About 170 Rohingya refugees living in India have been rounded up into detention centres and told they will be forcibly deported back to Myanmar where they had previously fled genocidal human rights abuses.

The mass detentions, which began in the city of Jammu in Kashmir over the weekend, are part of a wider nationwide crackdown against Rohingya Muslims, who number about 40,000 in India. Many hold registered United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) refugee ID cards, which are supposed to offer protection from arbitrary detention.

On Saturday, hundreds of Rohingya including women and children were summoned by police as a part of a “verification” exercise and others were picked up during raids on camps on the outskirts of Jammu city where about 5,000 Rohingya live.

They were taken in buses to a jail in nearby Hiranagar, which police described as a “holding centre”. Proceedings have begun for their deportation back to Myanmar, which is in the midst of a coup and where the Rohingya remain a heavily persecuted minority.

Akram Mohammad was among those detained on Saturday, after he, his wife, Amina, and their three children were summoned to a local stadium by the police. The police and paramilitary banned them from leaving and then in the afternoon they began calling out names.

His wife, Amina, 28, said: “I have small kids: where will I go? What crime has my husband committed?. We came here in 2012 fleeing the brutal violence in our country. My husband was working as a labourer here and we all have identity cards of UNHCR. This is oppression.”

Source: The Guardian