By Kim Arora
Last week two of her friends, both in their late teens, were waiting for her outside her home. "I heard noises and when I went out, I saw this man beating my two friends. When I tried to stop him, he punched and slapped me as well. He groped us and pulled our blouses," says Cynthia, who moved to Delhi from Myanmar's Chin state three years ago.
She is still uncertain as to what provoked the attacker, who later turned up with two accomplices. The three men beat them again. "He just wouldn't listen to me when I asked him to stop and he wouldn't say what his problem was," she says. Currently, however, there's more weighing on her mind. "My landlord has asked me to vacate the house after the incident. I must find a new one by this weekend," says Cynthia, terrorized.
The attack on Cynthia and her friends is just one of the many problems faced by the Burmese community in the city. To escape the oppressive regime of the military junta in Myanmar, many Burmese have moved to neighbouring countries like Thailand and India. Owing to limited avenues of employment, they're mostly concentrated in underclass areas like Bodella, Sitapuri and Hastsal village in west Delhi where rents are low.
"The Burmese population in the area has increased post the 'Saffron Revolution' of 2007. There were about 3,000 Burmese refugees in Delhi in 2006. Now there are close to 2,000 in Bodella alone," says Kim, a coordinator of the advocacy group Burma Centre Delhi, Bodella. The 2011 UNHCR planning figures for India project 7,500 refugees from Myanmar in India in December 2011 with an additional 8,800 asylum-seekers in that month.
Trouble with the police and landlords is routine for the refugees and asylum seekers. A three-month-old rape case of a hearing and speech-impaired Burmese girl still awaits police action. "The victims' clothes are still lying with the police as evidence. They haven't been sent to a lab," says Thin Thin Aung, presidium board member of the Women's League of Burma.
Cing Deih Lam Siang, 27, also from Bodella, traded one kind of subjugation and violence for another when she came to Delhi five years ago. Things like food, dress and music become points of conflict between the refugees and the xenophobic local community. Linguistic differences make it harder still. "It is very demeaning. Just because we dress differently and look different, people stare at us and sexually harass us," says Siang, who was forced to vacate an earlier house for cooking food with bamboo shoot. She now shares a room with seven others. Her friend, Ciin Dieh Lian, 23, feels she has it better in Bodella. In Hastsal, where Lian lives, she keeps her door bolted at all times and does not step out unaccompanied. "There are fewer Burmese people there. The locals turn against us," she says.
Cynthia's case has the support of local NGOs and community leaders. Despite that, it took a whole night of camping at the Vikaspuri police station just to get the police to register the complaint. The two accused nabbed by police were let off in a few hours on bail. "The police wouldn't accept our written statement. They kept asking us to remove the portion where we alleged sexual harassment. They insisted on us giving a statement instead of accepting our written complaint. I don't know what version of events they have recorded," says a visibly angry Cynthia, adding, "They said there will have to be a medical test for sexual harassment. They equated it with rape." Meanwhile, police officers at the Vikaspuri station say it was following their "proactive" role that the complaint was lodged.
(Some names have been changed on request to protect identity)
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