Cox’s Bazar to Bhashan Char from December 2020 despite doubts raised by environmental groups and UN agencies about the safety of the relocated persons as the island is a newly emerged landmass.
But the government says that adequate safety arrangements in terms of embankments and cyclone shelters have been made for the protection of the people in case of any natural calamity.

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