Rohingya Muslims deportation: Supreme Court to hear case on Monday

A petition has been filed in Supreme Court by two Rohingya Muslim refugees against the deportation of Rohingya Muslims, who have taken refuge in India to escape persecution in Myanmar..The matter was mentioned by Advocate Prashant Bhushan today before a Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud. The Bench agreed to list the case on Monday..The petitioner have cited a Reuters report of August 14, 2017, as per which Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, told parliament that the Central government had directed State authorities to identify and deport illegal immigrants including Rohingya, who face persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar..The petitioners have submitted that this proposed deportation is contrary to the Constitutional protections of Article 14, Article 21 and Article 51(c) of the Constitution of India, which provides equal rights and liberty to every ‘person’. It is also their argument that this act would fall foul of the principle of ‘Non-Refoulement’, which has been widely recognised as a principle of Customary International Law..“India has ratified and is a signatory to, various Conventions that recognise the Principle of ‘Non Refoulement’, that prohibits the deportation of refugees to a country where they face threat to their life. .Further, the Constitution of India under Article 51(c), a Directive Principle of State Policy, also requires fostering respect for International Law and Treaty Obligations. That the petitioners claim that despite these Constitutional and Statutory requirements, the Respondent No. 1 has failed to carry out their obligations to ensure protection to the Rohingya Community by proposing to deport the Community to their home country of Myanmar, where they face serious persecution.”.The petitioners have also relied on the decisions of the Delhi High Court in Dongh Lian Kham v. Union of India and Gujarat High Court in Ktaer Abbas Habib Al Qutaifi v. Union Of India to buttress their arguments..They have prayed for issuance of a writ or direction to the Centre to refrain from deporting the Rohingyas and also to provide them with basic amenities so as to ensure that they can live in human conditions as required by International law in treatment of refugees.Over the past few years, the Myanmar government has committed multiple atrocities on the Rohingya Muslims, who are considered ‘stateless entities’. The government has refused to acknowledge the Rohingyas as a religious minority..Around 40,000 such refugees are said to be residing in India. Home Minister Kiren Rijiju recently revealed that only 14,000 or so Rohingya Muslims in India were registered with the UN refugee agency, and that India was considering deporting the illegal refugees..Read the Petition below.