Assam NRC: Workers at India's first detention camp for illegal migrants may end up there
Some of the workers building the camp said they were not on a citizenship list Assam released last week as part of a drive to detect illegal immigrants. That means the workers could themselves end up in detention.
Reuters
Reuters
Goalpara
September 8, 2019UPDATED: September 8, 2019 23:30 IST
Shefali Hajong, a labourer whose name is excluded from the final list of the NRC poses for a picture at the under-construction detention centre. (Reuters)
Across a river in a remote part of Northeast, labourers have cleared dense forest in an area equivalent to about seven football fields and are building the first mass detention centre for illegal immigrants.
The camp in the lush, tea-growing state of Assam is intended for at least 3,000 detainees. It will also have a school, a hospital, a recreation area and quarters for security forces - as well as a high boundary wall and watchtowers, according to Reuters interviews with workers and contractors at the site and a review of copies of its layout plans.
Some of the workers building the camp said they were not on a citizenship list Assam released last week as part of a drive to detect illegal immigrants. That means the workers could themselves end up in detention.
Shefali Hajong, a gaunt tribal woman from a nearby village, said she was not on the list and will join nearly two million people who need to prove they are Indian citizens by producing documents such as birth and land ownership certificates dating back decades.
If they fail to do so, they risk being taken to detention camps like the one being built. The government says there are hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in Assam from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, but Dhaka has refused to accept anyone declared an illegal immigrant in India.
Shefali, who belongs to the indigenous Hajong tribe, said she was tense because of the situation.
But I need to fill my stomach, she said in the local Assamese dialect as she used a hoe to feed stones into a concrete mixer. She and other workers make about $4 a day, which is considered a decent wage in the impoverished area.
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She said she didn’t know her exact age and believed it was about 26, adding that she did not know why she wasn’t on the citizenship list. We don’t have birth certificates, said her mother, Malati Hajong, also working at the site.
The camp, near the town of Goalpara, is the first of at least 10 detention centers Assam has planned, according to local media reports.
People have been coming here every other day from nearby villages asking for work, said Shafikul Haq, a contractor in charge of building a large cooking area in the camp.
The mammoth Supreme Court-ordered exercise to document Assam’s citizens has been strongly backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi government that came to power in New Delhi five years ago. Critics say the campaign is aimed at Muslims, even those who have lived legally in India for decades.
Many Hindus, mostly poor and ill-educated, are also not on the citizenship list released last week.
BRINK OF CRISIS
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, Amnesty said in a statement.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has called the citizenship verification exercise an internal matter. MEA spokesperson said those not in Assam’s citizenship roster will not be detained and will continue to enjoy all the rights as before till they have exhausted all the remedies available under the law.
The federal government and the local Assam government did not respond to questions about the camps.
From Goalpara town, the camp being built is reached by a leafy, narrow road dotted with coconut trees. A shaky wooden bridge takes vehicles across a small river to the site, overlooked by a cluster of rubber trees.
Government guidelines for detention camps, released earlier this year, include building a boundary wall at least 10 feet (3 metres) high and ringed with barbed wire, local media reports said.
The detention centres will have a school, a hospital, a recreation area and quarters for security forces - as well as a high boundary wall and watchtowers (Reuters)
A red-painted boundary wall encircles the new camp at Goalpara, and green fields and mountains are visible beyond two watchtowers and quarters for security forces built behind it.
The camp will have separate living facilities for men and women, according to workers and contractors.
AK Rashid, another contractor, said he is building six of what would be around 17 buildings with detention rooms of around 350 square feet (32.5 square metres) each. Each of the buildings he is making will have 24 rooms, he said, adding drains for sewage were being built along the boundary walls of the centre.
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G Kishan Reddy, a Centre government official, told parliament in July that the government had published guidelines for detention centres which stipulate the construction of basic amenities like electricity, drinking water, hygiene, accommodation with beds, sufficient toilets with running water, communication facilities and kitchens.
Special attention is to be given to women/nursing mothers, children, he said. Children lodged in detention centres are to be provided educational facilities in nearby local schools.
WORSE THAN PRISONERS
A security tower inside an under-construction detention centre for illegal migrants at a village in Goalpara district of Assam (Reuters)
A senior police officer who declined to be named said the camp would initially be used to house the roughly 900 illegal immigrants who are held at detention facilities in Assam jails.
A group from National Human Rights Commission that visited two of those facilities last year said the immigrant detainees there were in some ways deprived even of the rights of convicted prisoners.
The apex court is hearing a petition for their release.
At the camp site, another woman labourer, 35-year-old Sarojini Hajong, said she wasn’t on the citizenship list either and didn’t have a birth certificate.
Of course we are scared about what will happen, she said.
But what can we do? I need the money.
India builds detention camps for up to 1.9m people ‘stripped of citizenship’ in Assam
Ten centres ‘planned’ across northeastern state after national register published
Zamira Rahim @ZamiraRahim
Tuesday 10 September 2019 14:55
32 comments
The Indian government is building mass detention camps after almost two million people were told they could be effectively stripped of citizenship.
Around 1.9m people in the north-eastern state of Assam were excluded when India published the state’s final National Register of Citizens (NRC) list in August.
Those excluded from the register will have to appeal to prove they are citizens. The UN and other international rights groups have expressed concern that many could be rendered stateless.
The citizenship list is part of a drive to detect illegal immigrants in Assam.
The Indian government claims that the migrants have arrived from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Critics say that the register has upended the lives of Muslims who have lived legally in the state for decades.
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Those appealing to be put on the register will need to provide documentation, such as birth certificates, dating back decades.
Record keeping in parts of rural India is poor and many, including those building the camps, have been caught out by the NRC’s stringent requirements.
“We don’t have birth certificates,” Malati Hajong, one of the labourers working at a site near the village of Goalpara, told the Reuters news agency.
The Goalpara camp is one of at least 10 planned detention centres, according to local media reports.
It is around the size of seven football pitches and designed to hold 3,000 people.
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Officials plan to have a school and hospital at the centre, as well as a high boundary wall and watchtowers for the security forces.
Critics have accused the Modi administration of using the NRC to target Assam’s large Muslim community.
But the government says it is simply complying with an order from India’s Supreme Court, which said the NRC had been delayed for too long and set a strict deadline for its completion.
Government sources say those excluded from the list retain their rights and have 120 days to appeal at local “Foreigners Tribunals”. If that fails, they can take their cases to the High Court of Assam and ultimately the Supreme Court. What happens to those who fail at all levels of appeal is yet to be decided, they said.
assam-detention-camp-2.jpg
The camp is expected to hold around 3,000 people (Reuters)
Last month the local chapter of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party expressed dismay after it became apparent that many Hindus had also been excluded from the list.
Officials said the government may pass legislation to protect legitimate citizens.
The government is already in the process of bringing legislation to grant citizenship to Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist immigrants from neighbouring countries.
Muslim immigrants are not included in the law.
The nationalist, hardline Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) group also called for genuine citizens to be included in the list after it emerged that Hindus had been affected. The RSS and BJP are closely affiliated.
Additional reporting by agencies
Assam to Build its 1st, Exclusive Detention Centre in Goalpara for Those Who Don’t Qualify as Indian Citizens
Assam currently has six detention centres that are run out of district jails. The one in Goalpara will be built at a cost of Rs 45 crore, with a capacity to hold 3,000 detainees.
Tulika Devi | News18Updated:September 4, 2019, 5:49 PM ISTfacebookTwitterskype
Assam to Build its 1st, Exclusive Detention Centre in Goalpara for Those Who Don’t Qualify as Indian CitizensA new detention center being set up in Goalpara, Assam. (Image: News18)
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Guwahati: After 19 lakh people were left out of Assam’s final National Register of Citizens (NRC) on August 31, construction work has started on the state's first detention centre for those who do not quality as Indian citizens. The centre will be built at a cost of Rs 45 crore in Goalpara, with a capacity to hold 3,000 detainees.
Currently, the state has six detention centres that are run out of district jails.
The Goalpara building is one of 11 such detention centres being planned in Assam -- the others will be located in Barpeta, Dima, Hasao, Kamrup, Karimganj, Lakhimpur, Nagaon, Nalbari, Sivasagar and Sonitpur.
According to sources, each centre will have a capacity of at least 1,000 people. The total expenditure for the construction of these centres is estimated to be around Rs 1,000 crore.
Assam currently has 31 jails with approximately 9,000 inmates. The government is likely to set up extra camps for detainees in these jails.
Those excluded from the final NRC list can appeal against it at the Foreigners' Tribunal — a quasi-judicial court. The state government has initiated establishment of 200 additional foreigners’ tribunals to deal with NRC appeals and references; another 200 will be set up in the coming three months.
The BJP-led Assam government has already declared that those left out of the NRC list would neither be labelled as ‘foreigners’ nor ‘arrested’ till the matter is in court, but will have to approach the Foreigners’ Tribunal to prove their citizenship. Each person will have a maximum of 120 days to challenge his or her case at a Foreigners’ Tribunal.
Many people declared foreigners remain in the six detention centres in the state even after the Supreme Court ordered conditional release of detainees who have completed three years in detention.
The Supreme Court in May had ordered that illegal foreigners in Assam who have completed three years in detention may be released on the condition of execution of a bond of Rs 1 lakh with two Indian sureties and a verifiable address. The court had also ordered that biometric details and photos of all detainees will be captured and stored in a secured database and the released person must report to the police station every week.
While the tribunals so far have declared more than one lakh people as foreigners, only four of them have been repatriated since 2013. According to the state government, more than 900 persons remain in detention, with most of them absconding.
Some of the workers building the camp said they were not on a citizenship list Assam released last week as part of a drive to detect illegal immigrants. That means the workers could themselves end up in detention.
Reuters
Reuters
Goalpara
September 8, 2019UPDATED: September 8, 2019 23:30 IST
Shefali Hajong, a labourer whose name is excluded from the final list of the NRC poses for a picture at the under-construction detention centre. (Reuters)
Across a river in a remote part of Northeast, labourers have cleared dense forest in an area equivalent to about seven football fields and are building the first mass detention centre for illegal immigrants.
The camp in the lush, tea-growing state of Assam is intended for at least 3,000 detainees. It will also have a school, a hospital, a recreation area and quarters for security forces - as well as a high boundary wall and watchtowers, according to Reuters interviews with workers and contractors at the site and a review of copies of its layout plans.
Some of the workers building the camp said they were not on a citizenship list Assam released last week as part of a drive to detect illegal immigrants. That means the workers could themselves end up in detention.
Shefali Hajong, a gaunt tribal woman from a nearby village, said she was not on the list and will join nearly two million people who need to prove they are Indian citizens by producing documents such as birth and land ownership certificates dating back decades.
If they fail to do so, they risk being taken to detention camps like the one being built. The government says there are hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in Assam from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, but Dhaka has refused to accept anyone declared an illegal immigrant in India.
Shefali, who belongs to the indigenous Hajong tribe, said she was tense because of the situation.
But I need to fill my stomach, she said in the local Assamese dialect as she used a hoe to feed stones into a concrete mixer. She and other workers make about $4 a day, which is considered a decent wage in the impoverished area.
ADVERTISEMENT
She said she didn’t know her exact age and believed it was about 26, adding that she did not know why she wasn’t on the citizenship list. We don’t have birth certificates, said her mother, Malati Hajong, also working at the site.
The camp, near the town of Goalpara, is the first of at least 10 detention centers Assam has planned, according to local media reports.
People have been coming here every other day from nearby villages asking for work, said Shafikul Haq, a contractor in charge of building a large cooking area in the camp.
The mammoth Supreme Court-ordered exercise to document Assam’s citizens has been strongly backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi government that came to power in New Delhi five years ago. Critics say the campaign is aimed at Muslims, even those who have lived legally in India for decades.
Many Hindus, mostly poor and ill-educated, are also not on the citizenship list released last week.
BRINK OF CRISIS
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, Amnesty said in a statement.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has called the citizenship verification exercise an internal matter. MEA spokesperson said those not in Assam’s citizenship roster will not be detained and will continue to enjoy all the rights as before till they have exhausted all the remedies available under the law.
The federal government and the local Assam government did not respond to questions about the camps.
From Goalpara town, the camp being built is reached by a leafy, narrow road dotted with coconut trees. A shaky wooden bridge takes vehicles across a small river to the site, overlooked by a cluster of rubber trees.
Government guidelines for detention camps, released earlier this year, include building a boundary wall at least 10 feet (3 metres) high and ringed with barbed wire, local media reports said.
The detention centres will have a school, a hospital, a recreation area and quarters for security forces - as well as a high boundary wall and watchtowers (Reuters)
A red-painted boundary wall encircles the new camp at Goalpara, and green fields and mountains are visible beyond two watchtowers and quarters for security forces built behind it.
The camp will have separate living facilities for men and women, according to workers and contractors.
AK Rashid, another contractor, said he is building six of what would be around 17 buildings with detention rooms of around 350 square feet (32.5 square metres) each. Each of the buildings he is making will have 24 rooms, he said, adding drains for sewage were being built along the boundary walls of the centre.
ADVERTISEMENT
G Kishan Reddy, a Centre government official, told parliament in July that the government had published guidelines for detention centres which stipulate the construction of basic amenities like electricity, drinking water, hygiene, accommodation with beds, sufficient toilets with running water, communication facilities and kitchens.
Special attention is to be given to women/nursing mothers, children, he said. Children lodged in detention centres are to be provided educational facilities in nearby local schools.
WORSE THAN PRISONERS
A security tower inside an under-construction detention centre for illegal migrants at a village in Goalpara district of Assam (Reuters)
A senior police officer who declined to be named said the camp would initially be used to house the roughly 900 illegal immigrants who are held at detention facilities in Assam jails.
A group from National Human Rights Commission that visited two of those facilities last year said the immigrant detainees there were in some ways deprived even of the rights of convicted prisoners.
The apex court is hearing a petition for their release.
At the camp site, another woman labourer, 35-year-old Sarojini Hajong, said she wasn’t on the citizenship list either and didn’t have a birth certificate.
Of course we are scared about what will happen, she said.
But what can we do? I need the money.
India builds detention camps for up to 1.9m people ‘stripped of citizenship’ in Assam
Ten centres ‘planned’ across northeastern state after national register published
Zamira Rahim @ZamiraRahim
Tuesday 10 September 2019 14:55
32 comments
The Indian government is building mass detention camps after almost two million people were told they could be effectively stripped of citizenship.
Around 1.9m people in the north-eastern state of Assam were excluded when India published the state’s final National Register of Citizens (NRC) list in August.
Those excluded from the register will have to appeal to prove they are citizens. The UN and other international rights groups have expressed concern that many could be rendered stateless.
The citizenship list is part of a drive to detect illegal immigrants in Assam.
The Indian government claims that the migrants have arrived from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Critics say that the register has upended the lives of Muslims who have lived legally in the state for decades.
World news in pictures
Show all 50
3 October 2019
2 October 2019
1 October 2019
30 September 2019
Those appealing to be put on the register will need to provide documentation, such as birth certificates, dating back decades.
Record keeping in parts of rural India is poor and many, including those building the camps, have been caught out by the NRC’s stringent requirements.
“We don’t have birth certificates,” Malati Hajong, one of the labourers working at a site near the village of Goalpara, told the Reuters news agency.
The Goalpara camp is one of at least 10 planned detention centres, according to local media reports.
It is around the size of seven football pitches and designed to hold 3,000 people.
Independent news email
Only the best news in your inbox
Enter your email address
Continue
Register with your social account or click here to log in
I would like to receive morning headlines
Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts by email
Officials plan to have a school and hospital at the centre, as well as a high boundary wall and watchtowers for the security forces.
Critics have accused the Modi administration of using the NRC to target Assam’s large Muslim community.
But the government says it is simply complying with an order from India’s Supreme Court, which said the NRC had been delayed for too long and set a strict deadline for its completion.
Government sources say those excluded from the list retain their rights and have 120 days to appeal at local “Foreigners Tribunals”. If that fails, they can take their cases to the High Court of Assam and ultimately the Supreme Court. What happens to those who fail at all levels of appeal is yet to be decided, they said.
assam-detention-camp-2.jpg
The camp is expected to hold around 3,000 people (Reuters)
Last month the local chapter of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party expressed dismay after it became apparent that many Hindus had also been excluded from the list.
Officials said the government may pass legislation to protect legitimate citizens.
The government is already in the process of bringing legislation to grant citizenship to Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist immigrants from neighbouring countries.
Muslim immigrants are not included in the law.
The nationalist, hardline Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) group also called for genuine citizens to be included in the list after it emerged that Hindus had been affected. The RSS and BJP are closely affiliated.
Additional reporting by agencies
Assam to Build its 1st, Exclusive Detention Centre in Goalpara for Those Who Don’t Qualify as Indian Citizens
Assam currently has six detention centres that are run out of district jails. The one in Goalpara will be built at a cost of Rs 45 crore, with a capacity to hold 3,000 detainees.
Tulika Devi | News18Updated:September 4, 2019, 5:49 PM ISTfacebookTwitterskype
Assam to Build its 1st, Exclusive Detention Centre in Goalpara for Those Who Don’t Qualify as Indian CitizensA new detention center being set up in Goalpara, Assam. (Image: News18)
USA Tour Packages From India Might Surprise You
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Finding A Job In The USA Might Be Easier Than You Think
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Guwahati: After 19 lakh people were left out of Assam’s final National Register of Citizens (NRC) on August 31, construction work has started on the state's first detention centre for those who do not quality as Indian citizens. The centre will be built at a cost of Rs 45 crore in Goalpara, with a capacity to hold 3,000 detainees.
Currently, the state has six detention centres that are run out of district jails.
The Goalpara building is one of 11 such detention centres being planned in Assam -- the others will be located in Barpeta, Dima, Hasao, Kamrup, Karimganj, Lakhimpur, Nagaon, Nalbari, Sivasagar and Sonitpur.
According to sources, each centre will have a capacity of at least 1,000 people. The total expenditure for the construction of these centres is estimated to be around Rs 1,000 crore.
Assam currently has 31 jails with approximately 9,000 inmates. The government is likely to set up extra camps for detainees in these jails.
Those excluded from the final NRC list can appeal against it at the Foreigners' Tribunal — a quasi-judicial court. The state government has initiated establishment of 200 additional foreigners’ tribunals to deal with NRC appeals and references; another 200 will be set up in the coming three months.
The BJP-led Assam government has already declared that those left out of the NRC list would neither be labelled as ‘foreigners’ nor ‘arrested’ till the matter is in court, but will have to approach the Foreigners’ Tribunal to prove their citizenship. Each person will have a maximum of 120 days to challenge his or her case at a Foreigners’ Tribunal.
Many people declared foreigners remain in the six detention centres in the state even after the Supreme Court ordered conditional release of detainees who have completed three years in detention.
The Supreme Court in May had ordered that illegal foreigners in Assam who have completed three years in detention may be released on the condition of execution of a bond of Rs 1 lakh with two Indian sureties and a verifiable address. The court had also ordered that biometric details and photos of all detainees will be captured and stored in a secured database and the released person must report to the police station every week.
While the tribunals so far have declared more than one lakh people as foreigners, only four of them have been repatriated since 2013. According to the state government, more than 900 persons remain in detention, with most of them absconding.
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