Rohingya teenager taken to India’s Manipur to be deported to Myanmar

A Rohingya teenager whose parents are reportedly residing in a camp in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, was taken to a town in the north-eastern Indian state of Manipur bordering Myanmar on Thursday to be deported to that country, the Indian media reported today quoting police officials.

A team of Assam police took the girl, whose age is stated to be 14, to Moreh, a border town, where paperwork was finalised to send her back to Myanmar after she was sheltered in Silchar town of Assam, for one and half years while her family lived as refugees in Cox's Bazar, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

A senior police official of Cachar district said the girl's deportation was "previously scheduled." But it was not officially confirmed if she has been sent back to Myanmar.

Hindustan Times reported that Myanmar declined to take her back, Assam Tribune newspaper said she has been deported.

Diba Roy, founder of NGO Nivedita Nari Sangshta in Silchar said it had taken care of the girl who told the local authorities that she did not have family in Myanmar. According to Cachar police, the Rohingya girl was found in an unconscious state at Rongpur area near Silchar town in 2019.

On being rescued, she was handed over by the police to Ujjala Shelter Home for Girls and Women for counselling.

She stayed there for almost a year and was later sent to the Nivedita Nari Sanstha. India is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and rejects a UN position that deporting the Rohingya violates the principle of refoulement – sending refugees back to a place where they face danger.

An Assam state official said the girl is not willing to go to Myanmar as her parents are in Bangladesh at present. The girl is suspected to be a victim of human trafficking.

Silchar-based human rights activist Kamal Chakraborty was quoted by Hindustan Times from Guwahati as flaying the attempt to deport the girl as "inhuman." "Report suggest that her parents are in a Bangladeshi refugee camp and the situation in Myanmar is volatile. So, how did the Indian government even think of sending a minor girl to that country? This is a clear case of human rights violation. We are going to give her proper shelter so that she doesn't become a victim of such attempts in future," Chakraborty said.

 A number of Myanmar nationals who illegally entered Assam and Manipur were arrested in the last few years in Assam and some of them were sent back. At present, 22 illegal Myanmar migrants are staying in detention centres inside Silchar Central Jail, Indian media reports said.