Jammu (AsiaNews) – Hundreds of Rohingya who had sought refuge in Jammu, northern India, have been evicted by landlords in the Narwal and Karyani Talab areas.
The homes that they had built have been torn down, even though people had been living there for several years. For many families, this also meant the loss of the small shops and informal businesses upon which they relied for their livelihoods.
Local news outlets have described men and women forced to sell tools, furniture, and householdgoodsfor a pittance, in an attempt to recoup someof their lossesbefore leaving.
Some residents are considering going to West Bengal and cross into to Bangladesh, where many Rohingya live in massive refugee camps, simply to find shelter and access to humanitarian aid.
Some families have tried to set up tents in the open, but were driven away by the police, who also investigated property owners who continued to provide them with shelter.
Mohammad Sabir, a Rohingya refugee who lived in Burma Colony, explained that 70 to 80 families had settled in the Narwal settlement, located south of the city of Jammu, the union territory’s winter capital, and had been given three days to leave, despite not knowing where to go.
Sabir added that many of the refugees are elderly and ill: “There are people whosurviveon medication. They areleft with no optionto work,” he said.
The operation began on 15 September and continued over the following two days. On 3 October, dozens of additional structures on forest land in the Raika area, on the outskirts of the city of Jammu, werealsotorn down.
The district collector had notified the landowners of the requirement to remove residential and commercial structures from their property; according to the authorities, the land was designated for agricultural use and therefore could not host dwellings.
Formally, therefore, the dispute concerns land use; however, the consequences have fallen primarily upon the predominantly Muslim migrants from Myanmar, who already face significant legal and social uncertainty in India, where the government has long discriminated against them, in some instances even expelling some to Bangladesh.
An increasingly contested presence
A commission, established in May by the central government to examine demographic shifts in the area, visited a Rohingya settlement in Narwal in August.
According to the information collected, 7,656 Rohingya lived in Jammu and Kashmir (which, until 2019, was a single state with broader administrative autonomy), 6,737 in Jammu and 919 in the Kashmir Valley.
For years, the presence of these refugees was at the centre of a political debate fuelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ultranationalist Hindu party.
Proximity to borders and concerns over irregular immigration are frequently cited to justify stricter controls. However, the displaced families had been living in these settlements for years, after fleeing persecution in their home country.
The Rohingya come mainly from Rakhine, a state currently the scene of violent fighting between Myanmar’s military (which seized power in a 2021 coup) and the Arakan Army, one of the main armed groups opposing the military junta in an attempt to make Rakhine an autonomous region.
In 2017, persecution by the army forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to Bangladesh, where they ended up in overcrowded refugee camps. Others reached India, settling in Jammu, where they work as day labourers, collectors of recyclable materials, domestic workers, or small-scale traders.
The legal limbo of refugees
Their situation in India, however, remains precarious because New Delhi has not signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and lacks a national law that would guarantee a uniform procedure for the recognition and protection of refugees.
Identity cards issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) confirm registration with the organisation, but they do not automatically grant a right of residence recognised by Indian authorities, who refuse to provide such recognition, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir, in an effort to counter the growth of the Muslim population.
As early as 2021, hundreds of Rohingya refugees were arrested and moved to a detention centre in Hiranagar, which had been repurposed to hold migrants.
Many remain there because there are no direct agreements with the government of Myanmar regarding repatriation, a process that would, in any case, be problematic and a violation of human rights, given that Rohingya in Rakhine State are currently being forcibly conscripted into the very army that once persecuted them, and compelled to fight against opposition forces.
Some parents, who were forced to leave their children behind, also remain in prison.
Also in 2021, the Supreme Court of India did not rule out the possibility of repatriating the Rohingya, though it specified that any expulsions must follow due process.
This is a difficult situation to resolve as long as there is no agreement between India and Myanmar. Meanwhile, the government in Naypyidaw (Myanmar’s capital) is authoritarian, while the democratically elected government that was in power before the coup operates in exile.
Recently,the military regimeagreed to the repatriation ofsome1,500Myanmar nationals, including some from Malaysia, an operation condemned by United Nations agencies and human rightsgroups, which point out that this amounts to forcedrepatriationto a country stillin the grip ofcivil war.
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