WASHINGTON: The head of a US government advisory board on Tuesday voiced concern over India’s drive to register citizens in the northeastern state of Assam, amid fears it could disenfranchise millions, most of them Muslims.
Tony Perkins — chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, which issues recommendations to the government but does not make policy — said that religious pluralism was “a bedrock of Indian society.”
“However, we remain concerned with the potential abuse of the National Register of Citizens in Assam and the resulting introduction of a religious requirement for citizenship, which are contrary to the ideals of religious freedom in India,” he said in a statement.
India has given Assam residents until the end of the month to prove they, their parents or grandparents were in the state before 1971, when millions fled predominantly Muslim Bangladesh’s war of independence.
Home Minister Amit Shah, the right-hand man of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has called for the ejection of “termites” from India and, before their Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s election triumph this year, vowed to take the Assam-style campaign nationwide and “send back the infiltrators.”
In another move, India’s lower house of parliament passed legislation in January to grant citizenship to people who came from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan at least six years ago — but not if they are Muslim.
Perkins is president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group close to President Donald Trump’s Republican Party that is known for its opposition to acceptance of homosexuality.
Joining his statement of concern was Anurima Bhargava, a member of the commission appointed by Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
She said the commission was “troubled” by any actions that target minorities, saying that the registration “must not become a means to target and render stateless the Muslim community in northeastern India.”
The United States rarely criticizes India, an emerging ally, and has been guarded in statements on Modi’s recent stripping of autonomy for Kashmir, which had been the country’s only Muslim-majority state.
US body voices concern on India registry of Muslims
US body voices concern on India registry of Muslims
- Joining his statement of concern was Anurima Bhargava, a member of the commission appointed by Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
