"The tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled to India to escape widespread and systematic violence and discrimination in Myanmar face an existential threat from a new source: India’s government. Early this month, a senior government minister announced that Indian authorities would move expeditiously to deport the country’s sizable Rohingya refugee population back to Myanmar regardless of the risks to the refugees. “There are no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ … what would happen here is that the next move would be in relation to [the deportation] of Rohingyas,” Jitendra Singh, minister of state for development of the North Eastern Region, stated on January 4. Singh justified that call for Rohingya deportation on the terms of India’s controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The CAA, passed by India’s Parliament on December 12, explicitly denies the rights of Muslim “irregular immigrants,” those who lack UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) identity cards. Singh’s comments constitute a visceral threat to the safety of the thousands of Rohingya who have sought safety in India over the past decade. The government estimates that 40,000 Rohingya refugees live in India, of whom fewer than half possess UNHCR identity cards designed to protect them from “harassment, arbitrary arrests, detention and deportation.” Those refugees have fled Myanmar government-imposed institutionalized discrimination, including restrictions on movement, education and health-care access, as well as spasms of deadly violence such as the bloody purge perpetrated against Rohingya in northern Rakhine state in late 2017..."