K N Pandita
knp627@gmail.com
The Rohingya migration issue is once again hotly debated in political and media circles. More light is thrown on its various aspects. Perhaps the issue came into the limelight because of the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre of 28 tourists on May 22 last year.
The Rohingya are the Muslim citizens of Myanmar (formerly Burma), who are reported to have been extirpated by the local military regime. The regime contends that they are not the original citizens of Myanmar but are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Whether they are the alleged illegal immigrants or not is not what essentially concern us.
Again, the Myanmar regime contends that the Rohingya are engaged in criminal acts, narcotic trade and anti-regime activities. We will not go into the merits or demerits of these allegations either. But the Myanmar military regime asserts that the Rohingya are illegal migrants in Myanmar. Because they are involved in many criminal and anti-national activities, the regime claims justification for throwing them out.
We are not poised to debate the legalities or illegalities of the issue. But, because a good number of Rohingya headed towards J&K, a distance of thousands of miles, several questions arise. Firstly, who advised or persuaded them to head towards J&K State, which is located thousands of miles away and which remains embroiled in terrorist sponsored violence? Who provided them with transport, and who reported their presence in the state? These questions suggest that there could be an unknown agency working behind the curtain and issuing directions to the migratory Rohingya.
We are aware that some “well-wishers” of the immigrating Rohingya have been making serious efforts to bring the issue before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and other international platforms. It indicates that certainly some agencies running in the name of human rights are showing political rather than humanitarian interests in the entire narrative of the Rohingya.
Knowledgeable sources reveal that they have been provided with such official documents as will enable them to claim the citizenship of J&K. Among the documents recovered from them are Aadhaar cards, enlistment as voters, ration card, gas card, electricity and water entitlement and admission of their children in government schools where the kids do not have to pay any fees.
During her tenure as Chief Minister of J&K (2016 – 2018), Mehbooba Mufti maintained a stance that emphasised humanitarian consideration for the Rohingya refugees while opposing their deportation. That stance remained in place in contrast to her coalition partner, the BJP. She maintained that “no adverse intelligence reports were linking the Rohingya in Jammu to militancy or terrorism”. More investigation revealed that the ground situation did not corroborate with Chief Minister’s statement.
In January 2017, Mehbooba informed the Legislative Assembly that there were 4-5 thousand Rohingya refugees in J&K and they were allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds. She did not disclose the exact number, nor did she say their location in the State where they had taken up abode. But she did mention an exact number of 7,690 Tibetans living in the Jammu and Samba districts of the state.
Obviously, she wanted to argue that if the Tibetan refugees were not deported and allowed to stay in J&K, why should anybody object if the Rohingya are also allowed to stay in the State? This is not a fair and justifiable comparison. China annexed Tibet, and Beijing wanted to impose its conditionality on the Buddhists of Tibet. Unable to withstand the oppressive measures, the Tibetan Buddhists left their country and found asylum in India. A few of them might have moved to J&K. They are international refugees in accordance with the definition of the UN Human Rights Council. Contrarily, the case of the Rohingya is that of illegal migrants indulging in criminal and anti-national activities in a country which is not of their origin. Therefore, focusing on national security, the Myanmar government decided to deport them. Mehbooba should understand that the comparison is incongruous.
But more questions arise. Rohingya are all Muslims. If the humanitarian element was uppermost in providing them succour, according to Mehbooba Mufti, then the right place where they should have been adjusted was the Kashmir valley and not the Jammu region. The valley Muslim population could give them a warm welcome and provide them with many facilities to reduce their hardship. The Kashmiris are known for their hospitality, as can be gauged from their treatment of the “Mujahedin” from PoK and Pakistan in the 1990s, and thereafter, down to the present day. The Jamaat-i-Islami of J&K, which usually espouses the cause of Muslims in predicament, should have volunteered to take them to Kashmir and assuaged their suffering. They did not say a single word. Instead of invoking Islam.
Furthermore, the Mehbooba Mufti government not only resettled them in Jammu instead of Kashmir because she intended to add a few thousand more Muslim votes to the electorate in the Jammu region, but she also settled them along the LoC, where Pakistan’s forward military posts are close to the Line of Control. Pakistani terrorists have been using the Samba-Kathua border for illegal entry into the Indian side. It is this line along which Pakistani infiltrators have been digging tunnels for clandestine entry into the Indian side to carry out their nefarious designs.
It will be reminded that more than a year ago, in connection with the attack on a security base in Sunjuwan, in the outskirts of Jammu, the investigating authorities found a clue to the Rohingya refugees settled in Jammu. The news was quickly suppressed, and nothing more was said about it.
With the unfolding of the Kashmir connection of the recent Red Fort car blast in Delhi, the needle of suspicion has been pointing towards Kashmir. That has made the security establishment undertake a deep-seated investigation into the overground conduits and their connections.
There are wild speculations about the exact number of Rohingya who have settled in the Samba-Jammu border sector. The J&K government has not divulged the precise number, but reports from various non-official sources put it at 89 thousand souls. (Confirmation awaited).
Mehbooba Mufti throughout opposed their deportation. She also showed no interest in resettling them in the valley. The army has had serious anxiety about the security of the border area and does not want any civilian habitation close to the border that might hamper their surveillance and random inspections. The solution to this problem is that either the illegal migrants should be deported to Bangladesh, which is the country of their origin, or they should be transported to the Kashmir valley and temporarily rehabilitated in rural Kashmir so that they become a dependable labour force to work in the agricultural and horticultural areas of the valley economy.
The manner in which the Rohingya have been patronised and facilitated in obtaining documents to prove their State citizenship is a reflection on the PDP-BJP coalition government in 2016-208 when this episode happened. It is a sad commentary on the valley-based leadership swearing by secularism but unable to cover up the hypocrisy.
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