A number of Rohingya refugees have been arrested by the Haryana Police in connection with the recent communal unrest in Haryana’s Nuh area adjoining Gurugram.
The migrants were forced out of their residences on Thursday as part of a surprise demolition carried out by armed personnel.
A demolition drive was carried out because Rohingya refugees had illegitimately occupied Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran’s property in Tauru, according to Nuh Superintendent of Police Narender Bijarniya. Some of them have also been identified as accused of throwing stones and participating in the mob on July 31 violence.
The Rohingya are primarily Muslim refugees from Myanmar who left their country after the government targeted brutality on their minority in 2017.
“We have identified a list of them who were involved in the violence, and we have evidence for it. Based on it, the teams have arrested them,” Bijarniya said, according to a national daily.
The majority of refugees in these camps are rickshaw pullers, ragpickers, and vegetable merchants, according to Sabber Kyaw Min, founder, and director of the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, an NGO that helps the community.
“The FRRO (Foreigners Regional Registration Office) officers had informed at the refugee camp that they had a list of at least 17 refugees and had picked some of them,” said Min. “They were known to them for their involvement in the violence,” he added.
The NGO will help the police if any refugees are engaged in unlawful activity, Sabber Kyaw Min said, but carrying out such raids makes the refugees feel uneasy and harassed, he said.
“This is discriminatory conduct and unjust practice towards them. People in the camps are living in fear and the situation is dire. They are handled as though they were dacoits or criminals. He asserted that they were just trying to get by.
The UNHCR has validated 16,000 Rohingya refugees in India. The government estimates that there are more than 40,000 Rohingya refugees living in India, with the majority of them in Jammu.