Rohingya community leaders in India urged the UN on Wednesday to take urgent steps to protect the persecuted minority in Myanmar.
Sabber, founder of the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, also called on the Indian government to reconsider its decision to deport Rohingya from India, and asked New Delhi to use its “clout with the Myanmar government to stop atrocities against the Muslim minority group.”
“It is the international community’s responsibility to protect the rights of the Rohingya community, not only in Myanmar but elsewhere as well,” he said.
Sabber set up the initiative two years ago to take up cases of human rights violations against Rohingya, and it also supports the community in India.
He has lived in India since 2005, when he escaped persecution in the town of Buthingdawung in Rakhine state in Myanmar, where his elderly parents still live. The situation there is so grim that he fears for their safety.
“We are not able to contact parents, relatives and other friends. Their houses are under siege; the roads are blocked. Myanmar has imprisoned them in their own houses. It’s a very miserable situation,” he said.
He rejected claims by the Myanmar government that Hindus in Rakhine state had been massacred.
“Just to divert attention from the brutalities of the Myanmar Army, they are raising the issue of the killing of Hindus. They want to win India’s support, that’s why they are propagating this.”
Maung Abdul Khan, another Rohingya refugee in India, said there were “two ways of handling the current crisis; one is humanitarian assistance and the other is political engagement.”
Khan, the son of a policeman in Buthingdawung, came to India in 2013 after the government in Myanmar threatened to prosecute him for raising the issue of Rohingya human rights in Rakhine. He earns a living in Delhi by giving private tuition to children.
“With what authority does Myanmar call me a stateless citizen?” he said.
“My father worked for the government, my maternal uncle was elected for parliament in 1999 and the regime drives us out of my country.”
He said he was hurt when some media in India described Rohingya as terrorists.
“Just because we are different, we are suffering, we are taking shelter, you are calling us terrorist. Is it justified?”