'Dispose of' illegal Rohingya immigrants, demands MP

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP Bhartruhari Mahtab on Thursday said the government should identify and "dispose of" Rohingya Muslims who have illegally migrated to India and "are being trained as terrorists".

Mahtab raised the issue in the Lok Sabha during Zero hour.

"Dark clouds have appeared in Jammu and Kashmir... Dark clouds of terrorism... There is emergence of a new insurgent group called Harakah al Yakin consisting of Rohingya Muslims and its presence is in Bangladesh, Myanmar and India," Mahtab said, raising the issue.

"This was reported by a Brussels-based international crisis group. Since then, 40,000 Rohingya Muslims have entered our country as refugees illegally through Bangladesh, the Bay of Bengal and the Myanmar border," he added.

"Myanmar is not recognising them. Indian government is also not recognising them as refugees. Should we treat them as stateless persons?"

Mahtab said, "Jammu and Kashmir is a very sensitive place for this country. These people are now being trained as terrorist. Intelligence report says the IS (Islamic State terror group) has already been in touch with them."

He also referred to a terror attack in Bihar's Buddhist shrine Bodh Gaya in 2013.

"This reminds me of an attack that happened in Bodh Gaya where IM (Indian Mujahideen) was involved," he said.

"As Myanmar is a Buddhist state, they are persecuting Rohingya Muslims. They are flying off to Thailand and other places. It is high time Home Ministry recognises them and... removes them," he said.

The BJD MP also asked what has the External Affairs Ministry done in this regard.

"The whole nation would want to know what the ministry has done in contacting the Myanmar government," he said.

"The Home Ministry should identify them and dispose them of as per the law because we do not have a refugee policy," Mahtab said.

He also said that it was "alarming" that many Rohingya Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir have got Aadhaar cards.

"The government should react immediately. We should not wait for cloudburst," he said.

Rohingya Muslims are a group of Muslims from Myanmar living in Rakhine state since the 15th century. According to some scholars, they are indigenous to Rakhine while other historians claim that the group represents a mixture of pre-colonial and colonial immigrants.

Following reports of atrocities against the Rohingyas in Myanmar since October 2016, the UN in February questioned the credibility of a government-led investigation into allegations of abuses against them.

In March, the UN Human Rights Council decided to send a fact-finding mission to clarify allegations of abuse by security forces against the Rohingyas.

The Myanmar government, however, rejected the UN Mission to investigate the alleged persecution.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday said "ethnic cleansing" was too strong a term to describe what was happening in the Muslim-majority Rakhine, according to a BBC report.

Reports said, the India government was working on identifying Rohingya Muslims who have entered the country over the past five to seven years and were staying illegally in various pockets, including in Jammu and Kashmir, for likely arrest and deportation under the Foreigners Act.

A terror attack in and around the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya on July 7, 2013, was targeted at international Buddhist tourists to avenge the killings of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, according to the revelations by an arrested SIMI and Indian Mujahideen suspect, reports have said.

--IANS

ao/in/vt