Persecution of Non-Muslim Minorities
(World bodies working on human rights violations failed to protect them)
By Ronik Sharma
Advocate, Jammu & Kashmir
Minister of Home Affairs has recently published notification for the citizenship amendment rules 2024, which would not only enable the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 but also bring it into force.
Citizenship (Amendment) Rules 2024 have been notified by the MHA, after amending the existing Citizenship rules that were in place in 2009. With this move, non-Muslim persecuted Minorities families from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who arrived in Bharat before December 31, 2014, are granted citizenship. Earlier, the bill to make changes to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act was passed in 2019. In the month of December 2019, both houses of Parliament passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019.
The president of Bharat gave assent to this citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 on January 10, 2020. It is pertinent to mention here that the attention of international organisations that monitor human rights violations against non-Muslim minorities has already been drawn to the widespread violence against them by the majority community as well as establishments of three countries. In Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, it is customary to commit major human rights brutalities against the minorities communities in an uncontrolled manners.
Those who follow these atrocities against non-Muslim minorities in these countries on a regular basis are not surprised. Every other day, news items about rape, forced abductions, and the forced conversion of non-Muslim minority community members may be found on social media platforms regularly. Not even minors are immune to these transgressions and mistreatment. These non-Muslim minority community members were being persecuted, which led to their forced conversions, displacement from these nations, where they sought safety in Bharat. The much-forgotten discussion over the CAA, which was passed by the Parliament four years ago, is once again triggered by the regular brutalities and abuses of human rights that are inflicted upon the minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The ratio of the population of these non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh has significantly decreased over the past several decades due to a variety of circumstances of brutality, including the atrocities committed against them by the majority community and the establishments of the countries.
It is a well-known fact that the Citizenship Act of 1955 regulates who may acquire Bharatiya citizenship, on what grounds and the criteria by which he is eligible for citizenship. However, in case of the illegal migrants and refugees are prohibited from acquiring Bharatiya citizenship. An illegal migrant is a foreigner who enters the country without any valid travel documents, like a passport and visa, or enters with valid documents but stays beyond the permitted time period. With the changes in the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, the new amendment in the existing act and the rules facilitate the acquisition of citizenship for refugees who are Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, and Parsi and who arrived in Bharat prior to December 31, 2014. The parliamentary procedure rules stipulate that any law’s rules must be drafted within six months of the president’s assent; if this is not done, the central government must have to approach the subordinate legislative committees of both houses of parliament for an extension of the deadline.
Regarding the same issue, the Ministry of Home Affairs has consistently requested an extension of the rule-making process since 2020. These persecuted Minorities families of refugees are from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Before this amendment of 2019, citizenship had been regulated by the Citizenship Act of 1955. After a lengthy period of persecution, the families of persecuted minorities who encountered religious persecution were compelled to flee from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan will now receive justice in Bharat. Who, in some way, saved their lives as well as the lives of their families and fled to Bharat. Because these refugees knew that only Bharat could protect and provide shelter to them, and apart from Bharat, there was no one else to give them a place to live or to protect their religion. Although, according to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Everyone has the right to freedom of religion, belief, and conscience. This freedom includes the ability to convert to a different religion or belief as well as the ability to express your faith or belief through practice, instruction, worship, and observance. The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 pertains to those who were pushed to flee their home country owing to religious persecution and seek refuge in Bharat. In case of these persecuted refugees’ families who had left behind their relatives and others had either been slain or converted as a result of coerced conversions. Now, Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, and Parsi and who arrived prior to December 31, 2014 will get justice from the government.
The citizenship amendment act as well as rules aims to protect such people from proceedings for illegal migration. The procedure for getting citizenship has been altered by the new regulations, and the Centre has established both a district-level committee and an empowered committee to handle the processing of citizenship applications. A director would preside over an empowered committee (Census Operations). The state postmaster general, the FRRO, the state informatics officer of the National Informatics Centre, and the deputy secretary or above officer of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau are among the other members. Two other representatives would also be invited to the committee a representative from the office of principal secretary (home) or additional chief secretary (home) of the state government or Union Territory (UT) concerned; and including a representative of the Railways’ jurisdictional divisional railway manager. These applications for obtaining citizenship are to be submitted in electronic form.
Bharat, on the other hand, vehemently disagreed with the US department’s critique of the citizenship amendment act and described it as misplaced, misinformed, and unwarranted. As soon as the CAA rules announced. The US says it is closely monitoring the Citizenship Amendment Act notification in Bharat and voiced reservations about it. US state department spokesperson expressed alarm over this issue and stated that they will be closely monitoring the act’s implementation. He went on to say that two essential democratic tents are respect for religious liberty and treating all communities equally before the law. However, for the past several decades, these innocent people were subjected to so much torture that many such destitute people were forced to convert, abducted, killed and that too was not visible to anyone, and no one even thought about them and their religion. Fundamental principles for religious liberty were laid to rest for non-muslim minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
World bodies working on human rights violations failed to address the concern of the persecution of these non-Muslim minorities in all three countries (Pakistan, Afganistan, Bangladesh) that are part and parcel of the Akhand Bharat. And now that Bharat has decided to give them citizenship, they should have termed this decision a commendable step and not criticised it. Anyway, this is Bharat’s internal decision; there is no need for anyone to interfere in it. And anyway, the government of Bharat at present is a very strong and bold decision-taking government. But on the other side, even the United States, the United Nations, or any other nation except Bharat failed to address such atrocities against non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. Even many large international NGOs, such as Amnesty International, the International Federation of Red Cross, CARE, Oxfam International, Save the Children, the World Wildlife Fund, etc., have shown less interest in the protection of these minorities and their generations. Many other factors, like forcible conversations, torture are responsible for the decline in the percentage of non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, where world bodies working on human rights violations failed to protect non-Muslim minorities and failed to stop wrongdoers, and even no sanctions have been imposed till date against these nations for grave human rights violations in their countries. In the meantime, Bharat’s initiative for coming forward and giving citizenship to those destitute people (non-Muslim minorities) is quite praiseworthy.
