Srinagar: Clashes broke out inside Jammu & Kashmir’s lone detention centre on Tuesday (July 18) morning after incarcerated Rohingya refugees staged protests to seek their release or repatriation to Myanmar.
Around 270 Rohingya refugees, including women and children, have been lodged in the detention centre for more than two years and have been intermittently protesting against their continuous detention.
Trouble erupted in the Hira Nagar sub-jail, which was notified as a holding centre in March 2020, when Rohingya refugees tried to step out of the jail in protest seeking their release. “They tried to break open the gate and come out, but we closed the gate,” Superintendent of Kathua district jail and holding centre in-charge, Koushal Kumar told The Wire.
He said that a few persons also sustained minor injuries in the incident.
“I cannot tell you the exact number of persons injured. I myself was hit by a stone on the nose,” he said, adding that Rohingya’s pelted stones on the prison authorities.
Koushal said they have been frequently protesting in the detention centre to seek their repatriation to Myanmar. “We have submitted their representations to the higher-ups,” he said.
A few videos of the incident have also been shared in some WhatsApp groups. In one such video, a person can be heard saying that teargas shells were fired upon them. “We have not eaten anything for the past 27 days. They fired teargas shells on us. Nobody has come to listen or see us. They also beat up women and children,” the person can be heard saying.
In another such video, a young person can be seen lying on the ground while men and women are returning presumably from the entrance gate of the detention centre.
The Wire, however, has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of these video clips.
According to officials, police reinforcements were rushed to the detention centre after the incident.
In May this year, the refugees went on a protest and refused to eat on two occasions. They demanded that they either be deported to Myanmar or released.
Officials from the civil administration and the prison department had then reached out to refugees and assured them that they would take up their demand with senior officials.
Today’s incident has left Rohingya families living in different parts of Jammu worried about the well-being of their relatives lodged in the detention centre.
“I want to go to Kathua jail but I am scared. My sister and brother-in-law have been there for the past two years. I am worried about them after I came to know that teargas shells were lobbed in the detention centre,” said Ataullah (name changed), a Rohingya refugee living in Jammu.
He said they are facing worse treatment here than in Myanmar.
“What is our fault and crime? The authorities should tell us what wrong we have done or which law we have broken. We came here to save our lives but we had never thought that we would have to undergo this,” he said.
When contacted, station house officer, Hira Nagar Police station, Amit Sangra said that they have registered a First Information Report (FIR) in the incident.
Detention of Rohingyas and rightwing campaigning for their ouster
In March 2021, J&K authorities detained more than 150 Rohingya refugees living in the Jammu region after the high court directed them to spell out what measures were being taken to identify and act on “illegal immigrants.” The court passed the direction responding to a petition filed by Hunar Gupta, who is affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
In 2017, Gupta had approached the court seeking directions to the state government to shift all “illegal immigrants” from Myanmar and Bangladesh from J&K to any other place.
His petition also sought necessary directions to a former retired judge to hold an inquiry to identify all the “illegal immigrants” from Myanmar and Bangladesh living in J&K.
The rightwing groups in Jammu have been campaigning for the ouster of Rohingyas from the city.
Who are Rohingya?
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority group who have lived for centuries in a predominantly Buddhist Myanmar – formerly known as Burma.
The Rohingya have suffered decades of violence, discrimination and persecution in Myanmar and have been denied citizenship since 1982.
Thousands of Rohingya have fled to different countries to escape persecution in Myanmar.
Around 6,000-7,000 Rohingya have been living in Jammu after arriving in the city between 2012 to 2017.
Umer Maqbool is a Kashmir-based independent journalist.