Foreign tribunal members in Assam fired for not “declaring enough Muslims”
Date: 4 April 2020
Category: Discrimination
Five former members of foreign tribunals in Assam that review cases to identify foreigners living illegally as Indian citizens say they were pressurized by the government to declare more Muslims to be foreigners. Three of the members were fired because they did not do so. The police — sometimes acting on reports from private citizens — had referred more than 433,000 residents as “suspected foreigners,” according to parliamentary documents, and sent them to tribunals to produce documents or witnesses to prove they are truly Indian. Tribunal members say that the choice of who is labeled a suspected foreigner seems to have a religious bias to it, with a much higher percentage of Muslims sent to the tribunals than Hindus. The direction to declare foreigners is actually a direction to declare Muslims. Many officials think Muslims are foreigners, they say. Some of the tribunal members felt pressure in general to find more “foreigners,” with a monthly requirement to report how many cases they had heard and of those, how many people had been declared foreigners. Tribunal members who declared more people foreigners had their performance rated as “good,” which increased their chances of keeping their jobs, according to court documents. The performance of those who didn’t declare enough people foreigners was marked as “not satisfactory.” Two former members said officials in Assam’s Home and Political Department, which from 2016 has been controlled by BJP, had complained that they were not declaring enough people noncitizens. Because the bulk of people in front of the tribunals were Muslims, the expectation was that they would declare Muslims as foreigners, paving the way to deport them, incarcerate them or take away their fundamental rights. In addition to the tribunals, which Assam has operated for decades, the state has also recently completed a broader, separate review of every resident’s paperwork to determine if they were citizens. That review found that nearly two million of Assam’s 33 million residents, many of them desperately poor, were possibly foreigners. Now this group — which is disproportionately Muslim — is potentially stateless. Dozens of people in Assam whose citizenship has been questioned have killed themselves. Countless others fear being expelled from India or thrown in jail. In December, India’s national government passed a sweeping new immigration law that gives a fast track to citizenship for undocumented migrants from nearby countries as long as they are Hindu or one of five other religions. Muslims are excluded. The upshot is that any Hindus left off Assam’s citizenship lists after its broad review, or declared by tribunals to be foreigners, will likely be affirmed as citizens because of the new immigration law. Muslims may not.
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Pregnant woman accused of ‘spreading coronavirus’, loses child to neglect
Date: 19 April 2020
Category: Discrimination
A pregnant Muslim woman lost her child after staff at a hospital in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, asked the bleeding woman to clean up her own blood and accused her of ‘spreading coronavirus’.
In a letter written to chief minister Hemant Soren, 30-year old Rizwana Khatoon of Jamshedpur alleged that she lost her child even before its birth due to delay in getting medical assistance as she was asked by the hospital staff to clean up blood after she reached Mahatma Gandhi Memorial (MGM) Medical College and Hospital in Jamshedpur.
The letter from the woman further stated that as it took her some time to clean up the blood spread on the floor, she was even beaten with slippers by the hospital staff who verbally abused her on religious lines, charging her of spreading coronavirus. As she was in intense pain, she immediately rushed to a private hospital where the doctors told that the child was dead.
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Man beaten to death in UP for urinating in the open
Date: 17 November 2020
Category: Hate violence: Physical
A 24-year-old man died of his injuries after neighbours attacked him for urinating in the open in the Khairi Dikauli police circle in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh. His relatives allege that he was killed in the name of ‘Swachh Bharat’ and that the upper caste men had also targeted him because he was Muslim. Suhail was urinating in an open space in front of his uncle’s house when his neighbours — Ram Moorat, Aatma Ram, Rampal, Sanehi and Manjeet — allegedly objected to it and attacked him with bricks and sticks, according to police. Suhail was seriously injured and started bleeding. He was rushed to the district hospital but was declared brought dead.
Sources:
https://www.newsclick.in/Muslim-Man-Beaten-Death-UP-Urinating-Open
Man who attended Tablighi Jamaat conference beaten up on returning home
Date: 9 April 2020
Category: Hate violence: Physical
A man who had returned to his house in Bawana in northwest Delhi after attending a Tablighi Jamaat conference in Bhopal was allegedly thrashed after some people accused him of spreading COVID-19.
Mehboob Ali, a resident of Harewali village in Bawana, had gone to Bhopal for a Tablighi Jamaat conference, officials said. He was there for 45 days and returned to the national capital in a truck carrying vegetables.
When he reached his village, rumour spread that he had plans to spread COVID-19. He was thrashed in the fields and later rushed to a hospital, a senior police official said.
Sources:
https://thewire.in/communalism/delhi-man-beaten-up-covid-19
UP cancer hospital puts up discriminatory ad against Muslim patients
Date: 18 April 2020
Category: Discrimination
A private cancer hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, Valentis Cancer Hospital, issued an advertisement in a local daily stating that it would no longer be accepting Muslim patients from Muslim-dominated localities in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Several Muslim patients are not following the guidelines (like using a mask, maintaining hygiene) and they are also misbehaving with hospital staff. For the security of hospital’s staff and patients, the hospital administration requests all new Muslim patients that they and one designated caretaker get tested for COVID-19 and visit the hospital only if their reports are negative,” reads a part of the advertisement issued by the Valentis Cancer Hospital in the Meerut edition of Dainik Jagran.
The hospital’s advertisement claims that the number of COVID-19 patients has grown ‘unexpectedly’ due to the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in New Delhi. It says that most of the patients in Meerut are connected to the gathering. This claim is not accurate. According to information released by the directorate of health services Lucknow on the evening of April 18, 70 patients from Meerut have tested positive for COVID-19. Of these, 46 were connected to the Tablighi Jamaat gathering.
In case of medical emergency, medical assistance will be made available on a condition if “patient and the caretaker undergo corona infection test after paying 4500/- Rs each”. The advertisement further added that Muslim professionals, including lawyers, doctors and police officers, living in non-Muslim areas would not be barred from availing treatment.
A radiation oncologist at the hospital said the need to get tested will not apply to people from religions other than Islam living in Muslim-dominated localities.
The next day, the hospital issued an apology for the part of the ad that called Hindus and Jains ‘miserly’ and that asked them to donate to the PM CARES fund. However, the ‘clarification’ stayed clear of any apology or regret on its stance towards Muslim patients.
Apart from violating the patient charter of rights, doctors at the Valentis Cancer Hospital who discriminate against Muslim patients would appear to be violating point no. 4 in the Declaration every doctor in India must sign under the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations 2002.
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Muslim dairy farmers in Punjab border town denied entry to Himachal, others let through
Date: 19 April 2020
Category: Discrimination
At Sansarpur Terrace border check post, through which farmers regularly cross over to Himachal Pradesh from Hoshiarpur in Punjab to sell produce, police officials deny entry to Gujjar Muslim dairy farmers while non-Muslim farmers are allowed to pass through to sell milk and vegetables. As lockdown conditions prevail across the nation, these farmers are being stopped despite carrying valid curfew passes and milk being deemed an essential item.
Police attributed the categorization to ‘tensions’ on the other side, without offering a clarification.
On 7 April, Several families of the Muslim Gujjar community in Hajipur and Talwara blocks of Hoshiarpur district were allegedly beaten by unruly groups in many Hindu-majority villages. The Gujjars had to throw hundreds of litres of milk into Swan, a rivulet of the Beas river, amidst their social boycott, as they were also not allowed to leave their mud-house dwellings.
Gujjar farmers point out that they had supplied milk without any trouble for over a week after the lockdown began, but had started facing problems after television channels started making noise about the Tablighi Jamaat conference. Some of these farmer’s buyers in the Himachal side are so desperate that they are crossing over instead to Punjab to get the milk.
Sources:
https://thewire.in/communalism/lockdown-muslim-gujjars-milk-himachal-pradesh
https://thewire.in/rights/punjab-muslims-gujjar-families-beaten-and-boycotted-in-hoshiarpur-villages
Muslim families chased away from Punjab village amid ‘coronavirus fears’
Date: 8 April 2020
Category: Hate Violence:Physical
Around 80 children, women and men were abused, beaten and chased away from their mud-house settlements in villages in the Talwara block of Hoshiarpur district of Punjab by villagers who called them ‘sick’. They were forced to hide in the Swan riverbed without food for at least three days. Members of the group reported that people in the surrounding villages have been harassing and humiliating them ever since the Tablighi Jamaat incident of Delhi. An 80-year-old woman was denied medicine by a local chemist who snubbed her and family as “sick Muslims spreading virus”. At least six calves belonging to members of the group had died of starvation in the absence of any fodder for the cattle.
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Close to a year later, four men arrested for anti-CAA protests recount horror
Date: 3 December 2020
Category: Hate violence: Physical
Four Muslim men, who were arrested by Kanpur Police on 21 December 2019 for alleged violence during anti-CAA protests say they were tortured, humiliated and forced to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ while in custody. They were arrested on charges of attempt to murder, rioting, arson, dacoity, and various sections of the Arms Act. All four live in the Muslim-dominated Babu Purwa area of Kanpur and do not have criminal backgrounds, their lawyer confirmed. Their names are Adil, who worked at a salon, 22-year-old Mustaqeem, a mechanic, 60-year-old store keeper Sarfaraz Alam, and 62-year-old Parvez Alam, a tailor. On later investigation, it was found that none of the men were present at the scene of clashes. After their bail was initially rejected by the district court, they were released on bail by the Allahabad High Court after several months in jail. Their allegations against cops include burning the beard of one of the accused, making inappropriate comments about Muslim women, calling the men terrorists, threatening them with 'fake' encounters, and forcing them to chant 'Jai Siya Ram.' After Adil’s beard was burnt, all four were presented in front of a magistrate and taken to jail. However, the session with the magistrate lasted for a very short while, and the accused were neither able to lodge a complaint about their treatment by police nor aware that they could do so. Their lawyers were not present. They did, however, narrate the events to district magistrate of Kanpur, Vijay Vishwas Pant. He listened to their complaint but there was no action later, they said. Adil claims he tried to explain to the police that they had not done anything. The policeman turned around and pointed a pistol at his friend Mustaqeem's waist. “Encounter kar denge tumhaara agar isi waqt bahar nahi nikloge. (We will kill you in an encounter if you do not get out right now.),” all four men corroborated that the police said this repeatedly. The four men were dragged and paraded outside on the Chaar Raat road. "As we were taken out, policemen standing everywhere took turns to hit us one after the other," Mustaqeem said. They hit Parvez so hard on his right ear, that it had a deep gash and blood started oozing out, he says."There were also some media persons, with big cameras in their hands, one of the men rammed it into my face", Mustaqeem said . In jail, “the room was reverberating with our shrieks and cries and the UP Police was screaming at us to say ‘Jai Siya Ram’ again and again. If we took a second longer to repeat the chant, or if we even took a moment processing that we had the choice not to repeat the chant, they would hit us. The cries grew louder and so did the chants," Adil alleged. Policemen were not wearing name badges and some were even wearing masks. “While burning my beard they were saying things like, ‘Your women, sisters are very lovely... What kind of people are you? To have four wives?... You're terrorists’,” Adil claimed. Parvez and Sarfaraz got to know about their bail through an article an inmate read in the local newspaper. Parvez is on medication for his mental health.
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Cops interfere before interfaith marriage, with parents’ consent, could take place
Date:4 December 2020
Category: Discrimination
The police in Uttar Pradesh stopped a Muslim man from marrying a Hindu woman in Lucknow despite the consent of their parents, saying they would first have to take permission from the state authorities under the new anti-conversion law that targets “love jihad”. The police action was based on complaints they received from members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, a right-wing youth outfit founded by Chief Minister Adityanath. The Muslim youth wanted to become Hindu and get married. They were getting married according to Hindu rituals.
Sources:
https://scroll.in/latest/980244/up-police-stop-inter-faith-marriage-in-lucknow-citing-love-jihad-law
House of former Delhi Minorities Commission chairman raided
Date: 29 October 2020
Category: Hate violence: Legal
Zafarul-Islam Khan, the former chairperson of the Delhi Minorities Commission, has been under continued police scrutiny following the anti-Muslim violence that swept the national capital in February this year. In the end of April, the Delhi Police special cell registered an FIR against the 72-year-old Khan for sedition, two days after he posted on social media thanking the Kuwait government for “standing with Indian Muslims.” Khan’s term as the chairperson ended in August, but it did not mark the end of the action against him. On 29 October, the National Investigation Agency conducted raids at Khan’s home and office. According to him, the officials had shown him an order linking his NGO with “Kashmir terror.” He denied these allegations, before adding, “It seems an attempt to implicate me in some terror or riot case.” A fact-finding report released by the Minorities Commission under Mr Khan in July had indicted Delhi Police and members of BJP. On May 1, Khan had released a public statement which said that he realized that his tweet was “ill-timed and insensitive in view of our country facing a medical emergency and fighting an unseen enemy. I apologise to all whose sentiments were hurt”. He goes on to add, “I have defended India in the Arab world on crucial issues. I will continue to do so, far from complaining against my country to any other country or Arab or Muslim world.” However, Mr Khan also added that a legal notice have been served to the news channel which “championed in distorting my statement.”
Sources:
https://www.facebook.com/khan.zafarul/photos/a.1571177209819855/2643093342628231/