- Immigrant Times
- Aug 17
- 5 min read
ROHINGYA REFUGEES
India is putting the lives of Rohingya refugees at risk by forcefully expelling them
A report by Human Rights Watch (1), with contributions by the BBC, The Immigrant Times and others (2)
It is estimated that more than one million Rohingya fled to Bangladesh and India, following the crackdown by the Myanmar military in 2017. The majority still live in Bangladesh, a country ill-equipped to provide them with a future.
August 2025: The international human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has accused the Indian government of putting the lives of ethnic Rohingya refugees in danger by forcefully expelling them to Bangladesh and Myanmar. The NGO added that the Indian authorities had arbitrarily detained several hundred and mistreated many of them.
An estimated 40,000 Rohingya live in India. Some 23,000 of them are registered with the UN refugee agency UNHCR. Although India is not a party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, India is bound by the customary international law principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits countries from returning or expelling people to places where they face threats to their lives or freedom.
In May 2025, states in India governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) initiated a campaign to expel Rohingya and Bengali-speaking Muslims for being ‘illegal immigrants’. Those expelled to Bangladesh included at least 192 Rohingya refugees despite being registered with the UNHCR. The authorities also put 40 Rohingya refugees on a ship near the Myanmar coast and forced them to swim ashore.
“The Indian government’s expulsion of Rohingya refugees shows an utter disregard for human life and international law,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The actions taken against these refugees, who have fled atrocities and persecution in Myanmar, reflect the ruling BJP’s policy to demonise Muslims as ‘illegal’ migrants.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed nine Rohingya men and women in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh who had recently arrived from India. Six who had been expelled in May alleged that Indian authorities assaulted them and seized their money, mobile phones, and UNHCR registration cards. The other three fled to Bangladesh, one each from Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi, fearing detention after police threatened them.
On 6 May 2025, Indian authorities arbitrarily detained 40 Muslim and Christian Rohingya refugees, including 13 women, in Delhi under the pretext of collecting data needed to identify them. The authorities flew the Rohingya to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and forced them to board an Indian naval vessel there, which set sail. The ship’s crew allegedly beat and interrogated them. A Rohingya Christian man in Delhi, whose brother was among those expelled, told Human Rights Watch that once the ship was close to the Myanmar coast, the crew gave the refugees life jackets and then tossed them into the sea.
The refugees swam ashore, reaching Launglon township in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region. One used a fisherman’s phone to contact family members. “We were treated like the worst criminals,” he told a relative. “One officer said, ‘No one will speak for you. No one will hold us accountable if we kill you all.’ Some of us could swim and helped those who could not reach the shore.” The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said the incident demonstrated “blatant disregard for the lives and safety of those who require international protection.”
Fearing arbitrary arrests, some Rohingya families decided to flee India for Bangladesh. They said police beat and violently mistreated those fleeing. A Rohingya man, 40, a UNHCR-registered refugee who lived in Hyderabad, set out on May 15 with his wife and two children by train with a Rohingya group. However, the police detained the group at a railway station in Tripura State, took the information needed to identify them, and then beat them. “They even beat my 4-year-old daughter,” he said. “They insulted the women, too. They took our phones and my 20,000 Indian rupees [US$230]. They took everything, even a school bag my child used.”
The man said that the police handed them over to border officials, who beat the men in the group with lathis (batons), compelled them to make a video, and then forced them across the border into Bangladesh. “They made us say that we were from Bangladesh, that we were trying to enter India, and that the Indian government had arrested us and was sending us back,” he said, “They told us that if the Bangladeshi border guards sent us back to India, we would be shot.”
In March, the UN special rapporteur wrote to the Indian government raising concerns about the widespread, arbitrary, and indefinite detention of refugees and asylum seekers, including Rohingya, from Myanmar. He also raised concerns about detention conditions, including allegations of ill-treatment and beatings, lack of access to adequate medical treatment, deaths in custody, and deportations.
Rohingya refugees previously had some access to education and livelihoods in India, but that policy changed in 2017 when the BJP government “issued detailed instructions for the deportation of illegal foreign nationals, including Rohingyas.”
The expulsions have made the Rohingya refugees who remain in India very insecure, Human Rights Watch said. In Jammu in May, authorities vandalised refugee shelters and arbitrarily arrested at least 30 refugees, said a Rohingya woman, 40, who fled with her two children to Bangladesh that month after the police threatened them. “They accused us of being ‘Bengalis,’ ignoring both our UNHCR cards and Myanmar nationality documents.”
India’s Supreme Court announced that it will decide whether the Rohingya are ‘refugees’ or ’ illegal entrants’, and the rights and protections to which they are entitled. The next hearing is scheduled for 23 September 2025. In May 2025, the court refused to halt the deportations and summarily dismissed the account of Rohingya refugees being abandoned at sea, calling it a “beautifully crafted story.”
Following the findings by Human Rights Watch, the British public service broadcaster BBC also contacted India's Ministry of External Affairs but received no replies.
Background
The Rohingyas, who numbered around 1.5 million in Myanmar at the start of 2017, are one of the many ethnic minorities in the country. Rohingya Muslims represent the largest percentage of Muslims in Myanmar, with the majority living in Rakhine state. It is estimated that nowadays only 300,000 Rohingyas still live in Myanmar.
In August 2017, a deadly crackdown by Myanmar's army on Rohingya Muslims sent hundreds of thousands fleeing across the border into Bangladesh. They risked everything to escape by sea or on foot a military offensive which the United Nations later described as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’.
In January 2020, the UN's top court ordered the Buddhist-majority country to take measures to protect members of its Rohingya community from genocide. But the army in Myanmar (formerly Burma) has said it was fighting Rohingya militants and denies targeting civilians. Described by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as "one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world", the Rohingya are one of Myanmar's many ethnic minorities.
India has a sizeable population of Rohingya refugees, although Bangladesh, where more than a million live, has the biggest number. Most fled Myanmar after a deadly army crackdown in 2017. Despite having lived there for generations, the Rohingya are not recognised in Myanmar as citizens.
(1) Sources: Human Rights Watch; the BBC; The Immigrant Times; the Observer Research Foundation; the Crisis Group; Wikipedia
(2) Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including war crimes, crimes against humanity, child labour, torture, human trafficking, and women's and LGBT rights. To ensure its independence, Human Rights Watch refuses government funding and carefully reviews all donations to ensure that they are consistent with its policies, mission, and values.
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