2019 – Posted in: Daily News

WHETHER ROHINGYAS ENTITLED TO REFUGEE STATUS IN INDIA?

For: Mains

Topics covered: All about Rohingyas, Principle of Non-Refoulement, Refugee law in India

The apex Court agreed to hear a “substantial question” on whether illegal immigrants can be granted the status of refugees.

Solicitor General said, let international laws regarding community rights govern the matter.

The substantial question here is:

A bench headed by CJI said it would examine the “substantial question” on the issue.

Two Rohingya men approach SC against the Centre’s proposed plan to deport 40,000 members of the community to the land of their origin- Myanmar.
In October 2018, India first deported seven Rohingya men to Myanmar.
Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been fleeing the Rakhine State on Myanmar’s western coast for years.
The refugees mostly landed in Bangladesh, but some crossed over into India also.

India estimates that 40,000 Rohingya live in the country in camps across the country.
They arrived over the years after fleeing violence and persecution in Myanmar, which denies them citizenship.
In August, a UN report accused the Myanmar military of mass killings and rapes of Rohingya with “genocidal intent” in 2017 in an operation that drove more than 700,000 of them to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had even issued a notice to the government on the proposed deportation.
The petition filed in the Supreme Court submitted that the 40,000 Rohingya were registered and recognized by the UNHCR in 2016 and granted refugee identity cards.
The pleas said their deportation would violate India’s commitment to international conventions that recognize the ‘Principle of Non-Refoulement’.

This principle of customary international law prohibited the deportation of refugees to a country where they faced a threat to their lives.

The Rohingya people are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar.
There were an estimated 1 million Rohingya living in Myanmar before the 2016–17 crisis.
By December 2017, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, had crossed the border into Bangladesh.

India is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol.
There is no national law on Refugees at present.
Only Standard Operating Procedure is issued by Ministry of Home Affairs to deal with foreign nationals in India, who claim to be refugees.

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