Assam Opposition leader raises concern about state ‘pushing back' allegedly undocumented migrants
Assam's Opposition leader Debabrata Saikia on Friday wrote to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar raising concern about the state government's recent exercise to 'push back' allegedly undocumented migrants to Bangladesh.
In his letter, Saikia accused the Assam Police of carrying out the crackdown in violation of constitutional rights and due process.
The leader of the Opposition in the Assembly said that the state's actions 'appear to target Muslim communities, undermining India's secular fabric'.
Saikia alleged in the letter that since May 23, hundreds of Indian citizens 'not involved in any citizenship-related legal proceedings' had been 'arbitrarily detained'.
While many have been released, the detentions highlight 'serious procedural lapses', the Nazira MLA said. In several cases, families were not informed about the whereabouts of the detainees, violating basic norms of transparency, he added.
Citing media reports, Saikia also alleged that several detainees, including women, were forcibly pushed into the no man's land along the border between India and Bangladesh, 'leaving them stateless as Bangladesh refuses to accept them'.
On May 10, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said that several inmates of the Matia detention centre in Assam – Rohingya refugees and undocumented migrants from Bangladesh – had been ' pushed back ' into Bangladesh as part of a nationwide operation by the Union government.
On Friday, Sarma said that the state was 'duty bound to protect the interests" of Assam and ' expel all illegal immigrants from the state through any means and as per directions of Supreme Court'.
The chief minister appeared to be referring to the court's February 4 ruling that the state must deport persons who had been declared foreign nationals.
Sarma claimed that persons who have pending citizenship cases in courts had not been detained.
On Tuesday, Scroll reported that a former teacher from Morigaon district, Khairul Islam, whose citizenship case was still being heard in the Supreme Court, had been picked up from the Matia detention centre and forced out along the Bangladesh border near Assam's South Salmara district in the early hours of May 27.
In the video recorded by journalist Mostafuzur Tara from Bangladesh's Rangpur division, Khairul Islam alleged that he was among 14 persons 'pushed' into Bangladesh by India's Border Security Force on Tuesday morning.
Islam and the others were reported to be in no man's land, between the two countries.
On Thursday, the nephew of two men from Kamrup district moved the Gauhati High Court, seeking information about his uncles. The two men, Abu Bakkar Siddique and Akbar Ali, were summoned to the Nagarbera police station on May 25.
'Since then, the authorities have refused to give details of their whereabouts,' Aman Wadud, one of the advocates representing them in the court, told Scroll.
The petitioner, Torap Ali, had said that he was 'apprehensive that his uncles will be pushed back into Bangladesh, in light of recent reports'. The court has issued a notice to the state government, seeking its response.
Saikia said in his letter to Jaishankar on Friday that since several cases are pending before the Supreme Court, the detentions and pushbacks were a 'clear violation of the judicial process'. He also alleged that the Assam government's actions violated international human rights standards.
'This action directly contradicts India's stated position on deportation,' the MLA said.
Saikia said that he was seeking the Union government's intervention 'before more lives are destroyed' and urged the state government 'to make public the number of persons in detention and their respective places of confinement'.
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