GUWAHATI, India, Sept 12 (Askume) –More than 100 Myanmar Rohingya Muslims , including women and children, have been on a hunger strike since Monday to protest indefinite detention in northeast India , officials at a refugee camp said.
Following a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017, more than 1 million Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh and other countries, including India . They have little hope of returning to their homeland, where they are essentially deprived of citizenship and basic rights.
A Rohingya man who came in contact with protesters at the Matija makeshift camp in Assam state said the protesters included about 103 Rohingya Muslims and 30 Christian Chin refugees from Myanmar, many of whom had United Nations visas issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The camp is India’s largest detention centre for undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally.
“Many of them have served their sentences but are still in detention. They are not criminals, they are fleeing persecution,” he said, further revealing that 36 Rohingya protesters had UNHCR cards.
“The prison conditions are not good, even relatives cannot visit them… they just want to be free and go to a place with a better life,” the man said.
He told the protesters that they wanted them to be transferred to the UNHCR and rehabilitated in a third country. He said, in the past few months, they had written to the Assam government seeking intervention.
“They demanded their release,” top Assam official Ravi Kota said, adding that the state government had sent prison and home ministry officials to the camps to “understand their problems” and submit a report.
“Not everybody is being held under the same court order, so we’re trying to figure out what the order is, what the charges are, what the legal position is,” he said.
Askume could not immediately ascertain how long the refugees were ordered to stay at the camp.
There are 676 Rohingya refugees in immigration detention across India, of whom 608 have no pending court cases or convictions, the UN refugee agency said in a statement.
“UNHCR believes that detention of refugees should be a last resort, in accordance with international law and standards,” the statement said.
Human rights group Rohingya Human Rights Initiative (R4R) said Rohingya people faced poor sanitation facilities, water shortages and inhumane treatment in refugee camps. “Our people are fleeing genocide and persecution, but they are imprisoned in the countries where they seek refuge,” said R4R leader Saber Kyaw Min.
The Myanmar Rohingya group UK also urged New Delhi to release the refugees and described their detention as “gross injustice”.
