The Honorable Prime
Minister Narendra Modi
The Prime Minister
of India
South Block, Raisina
Hill
New Delhi – 110011
Subject: The
Deportation of 40,000 Rohingya refugees from India
We, the European
Rohingya Council (ERC), are the “Voice of the Rohingya”, and are first and
foremost grateful to you and the people of India, as you have hosted the
Rohingya refugees – “the most forgotten people in the world”. As India was a
founding member of the United Nations and has been an elected member of the UN
Security Council throughout the decades, ERC writes to you today, standing in
the encouragement with our mutually shared humanitarian concerns for the
Rohingya people.
We are concerned
about the news that India is planning to deport 40,000 Rohingya people out of
your country. This is very concerning to ERC. Similarly, we have voiced
previously when the state authority of Bangladesh shared the plan to remove all
of the Rohingya people living in Bangladesh and put them on the uninhabitable
Bangladesh island of Thangar Char in the Bay of Bengal. ERC, and many other
countries and organizations already have made a stance on this as an
unacceptable and inhumane treatment of “the most forgotten people in the
world”.
The reality of why
so many thousands of Rohingya people leave Myanmar for neighboring countries is
simply due to the Rohingya are enduring a genocide and crimes against
humanity. Yes, U.N. has failed to prove
this. However, another humanitarian body, Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT),
has established the Tribunal on Myanmar to determine the decade-long Myanmar’s
systematic persecution of Rohingya amounts to genocide. The International State
Crime Initiative (ISCI) has created a panel of specialists and testimony
providers. On March 7, 2017, the judgement of the PPT concluded that the
National League for Democracy (NLD), the military of Myanmar, and the State
Counsellor Aung Suu Kyi are responsible for the crimes against humanity and
genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar.
Recently, U.N. has
established a Fact-Finding-Mission (FFM) to investigate Myanmar’s human rights
violations of Rohingya since October 2016, conducted in the name of security
operations. Until this moment, State Counsellor Daw Aung Suu Kyi has refused to
let the investigation team into Myanmar. As India is a current member of U.N.
Human Rights Council, ERC is hopeful that you will proactively join the
European Union and the United States of America to support in getting the
special investigation team into Myanmar to investigate Myanmar’s human rights
abuses against Rohingya.
Your Permanent
Representative to the United Nations, His Excellency Syed Akbaruddin must be
sharing with you the realities of the Rohingyas’ plight within Myanmar and
India.
The reason for what
has been happening for decades is what fuels the exodus, and why you are
dealing with the influx of Rohingya in India.
The Rohingya people in India are not immigrant; they are not in
violation of visiting India without your permission. They are refugees that ran
away from their genocide.
The European
Rohingya Council (ERC) hopes that you will encourage the humanitarian part of
you to stand up for the Rohingya people and cease the deportation plan. We are
encouraged that India has been a long standing member of U.N. and will come
down on the side of humanity and deal with what you have been facing within
India in a different method – different from politics, racial divide, economic
challenges and geographic divisions; but on the side of humanity that the
Rohingya people justly deserve as they endure their genocide.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Hla Kyaw
Chairman, The
European Rohingya Council
+31 652358202
