More than 100 Rohingya refugees who have for years been detained at a transit camp in the northeast Indian state of Assam have launched a hunger strike demanding that they be handed over to the United Nations refugee agency in New Delhi, transferred to a detention facility in the Indian capital, and that the process of resettlement in a third country be started.
The 103 Muslim Rohingya refugees have been on hunger strike since Monday at the Matia Transit Camp, where immigrants, most of whom entered the country illegally, are held. Local authorities said 30 Christian Chin refugees, also from Myanmar, are on hunger strike, too, in solidarity with the Rohingyas.
A midlevel police officer in Goalpara district, where the camp is located, told VOA Thursday that senior Home Affairs Ministry officials from the state headquarters were on their way to investigate the issue.
“The officials will interact with their counterparts at the camp, as well as the detainees who are on hunger strike, and aim to resolve the issues. The detainees, who are from Myanmar, are demanding to be released from the camp,” said the police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “All the officials are trying to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”
A Rohingya and her children at a Rohingya refugee camp in Faridabad, India, in April 2024.
Sabber Kyaw Min, an India-based Rohingya rights activist who is monitoring the situation, said that the refugees in the detention center were living in poor hygienic conditions and received “inhumane treatment.”
“Fleeing genocide in Myanmar, our people took refuge in India. Our home country continues to be increasingly unsafe for us. But we are facing persecution here — our people are being imprisoned in India,” Min, head of the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, told VOA.
“At least 40 of the Rohingya refugees at the Matia camp hold UNHCR cards,” he said, using the acronym for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “Yet they are treated like criminals and have been detained. Many Rohingyas have been in detention for as long as 10 or 12 years. They have finished their terms long ago. Yet they are being detained.”
India has not signed the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol and views all Rohingya refugees as "illegal immigrants," although they have lived peacefully in the country for decades.
Since Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, however, Rohingya refugees have faced trouble in India.
After repeated directives from the Indian Home Affairs Ministry in recent years, Indian states have been detaining Rohingya refugees under charges of illegal entry into the country.
According to the UNHCR, 676 Rohingyas are in detention in India, but Rohingya rights activists put the figure at 1,000.
Min said that in many cases, Rohingya refugees are being held in detention “illegally.”
Rohingya refugees pick through what remains after a fire broke out at a camp in Delhi in 2021. Around 50 shanties were reduced to ashes by the fire. Many Rohingya believe that right-wing Hindu groups who want the refugee community to be thrown out of India set fire to the camp.
Jan Mohammad, a Rohingya refugee who recently moved back to Bangladesh from India, told VOA Friday that a relative at the Matia camp told him Rohingyas there were facing torture.
“My relative sent an audio message to me from inside the camp in which he said that the inmates were suffering from poor health care facilities. The supply of drinking water was inadequate. Some were even drinking toilet water. The living conditions in the camp were abominable,” Mohammad said. “During winter, they often could not sleep at night because they did not have enough blankets. When they complained about the poor amenities, they were beaten by the guards there.
“Many inmates there often cried, saying that their detention was for an indefinite period and they would die there, my relative said in his message, three months ago.”
VOA’s email to the Assam home ministry seeking a reaction to the issue has not received a response.
In July, a Supreme Court said the living conditions in several detention centers were “deplorable” while hearing a related petition.
In July, 35 Rohingya inmates of the Matia camp wrote to the local administration seeking resettlement in a third country or transfer to a facility with better conditions. The inmates began their hunger strike on Monday, apparently because the authorities did not respond to their appeal.
The Indian Home Affairs Ministry said years ago Rohingyas detained in India would ultimately be deported to Myanmar, but only 18 have been deported there since 2021.
The London-based Burmese Rohingya Organization UK said in a statement Wednesday that the hunger strike at Matia camp was a “direct response to their prolonged and arbitrary detention and the severe human rights abuses they endure.”
“The arbitrary detention of Rohingya refugees in India represents a grave injustice. These individuals, who have already faced unimaginable atrocities, are subjected to further mistreatment. The Indian government must act immediately to end these unlawful detentions and address the abysmal conditions within detention centers,” Tun Khin, president of the organization, said in the statement.
Rohingya refugees collect food from a community charitable organization in Faridabad, Haryana, India, in early 2024.
New Delhi-based lawyer Ujjaini Chatterji, who argues against indefinite detention of Rohingya refugees in India, told VOA Friday that "the Rohingyas cannot be detained without following the due process established by law.”
“The due process includes serving prior notice to them with an opportunity to present their case, and also for the Rohingyas to be told the grounds for their arrest or detention while being given access to adequate legal representation and contact with friends and family,” Chatterji told the VOA.
“Indefinite detention is an absolute violation of not only the very thrust of the Constitution of India, but also against various precedents set through judgments by the high courts and the Supreme Court of India,” said Chatterji.