Global Courant
Those arrested include 14 women and five children living in six districts of Uttar Pradesh state “after illegally crossing the border,” police said.
Indian police say they have arrested 74 Rohingya refugees for living “illegally” in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Members of the mainly Muslim Rohingya community were detained in six towns and cities across the state and 10 of the refugees were youths, police said Monday.
Those arrested included 55 men, 14 women and five children who lived in six districts of Uttar Pradesh “after illegally crossing the border,” the police said in their statement.
At least one of the women arrested is pregnant, according to a post on the Indian website Scroll.in.
The Rohingya Human Rights Initiative campaign group said the detainees had been living in the area for about 10 years after fleeing persecution in Myanmar.
Many had done manual labor, including garbage collection, said Initiative director Sabber Kyaw Min. “They have only demanded refuge,” he added.
“The community is demanding…an end to detentions.”
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar to countries such as Bangladesh, which borders India, after Myanmar’s military killed tens of thousands of minority people, raped women and burned dozens of villages.
The United Nations said the military campaign against the Rohingya was carried out with “genocidal intent” and that some of the military generals face a genocide trial at the International Court of Justice.
New Delhi is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which spells out the rights of refugees and the responsibilities of states to protect them, nor does it have its own refugee protection laws.
According to Ali Johar, co-founder of the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, about 18,000 Rohingya lived in India early last year, with cases pending in the Supreme Court against their deportation.
Rohingya activists in India have campaigned against the arrests and urged the government to uphold human rights and democratic credentials.
“We must protect the dignity of the detainees. Rohingya are human beings, survivors of genocide and deserve the basic freedom and dignity given to all others,” said Kyaw Min.
“The detainees have applied for asylum in India and have committed no crime. International laws, past court rulings and the Indian Constitution are bound to protect them. Detainees include pregnant women, children and disabled people subjected to violence,” he added.
