NEW DELHI: India has pushed hundreds of Bengali-speaking Muslims into Bangladesh without due legal process, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday, accusing the Indian government of violating both domestic and international laws and fuelling bias on religious lines.
The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long taken a hard-line stance on immigration, particularly from Muslim-majority Bangladesh, with top authorities referring to them as “termites” and “infiltrators”.
Critics also accuse the government of sparking fear among India’s estimated 200 million Muslims, especially among speakers of Bengali, which is widely spoken in both eastern India and Bangladesh, AFP reported.
HRW, a New York-based non-profit organisation, said, while quoting Bangladeshi authorities, that India forcibly expelled more than 1,500 Muslim men, women, and children to Bangladesh between May 7 and June 15.
“India’s ruling BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is fuelling discrimination by arbitrarily expelling Bengali Muslims from the country, including Indian citizens,” Elaine Pearson, Asia director at HRW, said.
“The Indian government is putting thousands of vulnerable people at risk in apparent pursuit of unauthorised immigrants, but their actions reflect broader discriminatory policies against Muslims.”
New Delhi insists that the people deported are undocumented migrants, AFP reported.
Violation of human rights
However, claims by authorities that the expulsions were to manage illegal immigration were “unconvincing”, Pearson added, because of “their disregard for due process rights, domestic guarantees, and international human rights standards”.
HRW said that it had sent the report’s findings and questions to the country’s home ministry but had received no response.
The report documented the experiences of 18 people.
A 51-year-old daily wage worker told HRW that he “walked into Bangladesh like a dead body” after India’s Border Security Force (BSF) took him to the border after midnight.
“I thought they (the BSF) would kill me because they were holding guns and no one from my family would know,” the report quotes the worker as saying.
Forceful deportation
Bangladesh, largely encircled by land by India, has seen its relations with New Delhi turn icy since the ouster of Bangladesh’s former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, an ally of India.
India also ramped up operations against migrants in the wake of the attack in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir in April that killed 26 people.
In an unprecedented countrywide drive, Indian authorities detained thousands, with many of them being eventually pushed across the border to Bangladesh.
“The government is undercutting India’s long history of providing refuge to the persecuted as it tries to generate political support,” Pearson said.
India has also been accused of forcibly deporting Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, with navy ships dropping them off the coast of the war-torn nation.
