Inside India’s ‘inhumane’ detention camps for Rohingya refugees

A new report details dehumanising treatment and dire living conditions faced by hundreds of Rohingya held in detention camps across India

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A Rohingya refugee child looks out through the bars of a window at a camp on the outskirts of Chennai, India. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:00pm, 17 Dec 2024

Hundreds of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are being arbitrarily and indefinitely detained across India and face dehumanising living conditions that violate their basic human rights, according to a new report.

The study, published on Monday by the non-profit Refugees International and The Azadi Project, documents the segregation of family members and poor sanitation measures at the “jail-like facilities” known as holding centres or transit camps. It says the improper treatment of the detainees is “a failure by India to adhere to its commitments to international human rights treaties”.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates more than 676 Rohingya refugees are being held in detention centres across India. Among them, 608 have no ongoing court cases or pending sentences. Nearly half of the detainees are women and children, according to Refugees International and The Azadi Project.

A Rohingya girl walks through a muddy street at a refugee camp in New Delhi in June. Photo: AFP

Farida, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her identity, told This Week in Asia that she was detained for 14 months in 2021 for unspecified reasons. The 26-year-old, who lives in New Delhi, said she was called into a police station and interrogated for seven hours before being detained.

“Those interrogations are normal for us, but I didn’t realise I was being sent into a detention facility,” she said. “The police made me sign a document and didn’t give me any reason. I was really scared, knowing I might never get out.”

Farida fled from her native Myanmar in 2012 after a surge in military violence against Rohingya Muslims, which the UN has called “textbook ethnic cleansing”. Of the 2.8 million stateless Rohingya, nearly 1 million are in Bangladesh while about 22,500 registered with UNHCR in India, hoping for a more stable life.

Instead, many have found themselves mired in India’s legal limbo and confronted by the country’s growing Islamophobia, which rights advocates say has escalated under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.