The People’s Union of Civil Liberties has criticised the Indian Government for the deportation and crackdown of 43 Rohingya refugees from both the Muslim and Christian Communities in the waters near the Tanintharyi region of Myanmar. The PUCL said the Indian Government is responsible for the “illegal crackdown against Rohingya Refugees”, who are registered and protected under the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, India.
The PUCL has alleged that refugees were tricked into biometric verification, then forcibly flown to Port Blair, Andaman & Nicobar Islands. There, they were reportedly beaten, blindfolded, tied up, and taken on naval ships. The group says the refugees were then thrown into international waters and “abandoned to die.”
“The treatment meted out to the 40 Rohingya refugees who were thrown in international waters in gross violation of human rights, and the many more who are being harassed and tortured in India, is a blatant breach of India’s obligations under international law and also violates India’s own domestic law and policy. It bears repeating that arbitrarily throwing refugees into international waters is egregious conduct which is illegal, unconstitutional and a violation of the rules of international humanitarian and human rights law,” the PUCL said in a statement.
“The fact that the refugees thrown into international waters, belong to the Rohingya community, which is one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, indicates that the Indian Government is even prepared to cast aside its obligations under one of the most important significant human rights treaty it has ratified, namely the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide of 1948,” it said.
An audio testimony of one of the survivors received by the PUCL says that the refugees were brutally beaten up, women sexually harassed and were questioned about their involvement in the Pahalgam attack.
“We were taken to Port Blair, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, aboard an army aircraft. Later, we were forcibly put onto naval ships with our hands tied and eyes blindfolded. We remained in that condition for the entire journey. We were tortured aboard the naval ships, beaten brutally, and interrogated. We were accused of involvement in the Pahalgam terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir. When we insisted that we were not involved, they told us we were pretending and disguising ourselves,” the audio statement said, as per PUCL.
“We were treated very badly. They used abusive language, and the women among us were subjected to sexual harassment and other forms of mistreatment. Then, we were thrown into international waters near Tanintharyi, bordering Thailand,” it said.
PUCL said 40 of them are now in Myanmar under the National Unity Government (NUG) in Exile, an elected group of lawmakers and members of parliament formed after the military coup in 2021 expelled them.
The organization said that it “condemns this so-called innovative method adopted by the BJP government as heartless, inhumane, illegal and unconstitutional.”
“PUCL strongly condemns the inhuman and degrading treatment, torture, abduction and attempted killing of the Rohingya refugees.”
It called upon the Indian Government to “Initiate immediate inquiry into the grave allegations of human rights violations against the Rohingya refugees by the authorities and fix accountability on the officers responsible and ensure that they are tried and punished as per law”, “reiterate its commitment to the protection of Rohingya refugees in India and assure that no such illegal steps will be undertaken by government functionaries without following due process and will not threaten and push to genocidal danger, the members of the persecuted Rohingya community”, and “disclose the whereabouts to the families of the detainees and produce all illegally detained persons immediately to be released to the safe care and protection of their families.”
