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
http://www.theerc.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/To-Narendra-Modi.pdf
