Jabeda Khatun was devastated when she found out her daughter and granddaughter were in Myanmar, the country they fled eight years ago due to a genocide. Photo: Shaheen Abdulla/Maktoob
Jabeda Khatun couldn’t fight back her tears when Maktoob showed a photo of her daughter Anuwara Bagum and her granddaughter Asma Aletar from Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region. Asma’s wedding was planned for 20 May, and arrangements were underway.
Neighbours who had gathered joined her. It was a sigh of relief for some that they are safe, but the memories of a genocide in that land worry them.
Maktoob received the evidence that 40 Rohingya refugees India threw in the sea near the Myanmar coast are safe and now under the protection of the National Unity Government (NUG), a coalition of pro-democracy groups formed after the military coup in 2021.
Since then, they have been engaged in armed conflict with the Junta government.
A wing of the People’s Defence Force, the armed wing of the NUG, shared data that Maktoob cross-verified with family members of the people who were expelled inhumanely by Indian authorities.
Aung Kyaw Moe, Deputy Human Rights Minister of the Myanmar National Unity Government, in a message to Maktoob, said that the Rohingya groups are “safe” and provided with “necessary assistance”. He said NUG will do their best to ensure that these people are able to “contact their families”.
Moe is the first Rohingya person to serve in a ministerial position within the NUG.
The petition filed in the Supreme Court of India by Asma’s uncle Mohammed Ismail, states that “children as young as 15, female minors as young as 16, senior citizens up to 66 years old, and people suffering from cancer and other ailments were among those abandoned into the sea without regard for their lives or safety”.
Although a petition listed 43 people, the figure shared by NUG misses three names who are presumed to be still in detention in Delhi.
Ismail told Maktoob that since Asma and his sister Anuwara Bagum were called for biometrics, authorities have not informed him about their condition or whereabouts. A call his sister made to their brother in Malaysia was the only communication.
Testimonies of people who went through the ordeal state torture by Indian authorities. All details confirm that India threw them into the sea near Tanintharyi.
Active combat zone
Tanintharyi, the southern tip of Myanmar, has witnessed heavy shelling in recent days by the Junta forces. Aerial bombing and gunfights are frequent in this region, according to open-source data collected by Maktoob.
“The current situation in Tanintharyi Region is very concerning. Clashes between the junta and various resistance groups, including People’s Defence Forces (PDF), are becoming more frequent. So are deadly airstrikes by the junta on resistance-dominated areas. This makes Tanintharyi dangerous for the Rohingya,” Angshuman Choudhury, a doctoral scholar at the National University of Singapore who works on the conflict in Myanmar, told Maktoob.
“Further, because the Rohingya belong to northern Rakhine State, Tanintharyi is largely unfamiliar territory for them. They don’t have community-based support networks there, which makes them even more vulnerable to hostilities. If the junta apprehends them, they might be jailed, assaulted or forcibly conscripted into the military,” Choudhury added.
The active conflict in the region has led to the group protecting Rohingyas from India to conceal their location from the public. The PDF that is protecting them has raised concerns about their safety, activists who are involved in the matter told Maktoob.
Even though India is not a signatory to the UN Convention for Refugees 1951, it is a signatory to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Article 3 of the treaty states that no person shall be expelled to a place where there is a threat to their life.
Junta forces are led by generals who had orchestrated the genocide against the Rohingyas. Earlier this year, a federal criminal court in Argentina issued an international arrest warrant for Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the commander in chief of Myanmar’s military, for his role in the 2017 genocide against the Rohingya.
Arrest warrants were issued against the Myanmar military for the crime of genocide, following the horrific “clearance operations” in 2017 that led to the death of at least 10,000 people and left 700,000 Rohingya forcibly displaced.
