Two million risk becoming stateless after Indian state releases final list of citizens

Source: Washington Post, 31/08/2019

The state had required citizens to provide original documents
proving their residency and parentage going back decades.
The citizenship registry exercise has gained fresh impetus since
Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. Many of the
migrants in Assam are Bengali-speaking and hail from neighboring
Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim country. Such migrants have
proven a potent political issue for Modi`s Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party.
In the recent election campaign, Modi`s powerful right-hand man
Amit Shah referred to such migrants as `termites` and vowed to
expel them from India as a matter of national security. Shah
recently became the country`s Home Affairs Minister and has
pledged to take the citizenship registry exercise nationwide.
While the exercise was meant to identify migrants who had entered
the country illegally, activists say the opaque and complex
process made it difficult even for genuine citizens to prove their
nationality. The poor and uneducated have had particular
difficulty navigating the exercise and providing the required
documents.
Those excluded from the final registry will have four months to
appeal their status before quasi-legal tribunals and higher
courts. If their bids fail, they face potential detention. The
state of Assam is creating hundreds of such tribunals and building
new detention centers to handle the aftermath of the citizenship
list.
For those whose names were not on the list, the future is an
anxious question mark. Many of them have already tried to prove
their citizenship repeatedly and doubt they will receive a
reprieve from the quasi-judicial bodies known as `foreigner`s
tribunals.`
They fear they may be separated from their families, detained, or
even deported to Bangladesh, with which Assam shares a border.
Those left off the list could also become a disenfranchised
population within India, unable to vote or access crucial
government services.
`Assam is on the brink of a crisis which would not only lead to a
loss of nationality and liberty of a large group of people but
also erosion of their basic rights - severely affecting the lives
of generations to come,` said Aakar Patel, executive director of
Amnesty International India, in a statement.
A provisional list of citizens published last year left out 4.1
million people. Media reports said spelling errors and mistaken
identities led to erroneous conclusions about people`s
citizenship. Among those excluded were military veterans and
relatives of a former Indian president. Several families reported
their members had committed suicide after being left off earlier
versions of the list.
Unchecked migration from neighboring Bangladesh into Assam has
been a hot-button issue for decades - and the release of the final
list may not end the battle.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party
in Assam said Saturday that the final citizenship registry did not
go far enough. The party will devise a fresh strategy `on how we
can drive out illegal migrants,` he said. Local BJP leaders have
expressed dissatisfaction at the way the list has excluded
Bengali-speaking Hindus as well as Muslims.
On Saturday morning, families gathered at local government centers
and huddled around computers to check their final status - with
relief for some and anguish for others. Ahead of the release of
the list, thousands of additional law enforcement officers and
paramilitary troops were sent to Assam to prevent potential
unrest. The state police put out messages urging people not to
panic if they were left out of the registry, emphasizing that they
would be able to appeal their exclusions.
www.samigration.com