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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Capital shuts door on Burmese refugees-Anahita Mukherji

Capital shuts door on Burmese refugees-Anahita Mukherji

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published Published on May 16, 2012   modified Modified on May 16, 2012

Over 2000 impoverished Burmese asylum-seekers from across India, camping on the streets of Delhi pleading for refugee status were dealt a double whammy. On Tuesday afternoon, even as a delegation of Burmese met UN officials to sort out their problems, they were forced out of their temporary shelter in Vasant Kunj by police, dumped into buses and rickshaws and told to find their way home. To make matters worse, their leader, Zia-ur Rahman was whisked away from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) at Vasant Vihar from where he went missing for several hours.

Ironically, the harsh treatment meted out to them by police occurred at precisely the same time that UNHCR officials eulogized the generosity of the Indian government towards asylum-seekers and highlighted the government's decision to give them long-term visas. Many believe the speed with which police dismantled their dwellings had much to do with local pressure from Vasant Vihar and Vasant Kunj RWAs as well as some village mahapanchayats who did not want the refugees in their backyard.

On Tuesday morning, as Zia-ur Rahman stood outside the Sultan Ghari monument where the refugees had taken shelter, he said he was afraid police were after him. His fears were not unfounded. Rahman was amongst the delegation who met UNHCR officials later in the day. The refugees were not allowed to carry their mobile phones into the UN office, and chose to leave them with Shivani Nath of the JNU student union.

The police prevented Nath, as well as the media, from standing on the road outside the UNHCR office as the Burmese delegation walked out of their meeting. The delegation of asylum-seekers was not allowed to reclaim their mobile phones and was bundled into three cars. While two of the cars reached Vasant Kunj soon after, the car in which Rahman was travelling went missing. Refugees called frantically on his mobile to report his absence. UNHCR officials said they had no knowledge of his disappearance. Police, too, denied detaining him.

Fellow refugees say they found him at Kashmiri Gate on Tuesday evening, several hours later. JNU students say he called the students' union later in the evening to say that he had been detained by police.

As the refugees waited for the delegation to return, the police sprang a surprise. "Our shelters were dismantled and we were asked to vacate in five minutes. The police threatened to beat us if we did not leave," said Zohra Begum, an asylum-seekers who met TOI at Nelson Mandela Marg, at least 2km away from Sultan Ghari. The Burmese, who were made to walk the distance, balancing their belongings on their shoulders, were put in buses and rickshaws. Many of them are now living in UP, Jammu and Rajasthan. The police told them to return to their homes or risk deportation to Myanmar.

The Rohingya say they were living in extreme poverty in India and had been denied refugee status. But the UNHCR said that the asylum-seeker card protected them from deportation and was enough to allow them access to healthcare and education facilities. The Rohingya say this is not the case at the ground level.

The Times of India, 16 May, 2012, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Capital-shuts-door-on-Burmese-refugees/articleshow/13158183.cms


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