Invisible suffering of Rohingya refugees

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At a recent group psychosocial support session for Rohingya women refugees in Delhi, women burst into laughter when the therapist asked about feeling anxious at night. “I wake up paralysed on many nights. My hands and legs numb thinking there is a fire in our camp again.” Rozina laughed, acting out her paralysis. Another added, “everytime there is a loud sound we run out half naked, without our burqas, fearing another fire. There is no time to cover”. All 20 women in the room were laughing with tears in their eyes.

Psychotherapists say that laughter can be a defense mechanism that protects trauma survivors from feeling the depth of their actual pain. According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data from December 2023, more than 22,000 Rohingya refugees live in India.

Most of them fled Myanmar between 2012 and 2017 when the Myanmar military started the “clearance operation,” killing Rohingya people, raping women, and destroying their villages in Rakhine state. “I fled from Myanmar when I was 16 years old. I remember everything along the route; murdered and beheaded bodies lying’, says Momina, a 24-year-old mother of two. Living in shanty-like huts in Delhi, she and others here have witnessed fires burning down their huts. These fires are accidental sometimes, but at other times, they are started by members of nationalist extremist groups, who have claimed responsibility for them on social media.

The repeated fires in the refugee settlement in Delhi trigger and re-traumatise Momina. “I get so scared when a fire starts or even when there are loud noises, that I pass out.”

She has been diagnosed with severe depression and dissociative identity disorder, a mental health condition where the patient can have two or more separate identities. Momina manifests at least three to four different identities, all connected to her extremely traumatic past. Sometimes she becomes a four-year-old child whose mother was killed by the junta army in Myanmar, a child Momina then took under her wing. At other times she takes on the identity of a teenage Rohingya boy who is angry and violent.

Momina isn’t alone in reporting acute mental health illness. At a women’s center run by my organisation, The Azadi Project and supported by Mariwala Health Initiative, many women have reported fainting incidents after bouts of anxiety, dissociative episodes, and self-harm. The organisation works only with women, but many men are also dealing with acute mental health illnesses. 

Borders and belonging for those without a home

While their trauma dates back to the genocide in Myanmar, the discriminatory conditions they face in India, where they are officially labeled as “illegal immigrants”, and denied full access to education, basic health, legal services and formal livelihood opportunities, make matters worse. The growing anti-Muslim, anti-refugee xenophobia pushed them further to live in shadows and absolute fear.

Regions highlighted in dark blue house the highest number of Rohingya refugees. Source: Refugees International and the Azadi Project

The fear of arbitrary detention and deportation, despite most Rohingya having UNHCR cards recognising them as refugees, adds to their debilitating anxiety and fear. Based on interviews with Rohingya families and lawyers, there are at least 500 Rohingya detainees, including women and children, languishing in detention centers across India. In many cases, these people have been behind bars for decades, held illegally with no criminal charges against them. A walk through any Rohingya settlement in India will reveal that in every other family, there are either people currently detained or those who have spent considerable time in detention. Momina’s own sister-in-law, Amira, was also in detention for nearly three years after being randomly locked up during the pandemic. She was released only after she became paralysed and very sick. Amira, like most other Rohingya refugees, didn’t have a place to process her trauma and heal. An introvert who barely stepped outside, limiting herself to housework, Amira became further withdrawn after her years in detention. Both Amira and Momina are now receiving mental health support but this support is just a drop given the pressing need for this population.

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Civil society organisations in India that work for Rohingya refugees are starved for funding as most FCRA licences that permit receiving foreign funding have been cancelled. In the last few years, many programs that support Rohingya refugees have either shut down or been reduced to a bare minimum. Only a few UNHCR-supported organisations continue to work in this space but they do so cautiously and not at full capacity.

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While there has been considerable attention to the plight of close to a million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, there needs to be international attention to the escalating mental health epidemic of Rohingya refugees in India. We need an urgent multi-pronged approach. First, we must address and mitigate the core causes of re-traumatisation, providing the Rohingya people a life with more dignity, agency and official identity in India. Second, we must enable access to primary and tertiary healthcare facilities for everyone who holds a UNHCR card, and third, we must support grassroots organisations to build safe spaces where the Rohingya refugees can access support without fear and start their healing journeys.

Priyali Sur, Founder and executive director of The Azadi Project