India intensifies expulsion of suspected foreigners to Bangladesh

GUWAHATI, India: India has started to push people it considers illegal immigrants into neighbouring Bangladesh, but human rights activists say authorities are arbitrarily throwing people out of the country.

Since May, the northeastern Indian state of Assam has “pushed back” 303 people into Bangladesh out of 30,000 declared as foreigners by various tribunals over the years, a top official said this week.

Such people in Assam are typically long-term residents with families and land in the state, which is home to tens of thousands of families tracing their roots to Muslim-majority Bangladesh. Activists say many of them and their families are often wrongly classified as foreigners in mainly Hindu India and are too poor to challenge tribunal judgements in higher courts.

Some activists, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said only Muslims had been targeted in the expulsion drive. An Assam government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Assam, which has a 260-km border with Bangladesh, started sending back people last month who had been declared as foreigners by its Foreigners Tribunals. Such a move is politically popular in Assam, where Bengali language speakers with possible roots in Bangladesh compete for jobs and resources with local Assamese speakers. “There is pressure from the Supreme Court to act on the expulsion of foreigners,” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the state assembly on Monday.