families in India have been ‘deliberately ransacked’ by police, with families illegally detained, human rights activists have claimed.
The law offers amnesty to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, however critics argue that it goes against India’s secular constitution, making citizenship dependant for the first time, on religious criteria. A National Register of Citizens, which was published in the North-Eastern state of Assam, effectively resulted in 1.9 million becoming stateless, after they could not provide documents ‘proving their lineage’.
She added that it ‘was only Muslims families that had been targeted’ and described the level of violence as ‘unprecedented’.She claims the homes had been attacked as part of a message to the whole neighbourhood not to protest against the citizenship law. ‘The citizenship law is an attempt by the government of India to select who can and cannot be citizens of the state’.Prime Minister Modi has defended the citizenship law, by claiming that the bill was passed to ‘help the persecuted’. He has called on the country to ‘respect India’s MPs and its parliament’.