Trinamool Congress MP Derek O\u2019Brien today said in the Rajya Sabha that the country was moving from \u201cdemocracy to dictatorship\u201d and said there was an \u201ceerie similarity\u201d between the concentration camps of the Nazi Germany and the detention camps in the Northeast that house people left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). He was speaking during the debate on the Citizenship Amendment Bill \u2013 that was cleared two days ago in the Lok Sabha.<\/p>\n
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (cleared in the Lok Sabha on Monday with 334 in favour and 106 votes against), seeks to offer citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who entered the country before 2015.<\/p>\n
The Trinamool Congress MP said that the over 60 per cent people who had been excluded from the NRC were Bengali Hindus and thus, the segregation was not happening on just religious grounds but also on linguistic grounds.<\/p>\n
He referred to laws passed in Nazi Germany which he said have an \u201ceerie similarity with the laws passed today\u201d. \u201cIn 1933, there were concentration camps\u2026 in 2018 we have detention centres, where 60 per cent are Bengali Hindus,\u201d he said, adding that in 1935, there were citizenship laws to protect people with German blood, and \u201ctoday we have a faulty bill (referring to the CAB) that wants to define who true Indian citizens are.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that in 1935, one needed an identity to \u201cprove your Aryan lineage\u201d and had an \u201cancestor pass\u201d, and now one needed a piece of paper to prove one\u2019s Indian citizenship. \u201cIn 1940, there was the Madagascar plan to deport Jews, and now we have a plan called the NRC,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien said that the Nazis had dehumanised the Jews referring to them as \u201crats\u201d, and now \u201cthe Prime Minister and sometimes the Home Minister uses words such as \u2018termites\u2019, \u2018vermin\u2019, \u2018cockroaches\u2019,\u201d he said. This was a reference to a remark made by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who had addressed a rally saying there were crores of illegal immigrants who were like \u201ctermites\u201d eating the food that should go to the country\u2019s poor.<\/p>\n
The CAB has been opposed by several parties such as the Congress, Trinamool Congress, Aam Admi Party, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party among others. The Opposition has been saying that it discriminates against Muslims and thus violates Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. The Opposition has thus been calling it \u201cunconstitutional\u201d.<\/p>\n
In fact, after the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha,\u00a0the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said that the bill is\u00a0\u201ca dangerous turn in the wrong direction\u201d and\u00a0sought sanctions against Union Home Minister Amit Shah and other leaders if it is passed in the Rajya Sabha. The US body said that the\u00a0CAB enshrines a pathway to citizenship for immigrants that specifically excludes Muslims, setting a legal criterion for citizenship based on religion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over 60 per cent people who had been excluded from the NRC were Bengali Hindus, O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":7664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"adace-sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-7663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nation"],"yoast_head":"\n