The issue of illegal Rohingya immigrants in India has been heating up by the day. The Rohingya Muslims who comprise a minority in Mayanmar have been portrayed as one of the most persecuted communities in the world, though there have been reports which claim that things are not as simple as they look.
We had reported in the past how the erstwhile UPA government had in 2012 turned a blind eye to the illegal immigration, due to domestic political pressure and international concern over human rights. As a result of this inflow, their numbers have been pegged at about 40,000 which was excluding the 14,000 odd Rohingyas who are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The impression of the Rohingya community though started to morph from being simple refugees to being a security threat after it was found that the Rohingyas had started to get radicalised by the Lashkar-e-Toeba (LeT) to avenge the sectarian violence in Myanmar. And it was also found that their retribution was also for some reason aimed towards India.
All these factors reportedly prompted the Modi government to take up the issue of their deportation which included talking with Myanmar and Bangladesh on a diplomatic level. This action though wasn’t welcomed by the Rohingyas and their sympathisers in India and abroad.
The National Human Rights Commission as a result of this government stand, issued a notice to the centre and two Rohingya immigrants assisted by noted lawyer Prashant Bhushan also petitioned the Supreme Court to challenge the decision to deport Rohingyas which the Supreme Court agreed to hear.
Now Kiren Rijiju the Minister of State for Home Affairs has spoken [1][2] to the media about this issue without mincing his words. These statements of his come a day after the Supreme Court asked the government as to why it wanted to deport the Rohingyas.
Rijiju stated that Rohingyas are illegal immigrants who need to be deported as per law and that India is a nation with a great democratic tradition. He added that he was responding to the harsh and unnecessary criticism from human rights groups. He also took exception all such criticism by stating that why was the government being called inhuman when it was just following the legal path.
He also made a very pointed statement by categorically asking the critics to not preach to India regarding this issue as it has in its history given shelter to a maximum number of refugees in the world.
All these statements were made by him during the press briefing of the North East Democratic Alliance which is a political platform of the BJP and its allies in Northeast India.
