THE GLOBAL COMPACT on REFUGEES Indian Perspectives and Experiences
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THE GLOBAL COMPACT ON REFUGEES Indian Perspectives and Experiences Edited by Jessica Field |Srinivas Burra THE GLOBAL COMPACT ON REFUGEES | INDIAN PERSPECTIVES AND& EXPERIENCES EXPERIENCES I Copyright © 2020 Academicians’ Working Group. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For citation purposes, refer to the text below. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this volume belong solely to the author and do not reflect the views or position of Academicians’ Working Group or UNHCR. Front cover image by Roger Arnold. Description: Rohingya refugees cross the border from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Credit line: © UNHCR/Roger Arnold Book design by Nikhil Offset. Printed by Nikhil Offset, New Delhi, India. First printing edition 2020. Citation: Field, Jessica, Burra, Srinivas (eds). The Global Compact on Refugees: Indian Perspectives and Experiences. New Delhi: Academicians Working Group & UNHCR India, 2020. Publisher Academicians’ Working Group Coordinator, UNHCR India B 2/16, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi Email: [email protected] The mark of responsible forestry NEWSROOMS AND REFUGEE CRISES: HUMANITY vs. national security - the role of the media as stakeholder in implementation of the global compact on refugees in india * MAYA MIRCHANDANI 177 ABSTRACT August 2019 marked the second anniversary of the exodus of nearly one million Rohingyas from Myanmar, fleeing atrocities arguably amounting to genocide and other crimes. For the most part, this news sank without a trace in India. This reality begs the question why the Indian media is unable or unwilling to create public consensus on the need to recognize refugees as victims of violence, terrorism, or State oppression. In comparison with news coverage of earlier refugee influxes into India, reportage around the Rohingya has seen a major shift. Tibetans, Bengali Hindus, Sri Lankan Tamils, among others, were welcomed with empathy, historically. However, the Indian media’s reportage of the Rohingya crisis is at best negligible; at worst misleading, exaggerated and emotive—pitting the Bengali speaking Muslim Rohingya as an economic and security threat to India, and feeding into rising xenophobia and anti-Muslim ideologies in India and abroad. The role of the media as a watchdog in democracy cannot be understated. Its task is to inform the public accurately and hold governments to Constitutional standards—actions that can influence both opinion and policy. Much like the anniversary of the Rohingya exodus, reportage around India’s acceptance of the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact on Migration has also been next to absent in the Indian media—both print and television. Given the voluntary nature of the GCR, its uniqueness lies in its holistic approach towards refugee protection by bringing different stakeholders, including the media, together in order to generate support for victims of humanitarian crises. With nomenclature around refugees, migrants, asylum seekers merging into each other in the public mind today, how can the media improve its coverage of refugees as victims of a humanitarian crisis? Can it play a role in positively influencing opinion and building wider consensus around India’s acceptance of the Global Compact on Refugees? Accurate, well-informed reportage can sensitise audiences to the situation facing refugees and their distress, as well as introduce them to key debates and potential solutions to humanitarian crises. This paper analyses the role of media as a stakeholder in propagating, promoting and influencing narratives around ongoing refugee and migrant crises. *Maya Mirchandani is a broadcast journalist with reporting experience on Indian Foreign Policy, focusing on South Asia and identity conflicts. She teaches Media Studies at Ashoka University and is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, where she researches the intersections between hate speech, misinformation, populism and violent extremism. THE GLOBAL COMPACT ON REFUGEES | INDIAN PERSPECTIVES AND EXPERIENCES 178 INTRODUCTION On the eve of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th distribution of welfare and resources birth anniversary in October 2019, India’s against the needs of millions of refugees Home Minister, and the President of fleeing low- or middle-income countries the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Amit feeds into political populism and Shah addressed a rally in Kolkata and insularity. This is the “conflict” that finds promised Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, its way into dominant public narratives Christian and Parsi refugees that they in India, too. will not be forced to leave India.1 The Home Minister was referring to residents India’s own history, despite not being in India who have been excluded a party to the 1951 UN Convention on from a recently concluded exercise Refugees, is replete with examples to update the National Register of of an accommodative policy towards Citizens in the north-eastern state of people seeking refuge from war and Assam. While promising a nationwide violence, irrespective of ethnicity or register of citizens, he also pledged religion. Nonetheless, the shift in the that his government would enact the identification of which communities are Citizenship Amendment Bill to ensure more vulnerable than others—or who such individuals get full citizenship. The might be more needy of asylum and glaring omission of Muslims from his list protection in India and why—is both a of potential refugees seeking asylum is result of popular politics as well as the telling, both for its ideological position, near absence of an informed discussion as well as its geo-political ramifications. in the mainstream media on the victims Globally, refugees—particularly those of “new” conflicts in the 21st century.2 fleeing terrorism, civil war, and State- sponsored violence in the Middle East, In this context, it is both interesting Afghanistan and parts of Africa, as and necessary that India’s institutional, well as the disenfranchised Rohingya bureaucratic machinery has attempted from Myanmar—are among the most to separate domestic political discourse vulnerable today. Partly as a result of from foreign policy and international growing xenophobia and a (frequently commitments both as a member of deliberate) conflation of many refugee the United Nations (UN), as well as a groups with terrorism, these vulnerable regional leader, setting the agenda populations are “nobody’s people”— within the South Asian region. The unsafe in their homelands and rejected voluntary, legally non-binding nature by nations that could protect them. The of the Global Compact on Refugees apparent pressures faced by developing (GCR) makes it easier for New Delhi nations and emerging economies to maintain that balance between to prioritise their own citizens in the perception and action, especially as 179 M. MIRCHANDANI | NEWSROOMS AND REFUGEE CRISES demands for more equitable burden- over 400.6 And the explosion of digital and responsibility-sharing for refugees media portals as well as social media mutate into domestic narratives in not only challenge more traditional accordance with domestic laws. media formats, but also their reach and visibility. This paper argues that the In this landscape, relevant stakeholders— media as the watchdog of constitutional international humanitarian organisations, democracies and facilitator of public civil society actors, private enterprise, discourse needs to ensure that the governments, judiciary, and the media— imperative of national security doesn’t all have the capacity to inform and subsume national or constitutional influence public opinion and highlight commitments to human rights in the the need for urgent solutions in the face context of refugees. of ongoing refugee crises. Visible media discourses that often reflect official Unlike the legally binding 1951 Refugee positions are shaped not only by elite Convention, to which India is not a English or Hindi press and television party, the GCR is held together by a but regional, vernacular players too— moral force. Indian diplomats have long especially in the context of electoral argued that signatories to the older politics.3 As this paper will illustrate, convention have repeatedly attempted reportage that depicts the “refugee” to find ways to mitigate their own as a victim, or depicts the “migrant” as responsibility towards refugees—the an infiltrator have been used differently refusal of several European nations to either elicit empathy or generate to take in Middle Eastern refugees outrage. Both kinds of responses is a case in point. Unofficially, Indian have fed into political statements and diplomats say that more than refugees, official policies of their times.4 Like it was the need for protection offered to elsewhere, the media in India is not legal migrants specifically (e.g., social a monolith. Over 1 lakh newspapers security, identification, legal protection) are registered with the Registrar of under the 2016 New York Declaration Newspapers, across English, Hindi and that led to the compact, that propelled other major Indian languages.5 News India