‘The clock is ticking’: race to save 2 million from statelessness in Assam

By Dilip -
When she was one, Suro Devi was rescued by a sewer cleaner from a rubbish dump in Assam, northeast India. When the state of Assam started a massive exercise to register its citizens in 2015, Suro Devi did not have a birth certificate, information about her parents, a voter list with her name on it, or anything to prove that she had lived in Assam before 25 March 1971. She seemed destined to be left off the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and become stateless, and perhaps spend the rest of her days in a detention camp.

Thousands In Lawyer Fees, Debts: A Nightmare Awaits Assam’s Poor Left Out of NRC // Assams new detention centres

But Zamser Ali, a citizenship rights activist based in Assam’s capital, Guwahati, heard about Devi’s case. He knew that documents were not the only thing that could prove your origins. He managed to track down five eyewitnesses to her rescue from the dump. And in August, when the draft NRC was published, Devi’s name appeared on it. “You have to be creative in these situations,” says Ali, on his way to a small village to train two dozen men on how to defend their communities’ citizenship rights.

Ali leads the Assam chapter of the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) organisation and is overseeing a huge effort to train more than 1,000 volunteer paralegals in the state. In three months, they have certified about 200 people. The plan is for these volunteers to help the nearly 2 million people whose names were left off the NRC and who now face becoming stateless. The register is aimed at stripping the citizenship of people whom authorities describe as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. People have to prove that they or their family moved to Assam before March 1971, when neighbouring Bangladesh gained independence. Those who are left off the final list face going to detention camps or being deported....
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/nov/20/race-to-stop-2-million-becoming-stateless-as-the-clock-starts-ticking-in-assam


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