Foreigners' Tribunals Guilty of Violating Human Rights: Amnesty International on Assam NRC

Guwahati, November 28, 2019:

Human Rights body, Amnesty International has accused the Foreigners’ Tribunal (FTs) courts in Assam of violating basic human rights and creating ‘havoc’ following the final publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

The Assam NRC, which was published on August 31 this year, had left over 19 lakh people from its final draft. Several people were affected in what is known as one of the biggest citizenship exercises of the country. Amnesty has alleged that the Foreigners’ Tribunals that are supposed to decide the fate of the ones excluded, are ‘riddled with bias’ and they work in ‘arbitrary ways’.

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Amnesty, in its latest report titled ‘Designed to Exclude’, said, “For the last 15 years, Foreigners’ Tribunals have wreaked havoc in Assam by arbitrarily denying people their citizenship. They have not been held accountable by the courts, the Government of India and the Government of Assam.”

The Supreme Court-monitored NRC, which excluded even the genuine citizens of the state, was termed as flawed by leaders and experts owing to serious anomalies. It may be mentioned here that the government has given a window of 120 days to the ones excluded to appeal in the FTs. They can also file cases in the High Court and the Supreme Court for redress.

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Alleging that the FTs are biased, Amnesty, in its report, said, “The tribunals are riddled with bias and they have declared Indian citizens to be foreigners for minor spelling mistakes in their names, their inability to provide detailed documents or recall minute ancestral details dating back 50 years or more.”

It further added that the people appearing before the Foreigners’ Tribunals do not receive fair trial protections and human rights guarantees that flow from Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, applicable to both citizens and foreigners.

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Amnesty has urged India to set up an appellate body to look into the citizenship exercise and ensure that a person is not deprived of their citizenship due to a lack of documentation.

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