Boat with Rohingyas escorted out of India’s waters despite pleas by UN experts to allow them to disembark

Coast Guard provided food, medical aid to refugees, monitored the boat till it left India's waters on its way to Indonesia

India got its Coast Guard to escort a boat carrying 78 Rohingya refugees out of its territorial waters three months after the vessel was found adrift in the Andaman Sea with eight of its passengers already dead, one missing and several in need of medical support.

The Coast Guard escorted the boat to international waters even after Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations (UN) reminded the government of India of its obligation to allow them to disembark in a safe port “under the international human rights law, in particular the right to life, codified in Article 6 of the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights)”. The government, however, got the Coast Guard to provide the refugees with medical support and humanitarian aid as well as food and drinking water for almost three months, apart from technical assistance to repair the engine of the boat.

The refugees, including women and children, earlier this month finally arrived at Pulau Idaman, a small island off the coast of East Aceh in Indonesia – after a more-than-110-day-long perilous voyage from Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf in southern Bangladesh.

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The 78 refugees are among thousands of Rohingyas who had to escape ethnic cleansing and crackdown of the Rakhine State of Myanmar and had been living in camps in Bangladesh. They set sail for Malaysia on February 11 but the engine of the boat broke down on February 15. The Indian Coast Guard ships came to their rescue on February 24.

New Delhi conducted talks with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government in Dhaka for the return of the refugees to Bangladesh. But the Government of Bangladesh was apparently reluctant to take them back.

“While the efforts of the Indian Coast Guard in providing some relief materials to the starving occupants of the boat deserve appreciation, the refusal to permit their disembarkation on Indian soil and Bangladesh’s alleged refusal to take them back flies in the face of well-established norms of international humanitarian law and human rights standards,” said Venkatesh Nayak, a transparency activist based in Bengaluru.

At least 47 of the passengers of the boat had identity cards issued by the office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Bangladesh. Three members of the crew of the boat were also citizens of Bangladesh.

Chris Lewa, director of ‘Arakan Project’, told DH from Bangkok that although the Indian government had shown some humanity, taken care of the well-being of the refugees and had not abandoned them at sea, it had not brought them ashore to the nearest port of safety and thus failed to fully comply with its obligations under international maritime laws.

Lewa and her organisation ‘Arakan Project’ monitor the flight of Rohingyas from persecution in Rakhine State of Myanmar to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

Nayak had in April submitted applications to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) as well as the Indian Coast Guard, in accordance with the Right to Information Act 2005, seeking details about the location of the refugees and the assistance provided to them. The MEA turned down his plea on May 20, citing Section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act 2005, which empowered the government to refuse to make public certain information if such disclosure could affect relation with foreign state. The Indian Coast Guard cited the same reason to turn down his pleas. He filed first appeals in both cases on May 24, arguing mainly that the rejections were not in accordance with the RTI Act.

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The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants, along with Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions and Special Rapporteur on Torture or other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Punishment, wrote a letter to India on April 8, seeking updated information about the location of the boat and urging it to “promptly take steps to ensure the safety” of the refugees on it, including through disembarkation at a port of safety. The three UN Special Rapporteurs also expressed concerns over the possibility of asylum seekers and refugees being forcibly pushed back to the high seas. They stressed that the states should ensure that all border governance measures taken at international borders, including the ones aimed at addressing irregular migration, were in accordance with the principle of non-refoulement and the prohibition of arbitrary or collective expulsions. “The prohibition of refoulement under international human rights law applies to any form of removal or transfer of persons, regardless of their status,” they wrote to the government, which, however, did not respond to the letter.

India’s lack of response to the urgent appeal by three UN Special Rapporteurs and its refusal to part with details of the incident by citing national security exemptions under the RTI Act is likely to be construed as “conduct unbecoming of an aspirant to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council,” said Nayak.

“It is both a humanitarian imperative and an international obligation to provide vessels in distress with life-saving assistance and disembarkation to a place of safety,” the UNHCR stated after the arrival of the refugees in Indonesia on June 4. The UN organisation lauded Indonesia for providing food and medical support to refugees, but reiterated “the urgent need for states in the region to come together to forge a collective regional response to search, rescue and disembarkation”. “Vulnerable women, children and men should not be left to the mercy of the high seas,” said the UNHCR.

Lewa, however, said that refugees themselves had neither wanted to return to camps in Bangladesh nor had been keen to disembark in India, where they would have been possibly detained for a long time. “Their ultimate goal in paying smugglers and embarking on such a risky journey is clearly to reach Malaysia for various reasons, some for family reunification, others for better protection or to support their families,” she said, noting that the Indian Coast Guard continuously monitored the boat till it reached closer to the territorial waters of Indonesia.

The minority Rohingyas have since long been victims of persecution in the Rakhine State, where Buddhists constitute the majority. They have been denied citizenship and most of them have been stateless, despite living for generations in Myanmar. Myanmar's armed forces launched the latest military crackdown against the Rohingyas on August 25, 2017 after a militant outfit killed 12 security personnel in Rakhine. With hundreds of them killed and villages burnt down, over 723,000 more Rohingyas, including women and children, fled Myanmar and take refuge in Bangladesh. A large number of Rohingyas from Myanmar had already been living in the camps in Bangladesh and the new wave of ethnic cleansing took the number of refugees in Cox's Bazar camps to 1.3 million.