The girl is among thousands of Rohingya who fled a crackdown led by the Myanmar army in 2017. (Archive)
New Delhi:
Officials stopped the deportation of a 16-year-old Rohingya Muslim girl to Myanmar in the last minute today, saying they had been unable to contact officials caught in the coup at the border.
Authorities, who say the girl is an illegal immigrant, took her to a northeastern border town and began processing her papers on Thursday, police said, even as human rights groups pressured the government to stop the process.
But today they decided not to go ahead with the deportation, said Mayanglambam Rajkumar, a government official in Manipur’s Tengnoupal border district. He did not say whether the transfer had been postponed or canceled.
“We had contacted our counterparts in Myanmar, but so far we have not received any response,” he said, blaming the disruption in communications to the aftermath of the Myanmar coup.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya, who are largely denied citizenship in their home country of Myanmar, have lived in India for years, but the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi considers them a security threat and has been stopping.
The girl and her family were among hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled a crackdown led by the Myanmar military in 2017 that UN investigators said was carried out with “genocidal intent,” allegations Myanmar denies. .
The girl’s father, Mohammed Zaber, who lives in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, said she had left Bangladesh in 2019 and planned to seek a better life in Malaysia before being detained en route to India.
“I appeal to the Indian government to send my daughter to Bangladesh,” Zaber said.
Police officer BL Meena said the girl would probably now return to the non-profit group that had been caring for her in Assam.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said it had no comment on the case and a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, opposed the deportation, saying on Thursday: “The situation in Myanmar is not yet conducive to voluntary return in a safe and sustainable manner.”
India is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and rejects the UN position that deporting the Rohingya violates the principle of refoulement – sending refugees back to a place where they are in danger.
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