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3 enslaved Rohingya families rescued in northern India

Monday, 18 December 2017 1:43 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 18 December 2017 6:58 PM ]

Rohingya refugees wait for food distribution at the Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, December 18, 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

Indian activists and authorities have rescued three families from Myanmar’s Rohingya minority community that had been enslaved in the city of Agra for almost a year.

Authorities said Monday that the three families, comprising 13 people, had been working long hours as rag pickers without any pay.

Activists said the families had been brought to Agra from refugee camps in Bangladesh by agents who promised them jobs.

“They came to India thinking they would find a job and safety ... but they lived in a polythene hut, the rent for which was being deducted from their non-existent wages,” said Nirmal Gorana, an activist who contributed to the rescue operation.

“The employers had paid these agents money and did not pay them any wages saying the amount was being adjusted against the work they were doing,” added the activist.

Raju Kumar, a judicial magistrate in Agra, said an investigation had been launched, but added that police had yet to file a case against the employer.

“The men collected plastic bottles from garbage piles. They were in a poor state when we went to rescue them,” said Kumar.

Nearly a million Rohigya Muslims have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar into Bangladesh over the past years. Around 700,000 of them fled after a recent crackdown in Myanmar where government forces and Buddhist mobs launched massive attacks on towns and villages populated by minority Muslims in late August.

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh have become a fertile ground for human traffickers and that more and more people are now at risk.

Rights groups have called on India to launch a comprehensive survey of the situation of the Rohingya refugees in the country, who are estimated to be around 40,000. They say India authorities should protect the Rohingya in its efforts to eradicate bonded labor.

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