Thiruvananthapuram: A day before union home minister Rajnath Singh's directive to the state on Rohingya refugees, the Railway Protection Force had shot off a secret missive to the Railway authorities in the state warning them of a huge influx of Rohingyan refugees. “Input indicates that huge number of Rohingyas are travelling from every corner of North East states and ultimately heading towards Kerala,” the secret note from the office of the RPF's principal chief security commissioner said.
The union home minister, during his visit to the state on Thursday, termed the Rohingya as “illegal immigrants”, and asked state governments to identify them so that they could be deported to Myanmar. He said the Rohingya presence had caused a major security issue. “Their presence is not confined to the North East. They have reached south Indian states including Kerala,” he said.
The RPF secret, sent a day before the home minister's arrival, also listed 14 express and special trains on which the refugees were travelling. “All Rohingyan groups are travelling in groups along with their families,” the note added. The refugees are said to have boarded trains from three stations in Assam – Silchar, Guwahati, and Dibrugarh - and three in West Bengal – Shalimar, Howrah, and Santragachi. Some of the trains are bound for Chennai.
Supervision vs freedom of movement
The Railway was asked to get hold of the refugees and hand them over to the police. However, top officials of Southern Railways refused to come on record about the existence of such a secret missive. Nonetheless, field-level Railway officials, on the condition of anonymity, said that the movement of Rohingyas was being monitored with the help of police.
Intelligence ADGP Vinod Kumar said that the trains mentioned in the note were being monitored. “We are conducting searches at all stations. But we are yet to come across a Rohingya refugee in any of the trains,” he told Onmanorama. The police are going by the peculiar 'wheat-complexioned Mongol' looks for the preliminary identification. Those identified will be subjected to a thorough interrogation before being let off. The Police have a tough task on hand as their supervision should not cause serious difficulties for bonafide Indian citizens from the North East. Many from North East, especially Bengal and Assam, are working as migrant labourers in the state. It is usual for them to travel between Kerala and Bengal or Assam.
Rohingyas in India
Rohingyas, an ethnic Muslim community in Burma's Rakhine state, had fled to India in 2012, long before their mass exodus in August 2017. The figures put out by United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) shows that nearly 14,000 Rohingya are spread across six locations in India — Jammu, Nuh in Haryana’s Mewat district, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Chennai. It has given 'Refugee Status' certificates to approximately 11,000 Rohingyas in India; the remaining 3,000 are “asylum seekers”. India has also given some 500 Rohingyas long term visas with which they can open bank accounts and secure admission in schools.
Kerala connection
At the peak of the latest Rohingya crisis, the state police had identified five Rohingya families in various parts of Wayanad. Some of them possess bank accounts and send their children to local schools. Police officials, however, are not sure whether they were part of the 2017 influx or had wound up in the country long before. Three Rohingya refugees were arrested from Ernakulam on theft charges in January this year. There were also reports of Rohingya refugees living in camps in Delhi mobilising Rs 50,000 for Kerala flood victims.
Pogrom and exodus
The latest Rohingya exodus began in the last week of August after the brutal retaliation of the Burmese army in the wake of a deadly attack by Rohingya Arsa militants on police outposts. At least 6,700 Rohingya, including at least 730 children under the age of five, were killed in the month after the violence broke out, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). At least 288 villages were partially or totally destroyed by fire in northern Rakhine state after August 2017, according to analysis of satellite imagery by Human Rights Watch.
According to the UN, the exodus of the Rohingyas from Burma is the "world's fastest growing refugee crisis". Before August, there were already over three lakh Rohingya refugees living in camps, and makeshift settlements and with host communities. It has swelled by nearly seven lakh since August 2017, according to the UNHCR.
