GUWAHATI:
The Rights and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG), on June 21, urged the central government to enact refugee law in the country to safeguard the rights of the refugees given the inadequacy of the unconstitutional Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA).
“The failure of the Centre to enact a refugee law despite the country being born out of Partition, which saw the largest movement of refugees in the 20th century, is deplorable. Since Independence, India had witnessed a consistent influx of refugees, especially from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Myanmar, Pakistan, Uganda, Sri Lanka etc., but it failed to ensure the principles of equality and non-discrimination in the treatment of refugees,” said Suhas Chakma, director of the RRAG.
With India having 400,000 refugees at present, in 2021, over 25,000 refugees from Myanmar belonging to the Chins and religious minorities in Afghanistan sought refuge in India.
India enacted the CAA in 2019 to provide citizenship to religious minorities belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who had entered India on or before the 31st day of December 2014.
“The CAA is not only discriminatory towards other religious groups and political refugees, it even fails to protect those it intends to – Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan. It is as if discrimination against the religious minorities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan had ended on December 31 2014,” Chakma said.
Stating that India granted e-visas to over 100 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus on priority on June 19, 2022, following the terror attack on the Gurudwara in Kabul, he said that these Afghan Sikhs and Hindus on their arrival in India will suffer because of non-grant of refugee status as well as citizenship and might have to return just like some of the Hindu refugees from Pakistan.