Sri Lankans rally to stop deportation of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar

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Sri Lankan civil society groups and activists are mobilizing to save more than 100 Rohingya refugees rescued off the Indian Ocean island nation last month following a government announcement that they will be deported.

A group of about 100 Rohingya refugees, which reportedly included over two dozen children, was rescued off the coast of the northeastern Mullaitivu district on Dec. 19.

Several protests were recently organized in Mullaitivu and the capital Colombo after Sri Lanka’s Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs Ananda Wijepala announced on Jan. 3 that the government was in talks with Myanmar authorities over the deportation of the Rohingya refugees.

“These are stateless people, they don’t have a home to go to. The Rohingya are massacred and chased and terrorized in their own home, and that is why they fled their own country looking for greener pastures elsewhere,” social activist Thasneema Dahlan, who took part in a protest in Colombo on Friday, told Arab News.