Kill Us Here, But Don't Deport Us, Plead Rohingya Muslims

We’re sitting outside Hamid Hussain’s cramped one room tin hut located near Madanpur-Khader village, roughly 20 km from Delhi. His tiny abode cries for a little more space to accommodate his three children and, maybe, some sunlight.

He stays in Darul Hijrat, a 300-square-yard land that stands dotted with small huts, most of which have a squeaky old ladder dividing the hut into two floors for the families to adjust in.

“This is heaven,” he smiles. As compared to his burnt home 3,000 km away at Maungdaw Township of the Northern Rakhine state in Myanmar, this tiny hut is, understandably, nothing less than paradise.

Hussain, along with 300 other Rohingya Muslims near Madanpur-Khader village, are still coping with the news of India mulling deportation of 40,000 Rohingya refugees, terming them ‘illegal immigrants’.

Rohingyas have been the victims of a long-standing ethnic conflict in Myanmar where they have been denied citizenship as they are not recognised as Burmese and are considered Bengalis.

Reports have often cited the Rohingyas to be the most persecuted minority in the world. Although Rohingyas have been fleeing to countries like Thailand and Malaysia, their highest concentration is in Bangladesh and there are about 40,000 Rohingyas in India.

Hussain fled Myanmar in 2012 after violence and mass killings became the norm. Hussain, like other Rohingyas, made his way to Cox bazaar in Bangladesh in an over-crowded boat and after staying there for a couple of months entered Kolkata by road. It is there that his journey and survival in India began. Soon, he made his way to Delhi.

At this land in Darul Hijrat, which has been allotted to them by Zakkat Foundation of India (ZFI), the Rohingyas have to battle problems of sanitation and inadequate drinking water, but the fact that they have a roof above their head keeps them going.

“My brother was murdered. We don’t know how he was killed, but thankfully we found his body a few days later. There are many who don’t even get bodies of their loved ones. That way, we’re lucky,” says Hussain, who now works as a daily-wage labourer in a nearby godown.

The Darul Hijrat settlement houses close to 46 families who wake up to an Azaan from a common loudspeaker attached to the first structure in that cluster of tin huts.