Immigrants running a campaign against Assamese Muslims, Says Upamanyu Hazarika

GUWAHATI: There has been an upsurge in the aggression by Bangladeshi immigrants and their patrons in Assam by mounting a campaign in various international forums that Muslim of Bangladeshi origin (called miyas in Assam) are victimized as foreigners in Assam and which now extended to setting themselves up as an indigenous community in Assam and are running a vicious social media campaign against Assamese Muslims, said senior advocate Upamanyu Hazarika.

Hazarika shared two instances in this regard. The first is of a lawyer, Aman Wadud, who practices before the Gauhati High Court and who has in a hearing before the US Government Committee for International Religious Freedom denounced foreigner tribunals, the NRC process being anti-Muslim in Assam and the proposed NPR in India also being anti-Muslim, saying that Indian citizens are declared as foreigners in Assam, for which reason Bangladesh doesn't take them back.

The second is the case of hate campaign against a young Assamese woman, Shaheen Ahmed, currently pursuing PhD in Australia, who has been hounded by supporters of Bangladeshi immigrants going by the description of NorthEast Collective by intrusion of her privacy and sharing screenshots of her Facebook posts. Incidentally, she being a representative of indigenous Assamese Muslims has been very vocal about the rights of Indigenous people in Assam and the constant aggression by the immigrants. She was not only criminally intimidated online, but also defamed. She has therefore filed a complaint in this regard with the Cyber Cell of Assam Police on 15-06-2020, also forwarding the complaint to the DGP, Assam.

"While the indigenous leaders are busy serving their own interests and in the process pandering to the Bangladeshi vote, the indigenous communities continue to face one shock after the other - the latest being targeted as aggressors upon Bangladeshis," Hazarika asserted.

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