Lost in Exile: Refugees in Delhi
Than Mang was arrested on 4th December, 2006 while he sat outside the UNHCR office on a hunger strike, demanding to be recognized as a refugee. His appeal for recognition had been rejected twice before; with no other option open for him, Mang decided to demand what he considered to be his right. To his horror, the same agency that he approached for a safe haven reported him to the police, nearly leading to his deportation back to the certain torture and possible death that he had fled from.
The son of a pastor, 19 year old Than Mang was arrested in July 2003 while transporting Bibles from the village of Farkwan, on the Indian side of the porous India-Burma border, to his village Tlangpi in Chin state in Western Burma. In addition to the bibles, an envelope containing a letter and a photograph of an army-man, which he was carrying back for some people in his village from their relatives in Farkwan, proved incriminating. He was arrested and tortured in custody, suspected to be a supporter of the Chin National Front (CNF), a rebel group demanding a separate state. En-route to the dreaded Lung Ler Army detention camp, the convoy was ambushed by the CNA, and in the ensuing fracas, Mang managed to escape.
Mang crossed the border into Mizoram, joining 50,000 Chin refugees, located in make-shift refugee camps. Left at the mercy of local authorities and political outfits, these vulnerable refugees were routinely evicted and sent back to Burma. It was here that Mang received news from his father that in Mang’s absence, the military was going to arrest him. The letter exhorted him not to return and to seek protection in India.
This story did not seem credible enough to the UNHCR; he was rejected for lack of documents to support his claim.
Mang made the long journey to Delhi in 2003, with the belief that being directly under the nose of the only UNHCR office in the country would ensure recognition and aid for him as a refugee. He had waited here for three years, penniless; his only income was the paltry sum earned playing the Church organ for the Chin Community Church, every Sunday. Intermittently, he received letters from his village, telling tales of arrests and torture, including that of his father. His inability to speak Hindi or English, frequently got him into trouble with the local authorities.
When he fond out in November 2005 that he had been rejected and did not have the right to appeal again, Mang saw all doors closed for him. Therefore, the hunger strike.
“How can anyone force us into accepting them as a refugee? There is a proper procedure for these things. We tried telling that to Than Mang and even got some people from his community to speak to him”, says Nayana Bose, External Relations Officer at the UNHCR-New Delhi. The letter sent to police, by the UNHCR, said that Than Mang, “a national from Myanmar… (did) not have credible claims to become a refugee” and is now sitting in an “illegal demonstration” outside the UNHCR office.
It urged the police to “take action as appropriate and remove him from the premises”, citing concerns for his health.
Hunger strike is not illegal; the only charge that the police could hold up was his illegal presence on Indian Territory under section 14 of the Foreigners Act. Appropriate action was taken: the Burmese embassy was informed and Mang was sought to be deported. “I did not know what was happening to me. When I realized that they were going to send me back, I cried and begged that they do anything to me but send me back. They would have killed me there”, says Mang. Fortunately, when he was taken to the Burmese embassy the official there refused to take custody of him and advised the police to deal with him according to Indian law.
“We had no idea that he would be taken to the Burmese Embassy” says Nayana Bose “Earlier they would simply round them up and take them away”. The ignorance is shocking. An organization dedicated to “safeguarding the rights and well being of refugees” needs to be better informed of the laws related to them. The decision to report Mang to the police in the first place was a gross violation of trust and a lack of accountability on the part of the UNHCR. In this case it could have also proved fatal.
“I fear that if the Burmese government found out that I escaped to India”, wrote Mang in a desperate appeal to the UNHCR from prison, “I would certainly be tortured or even exterminated upon return”. Ironically, the danger that the UNHCR had put him into, finally opened their eyes to his “legitimate fear of persecution”; he was granted refugee status on 26th March, 2007.
What is worse is that Mangs case is not an exception. South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC), a human rights group that works in support of Burmese refugees, says that many refugees received rude treatment at the hands of UNHCRs legal officers and were rejected recognition unjustly. “Through interviews, we could only conclude that the questions asked of many asylum seekers at the interview stage were conducted by under trained staff, undertaken with an air of suspicion”, says Ravi Nair, Managing Dirctor of SAHRDC, “and did not address the core reasons of why the individual could establish a well-founded fear of persecution”.
India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1968 protocol, the benchmark for all international refugee law, which recognizes as a refugee “any person who… owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside his country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”. The official justification given by India was that the Convention defines the refugees on an individual level while India prefers to deal with them as a group. Over the years regional politics and international relations have come to shape India’s ad hoc refugee policy more than anything else. Hence, Sri Lankan Tamils and Tibetans are recognised and supported as refugees by the Indian government, while other, groups like Afghans and Burmese aren’t. The UNHCR itself was re-established in Delhi in 1981, with a limited mandate, to deal with the influx of Afghan refugees following the Soviet invasion, since the Indian government did not wish to upset the Soviet Union, by dealing with the refugees directly.
Similarly, when the ruling SPDC began its crackdown on suspected Chin National Front supporters and repression of the Chin minority, in Western Burma in 1988, India set up refugee camps in Manipur and Mizoram to accommodate Burmese Chin refugees. However, with the normalization of Indo-Burma relations and India looking to curb China’s influence in the region, the Indian government became warmer towards the SPDC and the camps fell into neglect. Reports from refugees and NGOs point out that even today arbitrary evictions are carried out by local authorities and political outfits, contrary to the non-refoulment understanding.
Delhi has 15,000 “urban refugees” under the UNHCRs care, including Afghans, Burmese, Sudanese, Somalis, Iranians and Iraqis. This constitutes one of the largest and most diversified urban-refugee populations. Most have fled violent, war-torn environments with the hope of finding a safer, better future for themselves and their children.
On the contrary, refugees find themselves in a limbo in India. Indian Law treats them as ordinary aliens, making it impossible for them to integrate within Indian society. They have no legal status and are forbidden from working, trading or setting up businesses and owning land or property. Their ambiguous legal status makes them subject to harassment by the police and local authorities.
The Burmese-Chin are the most disadvantaged group amongst refugees. Their physical traits, rural background, religious and cultural practices and inability to speak the local languages, makes it difficult for them to blend in, leaving them more vulnerable. Most of the 1800 Burmese-Chin refugees in Delhi live in overcrowded rooms, have no means to support themselves and are routinely abused and harassed by the locals.
On the other hand, while the Afghan refugees, particularly the Hindu Sikhs, have historical roots here and find it easier to blend in, most Iranians and Iraqis receive financial support from relatives settled in the west. Somalis form a small group in Delhi; most of them prefer to live in Hyderabad where they have a large support structure in the form of religious institutions and a significant African population.
Burmese refugees are mostly settled in West Delhi, an area almost entirely composed of internal refugees and economic migrants who resent the extra pressure on resources and jobs by outsiders. Xenophobia and racism are a fact of life here. Tin Sang, a 34 year old Burmese refugee, was beaten up by a mob, kept in confinement for a day and then handed over to the police. “Woh kuttey khaata hai, colony mein sabkey kuttey khaa raha hai ( He eats dogs. He’s killing the dogs in the colony.)”, they told the police. Verbal and physical abuse of this sort is common in these colonies. Single women escaping rape and torture, are again made victims of sexual harassment in the streets and workplaces.
“I thought India meant democracy and freedom. However, I do not feel free. Only more depressed and exploited”, says Thetta a Burmese Chin refugee. Living in Delhi since 2002, Thetta had to wait a year before getting refugee status. She brings up her three children in a small room in Jivan Bagh. In June 2006, her seven year old daughter, Bawi Lang, was molested and forced into oral sex by her neighbour’s teenage son. She suffers from severe trauma- depression, silence, constantly washing her hands and mouth. Although the police arrested the assailant, a 14 year old boy, they subsequently forced her into a “compromise”. “They said that since the convict is a minor and the son of influential people in the area and that since we are not from here, we should compromise”. After the incident, the hostility towards them increased- people threw garbage at her children, abused them verbally and even beat up her husband. The derogation eventually forced them to shift their home. “Nobody knows our reality”, says Thetta, nearly in tears, “the society and the environment harm us even more”.
Thetta, who was a schoolteacher in Burma, wants to send her daughter to school, to enable her to get over the trauma. However, the small sum that she gets for her childrens education, in addition to the 1300 rupees subsistence allowance and the 3000 that her husband brings home, thanks to the UNHCRs Basic Salary scheme, is barely enough to meet the monthly expenditures. Whatever little is left is spent in buying medicines for her husband.
Most refugees, however, are not fortunate enough to receive these benefits. Budget cuts in the global operations of the UNHCR forced the New Delhi office to gradually withdraw permanent Subsistence Allowance to refugees from 2003. This sparked a row of protests as for many this was the only source of income. Now, Subsistence Allowance is only given for the initial year after refugee status is granted and is revoked thereafter, except in some cases when the UNHCR subjectively considers a person an Extremely Vulnerable Individual-mostly female heads of households, elderly and the disabled.
The UNHCRs mantra for refugees since then has been Self Reliance, a program that they have started in partnership with other NGOs-Don Bosco Ashyalam and YMCA-to provide the refugees with voluntary education and then find suitable jobs for them. Minimum wages are ensured for Burmese refugees by the Basic Salary schemes where the income of maximum two members per family is complemented by the UNHCR to meet the minimum wage levels under Indian law.
Success in the self reliance program is limited, due to some inherent flaws. Lack of a legal status makes economic self sufficiency unrealistic. At the same time, employers are not comfortable hiring refugees. “Most simply do not trust the refugees. They think that they will run away or steal”, says Selin Mathews of Don Bosco Ashyalam. “It takes a lot of convincing. Even my parents sometimes ask me if I wouldn’t rather work for the benefit of Indians”, she adds. While 90% refugees are employed in the informal sector, they cannot negotiate the terms of employment and often find themselves being exploited.
Additionally, the self-reliance program only benefits those who already have some sort of skills. For others, especially the Burmese who mostly come from rural backgrounds, with no knowledge of English or Hindi it is nearly impossible to find a job. Although linguistic and vocational training is provided by partner NGOs, the infrastructure and funds are inadequate to make a real impact.
Hence, for most refugees in Delhi resettlement to a third country is the only viable option for a secure future. This, again, is not guaranteed. It requires third countries to be willing to open their doors to foreign refugees. Despite the recent success of having 200 Afghan refugees resettled in New Zealand, the UNHCR agrees that the prospects of resettlement as a durable solution might be dwindling. “Perceptions are important. Afghans, for example, might be viewed as terrorists by some ignorant people”, says Nayana Bose.
India has consistently maintained that although they have not ratified the 1951 Charter, they have done more than most countries for the benefit of refugees. While this may be true of politically important groups like the Tibetans and the Sri Lankan Tamils, it is akin to adapting an ostrich-like attitude towards refugees of other nationalities. The 1800 Burmese in New Delhi are living an “urban nightmare”. In addition another 50,000 are languishing in the Northeast. By denying refugees legal status and the right to work and refusing to grant UNHCR access to other parts of the country, the government provides a hindrance to any long term solution for their plight.
The apathy of the Indian government is complemented by the inaccessibility of the UNHCR. Meetings with the refugees happen only once a week and it takes months to get replies to letters and applications. The size and diversity of the refugee population in the city, combined with hostile laws, makes effective refugee protection an uphill task. Basic survival is difficult enough for most; the future is but a distant dream.
-by Fahad Mustafa
with Deepti Kakkar
The son of a pastor, 19 year old Than Mang was arrested in July 2003 while transporting Bibles from the village of Farkwan, on the Indian side of the porous India-Burma border, to his village Tlangpi in Chin state in Western Burma. In addition to the bibles, an envelope containing a letter and a photograph of an army-man, which he was carrying back for some people in his village from their relatives in Farkwan, proved incriminating. He was arrested and tortured in custody, suspected to be a supporter of the Chin National Front (CNF), a rebel group demanding a separate state. En-route to the dreaded Lung Ler Army detention camp, the convoy was ambushed by the CNA, and in the ensuing fracas, Mang managed to escape.
Mang crossed the border into Mizoram, joining 50,000 Chin refugees, located in make-shift refugee camps. Left at the mercy of local authorities and political outfits, these vulnerable refugees were routinely evicted and sent back to Burma. It was here that Mang received news from his father that in Mang’s absence, the military was going to arrest him. The letter exhorted him not to return and to seek protection in India.
This story did not seem credible enough to the UNHCR; he was rejected for lack of documents to support his claim.
Mang made the long journey to Delhi in 2003, with the belief that being directly under the nose of the only UNHCR office in the country would ensure recognition and aid for him as a refugee. He had waited here for three years, penniless; his only income was the paltry sum earned playing the Church organ for the Chin Community Church, every Sunday. Intermittently, he received letters from his village, telling tales of arrests and torture, including that of his father. His inability to speak Hindi or English, frequently got him into trouble with the local authorities.
When he fond out in November 2005 that he had been rejected and did not have the right to appeal again, Mang saw all doors closed for him. Therefore, the hunger strike.
“How can anyone force us into accepting them as a refugee? There is a proper procedure for these things. We tried telling that to Than Mang and even got some people from his community to speak to him”, says Nayana Bose, External Relations Officer at the UNHCR-New Delhi. The letter sent to police, by the UNHCR, said that Than Mang, “a national from Myanmar… (did) not have credible claims to become a refugee” and is now sitting in an “illegal demonstration” outside the UNHCR office.
It urged the police to “take action as appropriate and remove him from the premises”, citing concerns for his health.
Hunger strike is not illegal; the only charge that the police could hold up was his illegal presence on Indian Territory under section 14 of the Foreigners Act. Appropriate action was taken: the Burmese embassy was informed and Mang was sought to be deported. “I did not know what was happening to me. When I realized that they were going to send me back, I cried and begged that they do anything to me but send me back. They would have killed me there”, says Mang. Fortunately, when he was taken to the Burmese embassy the official there refused to take custody of him and advised the police to deal with him according to Indian law.
“We had no idea that he would be taken to the Burmese Embassy” says Nayana Bose “Earlier they would simply round them up and take them away”. The ignorance is shocking. An organization dedicated to “safeguarding the rights and well being of refugees” needs to be better informed of the laws related to them. The decision to report Mang to the police in the first place was a gross violation of trust and a lack of accountability on the part of the UNHCR. In this case it could have also proved fatal.
“I fear that if the Burmese government found out that I escaped to India”, wrote Mang in a desperate appeal to the UNHCR from prison, “I would certainly be tortured or even exterminated upon return”. Ironically, the danger that the UNHCR had put him into, finally opened their eyes to his “legitimate fear of persecution”; he was granted refugee status on 26th March, 2007.
What is worse is that Mangs case is not an exception. South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC), a human rights group that works in support of Burmese refugees, says that many refugees received rude treatment at the hands of UNHCRs legal officers and were rejected recognition unjustly. “Through interviews, we could only conclude that the questions asked of many asylum seekers at the interview stage were conducted by under trained staff, undertaken with an air of suspicion”, says Ravi Nair, Managing Dirctor of SAHRDC, “and did not address the core reasons of why the individual could establish a well-founded fear of persecution”.
India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1968 protocol, the benchmark for all international refugee law, which recognizes as a refugee “any person who… owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside his country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”. The official justification given by India was that the Convention defines the refugees on an individual level while India prefers to deal with them as a group. Over the years regional politics and international relations have come to shape India’s ad hoc refugee policy more than anything else. Hence, Sri Lankan Tamils and Tibetans are recognised and supported as refugees by the Indian government, while other, groups like Afghans and Burmese aren’t. The UNHCR itself was re-established in Delhi in 1981, with a limited mandate, to deal with the influx of Afghan refugees following the Soviet invasion, since the Indian government did not wish to upset the Soviet Union, by dealing with the refugees directly.
Similarly, when the ruling SPDC began its crackdown on suspected Chin National Front supporters and repression of the Chin minority, in Western Burma in 1988, India set up refugee camps in Manipur and Mizoram to accommodate Burmese Chin refugees. However, with the normalization of Indo-Burma relations and India looking to curb China’s influence in the region, the Indian government became warmer towards the SPDC and the camps fell into neglect. Reports from refugees and NGOs point out that even today arbitrary evictions are carried out by local authorities and political outfits, contrary to the non-refoulment understanding.
Delhi has 15,000 “urban refugees” under the UNHCRs care, including Afghans, Burmese, Sudanese, Somalis, Iranians and Iraqis. This constitutes one of the largest and most diversified urban-refugee populations. Most have fled violent, war-torn environments with the hope of finding a safer, better future for themselves and their children.
On the contrary, refugees find themselves in a limbo in India. Indian Law treats them as ordinary aliens, making it impossible for them to integrate within Indian society. They have no legal status and are forbidden from working, trading or setting up businesses and owning land or property. Their ambiguous legal status makes them subject to harassment by the police and local authorities.
The Burmese-Chin are the most disadvantaged group amongst refugees. Their physical traits, rural background, religious and cultural practices and inability to speak the local languages, makes it difficult for them to blend in, leaving them more vulnerable. Most of the 1800 Burmese-Chin refugees in Delhi live in overcrowded rooms, have no means to support themselves and are routinely abused and harassed by the locals.
On the other hand, while the Afghan refugees, particularly the Hindu Sikhs, have historical roots here and find it easier to blend in, most Iranians and Iraqis receive financial support from relatives settled in the west. Somalis form a small group in Delhi; most of them prefer to live in Hyderabad where they have a large support structure in the form of religious institutions and a significant African population.
Burmese refugees are mostly settled in West Delhi, an area almost entirely composed of internal refugees and economic migrants who resent the extra pressure on resources and jobs by outsiders. Xenophobia and racism are a fact of life here. Tin Sang, a 34 year old Burmese refugee, was beaten up by a mob, kept in confinement for a day and then handed over to the police. “Woh kuttey khaata hai, colony mein sabkey kuttey khaa raha hai ( He eats dogs. He’s killing the dogs in the colony.)”, they told the police. Verbal and physical abuse of this sort is common in these colonies. Single women escaping rape and torture, are again made victims of sexual harassment in the streets and workplaces.
“I thought India meant democracy and freedom. However, I do not feel free. Only more depressed and exploited”, says Thetta a Burmese Chin refugee. Living in Delhi since 2002, Thetta had to wait a year before getting refugee status. She brings up her three children in a small room in Jivan Bagh. In June 2006, her seven year old daughter, Bawi Lang, was molested and forced into oral sex by her neighbour’s teenage son. She suffers from severe trauma- depression, silence, constantly washing her hands and mouth. Although the police arrested the assailant, a 14 year old boy, they subsequently forced her into a “compromise”. “They said that since the convict is a minor and the son of influential people in the area and that since we are not from here, we should compromise”. After the incident, the hostility towards them increased- people threw garbage at her children, abused them verbally and even beat up her husband. The derogation eventually forced them to shift their home. “Nobody knows our reality”, says Thetta, nearly in tears, “the society and the environment harm us even more”.
Thetta, who was a schoolteacher in Burma, wants to send her daughter to school, to enable her to get over the trauma. However, the small sum that she gets for her childrens education, in addition to the 1300 rupees subsistence allowance and the 3000 that her husband brings home, thanks to the UNHCRs Basic Salary scheme, is barely enough to meet the monthly expenditures. Whatever little is left is spent in buying medicines for her husband.
Most refugees, however, are not fortunate enough to receive these benefits. Budget cuts in the global operations of the UNHCR forced the New Delhi office to gradually withdraw permanent Subsistence Allowance to refugees from 2003. This sparked a row of protests as for many this was the only source of income. Now, Subsistence Allowance is only given for the initial year after refugee status is granted and is revoked thereafter, except in some cases when the UNHCR subjectively considers a person an Extremely Vulnerable Individual-mostly female heads of households, elderly and the disabled.
The UNHCRs mantra for refugees since then has been Self Reliance, a program that they have started in partnership with other NGOs-Don Bosco Ashyalam and YMCA-to provide the refugees with voluntary education and then find suitable jobs for them. Minimum wages are ensured for Burmese refugees by the Basic Salary schemes where the income of maximum two members per family is complemented by the UNHCR to meet the minimum wage levels under Indian law.
Success in the self reliance program is limited, due to some inherent flaws. Lack of a legal status makes economic self sufficiency unrealistic. At the same time, employers are not comfortable hiring refugees. “Most simply do not trust the refugees. They think that they will run away or steal”, says Selin Mathews of Don Bosco Ashyalam. “It takes a lot of convincing. Even my parents sometimes ask me if I wouldn’t rather work for the benefit of Indians”, she adds. While 90% refugees are employed in the informal sector, they cannot negotiate the terms of employment and often find themselves being exploited.
Additionally, the self-reliance program only benefits those who already have some sort of skills. For others, especially the Burmese who mostly come from rural backgrounds, with no knowledge of English or Hindi it is nearly impossible to find a job. Although linguistic and vocational training is provided by partner NGOs, the infrastructure and funds are inadequate to make a real impact.
Hence, for most refugees in Delhi resettlement to a third country is the only viable option for a secure future. This, again, is not guaranteed. It requires third countries to be willing to open their doors to foreign refugees. Despite the recent success of having 200 Afghan refugees resettled in New Zealand, the UNHCR agrees that the prospects of resettlement as a durable solution might be dwindling. “Perceptions are important. Afghans, for example, might be viewed as terrorists by some ignorant people”, says Nayana Bose.
India has consistently maintained that although they have not ratified the 1951 Charter, they have done more than most countries for the benefit of refugees. While this may be true of politically important groups like the Tibetans and the Sri Lankan Tamils, it is akin to adapting an ostrich-like attitude towards refugees of other nationalities. The 1800 Burmese in New Delhi are living an “urban nightmare”. In addition another 50,000 are languishing in the Northeast. By denying refugees legal status and the right to work and refusing to grant UNHCR access to other parts of the country, the government provides a hindrance to any long term solution for their plight.
The apathy of the Indian government is complemented by the inaccessibility of the UNHCR. Meetings with the refugees happen only once a week and it takes months to get replies to letters and applications. The size and diversity of the refugee population in the city, combined with hostile laws, makes effective refugee protection an uphill task. Basic survival is difficult enough for most; the future is but a distant dream.
-by Fahad Mustafa
with Deepti Kakkar
posted by Fahad Mustafa at
10:54 AM
3 Comments:
hi my name is manu from banglore,look i am doing a project on burma so can you please send me the details of diffrent refuge settlements in north or south india,so that i can interview this people,thank u,and i feel so sorry for the refugees after i read your blog,good job man..continue yor work.bye.send me you reply to my mail id ran.manu@yahoo.in
Excellent write-up Fahad and Deepti...and very informative unlike most blogs which are just opinion pieces lacking basis in facts...keep up the good work :)
Baishali Adak, journalist, Deccan Herald
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