The struggles of fleeing Rohingya refugees on their way to Bangladesh

As Rohingya refugees try to find their way to Bangladesh — while Myanmar closes its doors to them — their biggest fear is being sent to detention centres in India.

Silchar: On August 25, Nur Saba Begum, a 45-year-old Myanmarese national broke down in front of the judge at the Cachar district sessions court. For two years, Nur Saba, along with her husband and two young children, have been at the detention centre in Assam’s Silchar central jail, arrested by Karimganj police near the Assam-Tripura border in 2019. On that day, the court rejected the bail petition for the Rohingya family because they didn't have an eligible bailer to stand surety. Nur Saba couldn't find back tears.

In May 2022, 26 Rohingyas were arrested in Assam's Silchar when they were trying to return to Bangladesh. 

According to officials of the Assam Police, Nur Saba and her family entered India illegally from Bangladesh in 2016, crossing over from the Akhaura border post, near Tripura's Agartala. The family then moved to Jammu and Kashmir, and worked as construction labourers. In 2019, post the nullification of Article 370, which brought about an increasingly fraught environment, the family decided to move to Bangladesh, and were arrested as they were trying to get past the Indo-Bangladesh border in Tripura.

If this was in 2019, this choice to risk their lives to cross the border back to Bangladesh is a choice several Rohingya refugees are appearing to make.

On August 21, 2022, two Rohingya men, 26-year-old Jamal Hussain, and 18-year-old Amir Hakim were arrested at Assam’s Badarpur railway station. Hussain came to India in 2012, and also moved to Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla, where he lived in a mosque, military intelligence officials said. Hakim entered India six months ago and joined Jamal.

Both did not have refugee cards issued by the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR). After they decided to move to Bangladesh, they travelled from Jammu to Delhi in a bus, then took a train to Guwahati, and were seeking to board another train to Tripura before entering Bangladesh. “This is the route most use to enter India and leave," an Assam Police intelligence officer said.

Similarly, in May 2022, 26 Rohingyas were arrested in Assam's Silchar when they were trying to return to Bangladesh. Currently, police officials said that there are 60 Myanmar nationals, including 20 minors, in the Silchar central jail, waiting to be deported. Assam Police along with Border Security Force (BSF) have arrested over 100 Rohingyas since March 2020 from the districts along India-Bangladesh international border, mostly in Karimganj.

Delhi-based social activist Ravi Hemadri, who runs a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Development and Justice Initiative (DAJI), which works for migrant workers and refugees in Delhi, said that the fear of detention centres is the primary reason for the shift backwards. "They are victims of an exodus and they moved from Myanmar to India and Bangladesh seeking shelter. Those living in various parts of India have relatives in Bangladesh and they contact each other often. If they go to Bangladesh, at least there is no fear of being sent to the detention centres."

In at least one case, the choice is between moving to Bangladesh or staying amid uncertainty in India, because being deported from India back to Myanmar was tried, unsuccessfully. On April 1, 2021, the Assam government attempted to deport a 14-year-old Rohingya girl who was allegedly kidnapped by miscreants from Bangladesh and brought to India in 2019. Myanmar, however, did not open the gates of the international border and the girl was taken back to the shelter home where she was living after being in police custody.

Diba Roy, a social worker who looks after the Nivedita Nari Sanstha shelter home in Silchar, said that the girl's family lives in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazaar and she had initially wanted to go back to them. “She is 16 now and in the next two years, she will be an adult. We will not be able to keep her in our shelter home after that, but there is no clarity on where she will go. Officially, she can be deported to Myanmar only, but this does not seem possible. She wants to go to Bangladesh, which is also not possible. Recently, her uncle who lives in Bengaluru, contacted us and we may send her there if the government allows," Roy said.

Sudip Banerjee, a senior official at the Silchar Central Jail, said that over 400 arrested foreign nationals, including 60 Rohingyas in Silchar detention centre, are waiting to be deported. "Myanmar and Bangladesh nationals have been deported in the past, but in the last two years, this has not happened. The deportation process is initiated by ministries of the two countries and we follow their orders."

For most of these refugees, the destination that they want to reach is Bangladesh’s Cox Bazaar where more than a million refugees reside in a large camp at Kutupalong and smaller camps at Ukhiya and Nayapara in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazaar District. The camps are looked after by the Office of Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC).

Zobaer Ahmed, a journalist based in Dhaka said that over the past few years, there have been increasing reports of Rohingya families from India reaching the camp at Cox’s Bazaar. “We have talked to families returning to Bangladesh from India. Some NGOs who work for these people say that the fear of detention camps in India is one of the reasons. Even if the situation isn’t great in Bangladesh, at the very least, they are not sent to jail here," Ahmed said.

Ahmed says that there are middlemen that are facilitating this crossing over in exchange for money. “Families pay ₹80,000 and the group has its agents everywhere from New Delhi to Guwahati to Chittagong to Cox’s Bazaar,” he said. The distance between Guwahati to Chittagong is around 567 kilometres and the route moves through Meghalaya to Sylhet in Bangladesh. Chittagong is around 150 kilometres from Cox's Bazaar where the Rohingya refugee camps are located.

HT reached out to the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh, but deputy secretary Md Shamsud Douza said that he was not authorised to speak about the process.

In July 2021, when 15 Rohingya refugees travelling from West Bengal, were arrested in Karimganj, the superintendent of police of the district Padmanabh Baruah said that there is a network which helps these refugees to cross the border.

Talking to HT on Thursday, Baruah said that, often, those arrested reveal that money is paid to middlemen to get documentation to enter and exit India. "We are trying to catch the people involved in such middlemen but it is difficult because some of them are doing it from beyond the border. But we are keeping strict vigil," he said.