CAA-NRC Protests: Amnesty, HRW, US Fed Commission Slated to Testify in US Congress Briefing Today

New Delhi: Close on the heels of over 600 European members of Parliament bringing in resolutions condemning India’s new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), cautioning against ‘largest stateless crisis in the world’, human rights organisations are gearing up for their presentation to the members of the US Congress on the ongoing countrywide protests in India.

On Monday, experts from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch will be testifying at a briefing on CAA being held at the US Congress in Washington, according to press release issued by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy group for Indian Americans working for protection of minority rights in India.

In their testimonies, the experts are expected to narrate in detail the “brutal” response of the Indian government through its police against anti-CAA protesters across India, in which 30 people have been killed and thousands incarcerated, including minors, said the release.

It may be recalled that the USCIRF, an autonomous federal commission mandated by the US Congress, had in December issued a statement recommending that the US Government impose sanctions on Union Home Minister Amit Shah and “other principal leadership” for bringing the CAA.

Among those expected to brief the US Congress on the widespread anti-CAA protests in India are Lucknow-based Magsaysay Award winner, Sandeep Pandey, who was among those who faced repression and police brutalities in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Uttar Pradesh, which has seen the maximum number of deaths allegedly due to police firing, in the recent protests.

According to the release, the Congressional briefing will also discuss the executive and legislative actions for the Donald Trump government and US, Congress, respectively, to consider ensuring that India “stays true to its secular and pluralist Constitution and that the CAA does not discriminate against any section of Indian society” 

Also speaking will be John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), who had testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the House of Representatives of the US Congress on November 14 and detailed the “human rights violations by the Narendra Modi government in Kashmir as also the humanitarian crisis caused by the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.” 

Monday’s Briefing at the US Congress is organised by IAMC, Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), an advocacy group that opposes Hindu nationalism; the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is the largest Muslim group in the US, and Engage Action. 

“The CAA has only one aim and that is to disenfranchise India’s 200 million Muslims by combining it with a nationwide NRC as Home Minister Shah has repeatedly said,” Ahsan Khan, IAMC National President, said in the release, adding that “already, many Members of Congress have condemned the Indian Government for bringing the CAA and asked for its repeal. This briefing will take that message to many, many more members of Congress.