Gee, I wonder why. Could it be that they are Muslims and India doesn’t want more Muslims. I’m not exactly sure of any country that wants Muslims, Rohingya or otherwise. What exactly do the Rohingya have to contribute that is special? The news media ignores this angle. Perhaps there are no special skills unique to the Rohingya. Perhaps there is no rational reason to import them. Perhaps there are good reasons why they are not wanted anywhere. Why doesn’t a Muslim nation take them in? If your fellow Muslims don’t want you, how good are you?
More than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have streamed out of Myanmar in recent weeks, fleeing a bloody military crackdown that a top United Nations official described as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Now the Rohingya are facing expulsion from another country: India, where an estimated 40,000 refugees are scattered amid a population of 1.3 billion.
The Indian government on Monday told the country’s Supreme Court that the Rohingya population posed a threat to national security and that intelligence reports suggested some refugees had links to militant groups based in Pakistan.
India’s Hindu nationalist government made the allegations in an affidavit arguing that the country’s highest court should not block its efforts to deport Rohingya refugees.
“India is already saddled with a very serious problem of illegal migrants and is attempting to address the situation in the larger interest of the nation,” the government said.
For several weeks, officials have said they would like to expel the Rohingya, who they say are in the country illegally. Human rights groups say such a move would violate international laws against sending refugees back to countries where they face persecution.
The Buddhist majority in Myanmar, also known as Burma, has long been accused of oppressing the Rohingya, an ethnic and religious minority of some 1 million people living mostly in the country’s western Rakhine state. The violence has exploded since Aug. 25, when a Rohingya militant group attacked Myanmar police checkpoints, killing a dozen officers.
