Dear friends and well-wishers, Here is a statement for your kind information. Some of youhad supported a very similar statement few months back. It is for yourre-endorsement before releasing to the media.
You may also ignore the statement if the content is notagreeable to you. Regards, Nava Thakuria for the PPFA PPFA bats for logical debates on citizenship bill Guwahati: Expressing absolute annoyance over a section ofAssamese intellectuals and civil society groups for projecting the citizenship amendment bill 2016 in a bias perception, the PatrioticPeople’s Front Assam (PPFA) emphasizes on a healthy debate over the matter. The forum of patriotic people in a statement pointed outthat those motivated elements had been claiming, as if, the concerned bill isAssam centric and once it turns into a law, millions of Bengali Hindu peoplefrom Bangladesh would be dumped in the State and the practice will continue fordecades. Those biased individuals have cleverly concealed that theasylum seekers belonged to Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian, Jain and Parsicommunities had already taken shelter in India and there is no provision in theamendments to bring more Bangladeshi (or Pakistani and Afghan national)after 31 December 2014. “Moreover, they are not merely Bengali Hindus, but a mix ofRajbongshi, Hajong, Jayantiya, Bishnupriya, Chakma, Garo, Khasi, Adivasi etcpeople. We should not forget that all these people became the victims ofPakistan’s partition game plan and had to live in a foreign land, for thecreation of which they were not responsible at all,” said the PPFA statement. The forum also urged the State government in Dispur led bySarbananda Sonowal to clarify the content of the amendment bill seeking toamend the Citizenship Act 1955 with the provisions to grant citizenship tothose persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladeshafter due processes, so that the indigenous populace do not get misguided andpanicky. Extending supports to the initiative, the PPFA however raisedvoices for equal distribution of thoseasylum seekers from the neighbouring countries across India. Moreover, thosewho prefer to stay legally in Assam, the forum would like to ask them to adoptthe Assamese language as their medium of instructions. “Adopting the Assamese language as the medium of officiallanguage by those settlers would help in promoting the Assamese culture andalso contributing for a stronger and safer India. Their goodwill will alsoremove the linguistic threat perception to the indigenous populace of Assam,”asserted the statement. The PPFA also reiterated its old stand to detect all immigrants from the then EastPakistan (and later Bangladesh) with the cut-off year of 1951 as it isapplicable to the entire nation. The organisation also urged the Uniongovernment in New Delhi to consider offering work permits (without votingrights) to those immigrants in case their deportation becomes impossible due toserious humanitarian and international crisis. Weighing for 1951 as the base year to detect the foreigners,the PPFA argued that the spirit of Assam Movement (1979 to 1985) was to deportall foreigners since 1951, for which over 850 martyrs-Khargeswar Talukder beingthe first, sacrificed their lives. It clarified that the immigrants who entered India after1951 till 16 December 1971 should be treated as East Pakistani nationals, asBangladesh emerged as a sovereign nation only after 16 December (not 25 March1971 as often reported in the media) following the surrender of Pakistaniforces under the leadership of AAK Niazi to the Bangladesh Mukti Bahini. Their‘Father of the Nation’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman only declared independence ofBangladesh in the late hours of 25 March 1971. The statement was endorsed by Dr Nirode K Barooah, Dr RabinDev Choudhury, Manju Bora, Kalyan Dutta-Choudhury, Rupam Barua, Nava Thakuria,Pramod Kalita, Jagadindra Raichoudhury, Anup Sarma, Ujjal Saikia, NamrataDatta, Babita Sarma, Subhra Kinkor Goswami, Jahnabi Goswami, Bidhayak Das,Kishour Giri, Ravindra Nath, Anirban Choudhury, DN Singh, Tarali Chakrabarty,Bhaswati Sarma, Dayal Kr Nath, Sabyasachi Sharma, Dipankar Baruah, Oken JeetSandham, Rajib Chowdhury, Sanjoy Ray, Mridul Kumar Chakrabarty, Biswajit Nath, KishorBhuyan, Indranil Kalita, Prarthana Hazarika, Gitika Talukder, Dibson Barua etcfor the PPFA
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