More than 100 refugees demand to be handed over to UN high commissioner for refugees and resettlement in a third country
Dozens of Rohingya refugees, held by India in its largest transit camp in the northeastern state of Assam, have begun a hunger strike, a media report said on Tuesday.
Among the more than 100 refugees, who have been on hunger strike since Monday, are children and women, the New Delhi-based Scroll.in news website reported, citing an official from the Indian Home Ministry.
The Matia Transit camp is located in the state's Goalpara district.
The detained refugees include those from the Chin ethnic group.
“The refugees, who have cards issued by the UN refugee agency, have been demanding that they be handed over to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, transferred to a detention center in Delhi, and have sought eventual resettlement in a third country,” unnamed sources told the news outlet.
Assam's top prisons official, as well as top Home Affairs official, were on the way to the camp to “ascertain the facts.”
About 1.2 million Rohingya have been living in Bangladesh since August 2017, fleeing a severe military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state, while tens of hundreds are living in India.
