By- Shantha Wijesooriya
According to a reports reaching to the Lanka Sky News website, the National People’s Power Government is preparing to hand over the 103 Rohingyas who came to Sri Lanka escaping Myanmar genocide by boat to the Myanmar authorities (genocide).
The move that the Sri government (NPP) has taken to deport the Rohingya Muslims arrested at the border of the country to Myanmar is a support for the ethnic cleansing and joining hands with the genocide against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and the European imperialists led by the United States against the Muslims on a global scale.
They were not the first Rohingyas or Myanmar nationals to arrive in Sri Lanka on December 19th in search of life. 55 Myanmar nationals arrived in Sri Lanka by sea on March 3rd, 2008, and 170 Myanmar nationals arrived in Sri Lanka in 2013, all of them were deported by the capitalist governments of the time. President Anura Kumara’s government is also preparing to deport the Rohingya, continuing the racist policies of those capitalist governments.
The previous government deported refugees en masse, and in 2017 and 2019, a group of Sinhala Buddhist extremists in the country protested against the deportation of Rohingya Muslims residing in the Mount Lavinia area.
The houses where the Rohingya refugees were living were pelted with stones by racist thugs.
The racist mob was led by a thug monk named Akmeemana Dayaratne of the Sinhala Balabuluwa organization. Later, the police arrested the refugees on the basis of a notification from the High Commissioner for Refugees. Among the Rohingya refugees who were attacked by the Sinhala Buddhist thugs were seven women, nine men, eight boys, eight girls and two Indians.
On December 19, a boat was seen floating in the sea about 100 meters from the northern sea border of Mullaitivu. Later, the local residents informed the Navy and the Navy sent a group of local residents and a doctor in a boat with food, water and medicine to take care of them and bring them to land.
Many people were sick due to the lack of food and water. The Navy took the Myanmar nationals to Trincomalee on December 20th instead of taking them to Mullaitivu. The government says that the boat was full of children and elders and that there were 115 Myanmar nationals on board. Among the group were 30 women, 50 children and a pregnant mother, according to reports.
Social media had reported that the Rohingya Muslims had arrived from Myanmar in three boats and two of the boats had capsized at sea. The Myanmar refugees fled Myanmar escaping from Buddhist killers hoping to reach Indonesia or Malaysia. WHen their boats were in the sea, they had been washed ashore to Sri Lankan waters due to cyclones, the Navy spokesperson had told the media.
The 115 Myanmar nationals brought to Trincomalee by the Navy on the morning of December 20 were produced before the Trincomalee Magistrate on the same day. Twelve of them were remanded in custody for violating the Immigration and Emigration Act by bringing the Myanmar nationals to Sri Lankan waters. The Magistrate also ordered that 103 Myanmar nationals be detained at the Mirihana Immigration Detention Centre. On that day, the Myanmar nationals were accommodated in a school in Trincomalee instead of being taken to the Mirihana Detention Centre. On the morning of December 21st, they were put back on buses and taken to Mirihana, where they were then diverted by those same buses and taken back to a different school in Trincomalee.
The police were supposed to be taken to the Mirihana Immigration Detention Center on December 23, but were later taken to the Mullaitivu Air Force Base. But they were reportedly taken to the Mullaitivu base because there was no space at the Mirihana Immigration Detention Center. However, according to the court order, the Rohingya refugees should be held at the Mirihana Detention Center. The incident has revealed that if there is congestion at the Mirihana Detention Center the police should be reporting back to the court, but they acted without even respecting the court orders.
An Extraordinary Gazette Notification was issued declaring the Mullaitivu Air Force Base, which is holding Myanmar refugees, as a detention camp from December 31. The Extraordinary Gazette Notification was issued with the approval of the Minister of Public Security, Ananda Wijepala.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has visited the Mullaitivu Air Force Detention Center to check the situation of Myanmar refugees, and the international organization has been able to meet the refugees despite various obstacles from the officers in charge of the camp, it is reported. Air Force officials have informed the officials of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission, who visited the Mullaitivu Air Force Camp on December 30, that they should obtain permission from the Department of Immigration and Emigration to check the conditions of Myanmar refugees detained. Later, when they spoke to the Immigration and Emigration Authority and sought permission, they were told that permission should be obtained from the Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs.
The Chairman of the Human Rights Commission, Justice Dehideniya, has sent a letter to the Commander-in-Chief, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, complaining about the refusal to allow them to observe the detention center where Myanmar refugees are being held.
“Any person authorized by the Commission in writing may at any time enter any place of detention, prison or other place where any person is detained by a court order or otherwise and make such inspection as may be necessary to ascertain the conditions of detention of the persons detained therein. Or may make any inquiry of any person therein,” he also emphasized in his letter to the President, Section 28 (02) of the Human Rights Commission Act No. 21 1996 of Sri Lanka
The Immigration and Emigration Controller General and other officials who had obstructed the Human Rights Commission were summoned to the Commission on December 31. The NPP government had not even shown the Myanmar refugees to the Human Rights Commission, had cut off all their connections and was keeping them inside an air force camp in Mullaitivu. The Rohingya Muslims are not criminals but people who escaped genocide. But the government treats them as serious criminals. Even criminals have the right to express their opinions and maintain contact with the public. The Rohingya Muslims have been deprived of that right.
Human rights organizations and journalists have the right to meet the Rohingya refugees, but the government has imposed restrictions. They were taken to a remote area about 150 kilometers from Colombo city and detained to prevent local and foreign journalists from meeting them.
The NPP government has taken away the right of the minority Rohingya Muslims to meet with journalists and expose the brutality of the mass killing campaign that Myanmar’s Buddhist oppressors have intensified against their people to the world’s working-class and oppressed people. Moreover, if there is any talk about them, it is feared that Sinhala Buddhist chauvinist thugs like Akmeemana Dayaratne and Galagodaaththe Gnanasara will take up the racist club against the government, as happened in 2017.
It is not surprising that the JVP, which pushed the government of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa into war in 2009 and carried out the massacre of Tamils, is acting in this way in the face of the Myanmar refugee issue. While the JVP government is trying to deport Myanmar refugees, it is using Sri Lanka as a staging ground for Palestinian genocide perpetrators to hide, rest and resume their genocide activities, exposing the duplicity of the JVP government. The Hind Raja Foundation has revealed on its website that an Israeli soldier who tortured and killed Palestinians is living in Sri Lanka.
Even though the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is reportedly set to close this year, they too cannot avoid this issue, because the UNHCR’s humanitarian pretense will be exposed to the world.
It is the responsibility of the government to release the Myanmar Muslim refugees from the military camps and provide them with facilities to live with the general public in the eastern region where the Muslim people live or in some other safe area and to provide education to their children and take care of them until they are sent to another country. We Lanka Sky News oppose the handing over of the Rohingya Muslims to the Myanmar genocide killers under any circumstances and we request the working-class and progressive people of this country to force the government to stop the deportation from Sri Lanka.
A case is currently being heard at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Myanmar government’s genocide against minority Rohingya Muslims. About a million Rohingya Muslims live as refugees in countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal and India.
Myanmar is 90% Buddhist, and the Rohingya Muslims live largely in Rakhine State. Buddhist rulers have been waging a campaign against the Rohingya since 1993. In 2017, Myanmar’s rulers intensified their crackdown on the Rohingya, following attacks on Myanmar police stations by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. The United Nations has described the Rohingya as the world’s most persecuted minority. The genocide being waged by Myanmar’s rulers against the Rohingya Muslims can only be ended by the conscious overthrow of the capitalist system by the Myanmar working class.