The Rohingya refugee camp at Kalindi Kunj in New Delhi. File
| Picture Credit score: The Hindu

At a current group psychosocial assist session for Rohingya ladies refugees in Delhi, ladies burst into laughter when the therapist requested about feeling anxious at night time. “I get up paralysed on many nights. My arms and legs numb pondering there’s a hearth in our camp once more.” Rozina laughed, performing out her paralysis. One other added, “everytime there’s a loud sound we run out half bare, with out our burqas, fearing one other hearth. There is no such thing as a time to cowl”. All 20 ladies within the room have been laughing with tears of their eyes.

Psychotherapists say that laughter could be a protection mechanism that protects trauma survivors from feeling the depth of their precise ache. In line with United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) knowledge from December 2023, greater than 22,000 Rohingya refugees stay in India.

Most of them fled Myanmar between 2012 and 2017 when the Myanmar navy began the “clearance operation,” killing Rohingya folks, raping ladies, and destroying their villages in Rakhine state. “I fled from Myanmar after I was 16 years previous. I keep in mind the whole lot alongside the route; murdered and beheaded our bodies mendacity’, says Momina, a 24-year-old mom of two. Residing in shanty-like huts in Delhi, she and others right here have witnessed fires burning down their huts. These fires are unintended generally, however at different occasions, they’re began by members of nationalist extremist teams, who’ve claimed duty for them on social media.

The repeated fires within the refugee settlement in Delhi set off and re-traumatise Momina. “I get so scared when a hearth begins and even when there are loud noises, that I go out.”

She has been recognized with extreme melancholy and dissociative identification dysfunction, a psychological well being situation the place the affected person can have two or extra separate identities. Momina manifests a minimum of three to 4 completely different identities, all related to her extraordinarily traumatic previous. Typically she turns into a four-year-old baby whose mom was killed by the junta military in Myanmar, a toddler Momina then took below her wing. At different occasions she takes on the identification of a teenage Rohingya boy who’s offended and violent.

Momina isn’t alone in reporting acute psychological well being sickness. At a ladies’s middle run by my organisation, The Azadi Venture and supported by Mariwala Well being Initiative, many ladies have reported fainting incidents after bouts of hysteria, dissociative episodes, and self-harm. The organisation works solely with ladies, however many males are additionally coping with acute psychological well being diseases. 

Whereas their trauma dates again to the genocide in Myanmar, the discriminatory situations they face in India, the place they’re formally labeled as “unlawful immigrants”, and denied full entry to training, primary well being, authorized providers and formal livelihood alternatives, make issues worse. The rising anti-Muslim, anti-refugee xenophobia pushed them additional to stay in shadows and absolute worry.

The worry of arbitrary detention and deportation, regardless of most Rohingya having UNHCR playing cards recognising them as refugees, provides to their debilitating nervousness and worry. Primarily based on interviews with Rohingya households and attorneys, there are a minimum of 500 Rohingya detainees, together with ladies and kids, languishing in detention facilities throughout India. In lots of circumstances, these folks have been behind bars for many years, held illegally with no prison expenses in opposition to them. A stroll by any Rohingya settlement in India will reveal that in each different household, there are both folks presently detained or those that have spent appreciable time in detention. Momina’s personal sister-in-law, Amira, was additionally in detention for practically three years after being randomly locked up in the course of the pandemic. She was launched solely after she turned paralysed and really sick. Amira, like most different Rohingya refugees, didn’t have a spot to course of her trauma and heal. An introvert who barely stepped exterior, limiting herself to home tasks, Amira turned additional withdrawn after her years in detention. Each Amira and Momina are actually receiving psychological well being assist however this assist is only a drop given the urgent want for this inhabitants.

Civil society organisations in India that work for Rohingya refugees are starved for funding as most FCRA licences that let receiving international funding have been cancelled. In the previous few years, many packages that assist Rohingya refugees have both shut down or been diminished to a naked minimal. Just a few UNHCR-supported organisations proceed to work on this house however they accomplish that cautiously and never at full capability.

Whereas there was appreciable consideration to the plight of near one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, there must be worldwide consideration to the escalating psychological well being epidemic of Rohingya refugees in India. We want an pressing multi-pronged strategy. First, we should handle and mitigate the core causes of re-traumatisation, offering the Rohingya folks a life with extra dignity, company and official identification in India. Second, we should allow entry to main and tertiary healthcare services for everybody who holds a UNHCR card, and third, we should assist grassroots organisations to construct protected areas the place the Rohingya refugees can entry assist with out worry and begin their therapeutic journeys.

Priyali Sur, Founder and government director of The Azadi Venture