NEFIS voices anti-CAB stand

By Our Staff Reporter
IMPHAL, Dec 8: The North-East Forum for International Solidarity (NEFIS) has strongly condemned the BJP Government’s communal intent in stirring up the ongoing controversy over the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
NEFIS members also participated in a protest demonstration today at Vishwavidyalaya, Delhi University against the Bill.
The Bill permits the minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan to become citizens of India. The communal angle here is starkly evident from the fact that the minorities from only three countries have been given space in the current Bill, while the minorities from other neighbouring countries have been consciously kept out of the scope of the Bill, said a press release issued by NEFIS.
The proposed Bill is premised on the religious persecution of non-Muslim minorities in neighbouring Muslim majority countries, and deliberately eludes the question of providing asylum to persecuted minorities of other countries.
Even though minorities in Sri Lanka and Myanmar too have faced persecution in the recent past, the BJP Government has refused to grant even asylum to the Rohingyas because it sees them as unwanted illegal immigrants.
The Rohingya people of Myanmar have been victims of State-sponsored genocide. To escape the persecution, the community had to migrate to neighbouring India and Bangladesh, but the BJP Government chose to drive the Rohingyas back to Myanmar.
Clearly, the persecuted immigrants of particular communities are of no concern for the BJP Government, it alleged.
It then condemned the Citizenship Amendment Bill which has been conceived with a conscious communal intent.
NEFIS is of the opinion that in order to forestall the misapprehensions of the various States specially the North-East States where the persecuted immigrants from neighbouring countries have sought asylum, the Government should bring in a quota system to distribute them in different States across the country, it added.