NEW DELHI, 9 Apr: Chakmas and Hajongs, led by the Arunachal Pradesh Chakma Students’ Union (APCSU), the Committee for Citizenship Rights of the Chakmas and Hajongs of Arunachal Pradesh (CCRHCAP), the Arunachal Pradesh Chakma and Hajong Students’ Association and the Chakma Development Foundation of India (CDFI) protested at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi recently against alleged “racial profiling of the Chakma and Hajong tribals by Arunachal Pradesh government through a special census only for them.”
“On 15 August, 2021, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu announced that the Chakmas and Hajongs who were settled in the state about 60 years ago will be relocated outside the state, and today, ie, 5 April, 2022, the training of the government enumerators is scheduled to be conducted at Diyun under Changlang district,” the organisations stated in a release.
The protestors submitted a memorandum to union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“In clear violations of the directions of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) against the ongoing racial profiling on 24.01.2022, the Arunachal Pradesh state government officials sought to conduct illegal census and the training of the enumerators is supposed to be held today at Diyun.
Chakmas and Hajongs shall not participate in any such illegal census,” said APCSU president Rup Singh Chakma.
“The Chakmas and Hajongs who had migrated during 1964-1969 are citizens of India as per the Indira-Mujib accord of 1972 and Section 5 (1) of the Citizenship Act of 1955. Those who are born in India are citizenship by birth too. The state of Arunachal Pradesh instead of implementing NHRC vs state of Arunachal Pradesh of 1966 to confer citizenship and enrolling the Chakmas and Hajongs into electoral rolls had started racial profiling of the Chakmas and Hajongs to keep the pot boiling,” said CCRCHAP general secretary Santosh Chakma.
“There is no law in India which can make particular citizens to stand in the queue for census solely based on their Chakma or Hajong ethnic origin and the same is prohibited by Article 14 of the Constitution of India. By seeking to conduct special census targeting, the state of Arunachal Pradesh is destroying the communal harmony and cordial relations between the Chakmas and Hajongs in one hand and the other communities. There is need for immediate interventions from home minister to bring some sanity to this organised targeting of the worst victims of the descendants of the partition of India,” said Suhas Chakma of the CDFI.
In their memorandum to Shah, they demanded “to immediately stop and abandon the ongoing process of illegal census of only the Chakma and Hajong people and bring an end to the repression on the Chakmas and Hajongs through racial profiling, proper implementation of the Supreme Court judgments on the conferment of citizenship and compliance with the directions of the NHRC,” they said.
