Assam’s Bengali community – both Hindu and Muslim – are no strangers to the rhetoric of xenophobia. Since the war of ‘Liberation’ with Bangladesh in 1971, the arrival of migrants to Assam has been a central theme in regional politics, sometimes with violent consequences. In the eighties, Muslims of Bengali origin found themselves under sustained attack by groups such as the ‘Assam movement’. Today, millions of Assam’s inhabitants are having to provide evidence that they deserve to stay.

The state began re-drafting its National Register of Citizens in 2014, for the first time since 1951, as part of a campaign to identify undocumented migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh who had settled in the province. The entire population of the province is around 32 million people. To establish who has legitimate citizenship is a mammoth task of bureaucracy. The first draft awarded citizenship rights to 19 of those 32 million. A second draft still left out 4 million people – and many more could now come under scrutiny again.

“While there is not yet a precise breakdown regarding those excluded from the list, it appears that most are from ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, and in particular Muslims and Hindus of Bengali descent,” Fernand de Varennes, Special Rapporteur on minority issues.

To understand the processes at work, and the politics that underpins them, we’re joined by two experts with different backgrounds to shed light on the complex situation. As the 2019 Indian general election approaches, contested ideas of who – and who isn’t – an Indian citizen are likely to come to the fore, making this issue more relevant than ever.

Speakers

Fernand de Varennes is Dean of the Faculté de droit at the Université de Moncton in Canada and Extraordinary Professor at the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria in South Africa.  He was appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues by the Human Rights Council and assumed his functions on 1 August 2017.

Alaphia Zoyab is a senior campaigner at the global campaigning organisation Avaaz who has been following the story in Assam and lobbying for action by the UN. She is a journalist by training having worked at India’s leading news station – NDTV. At Avaaz, Zoyab has campaigned to stop the Murdochs buying 100% of Sky, campaigned to strengthen laws against honour killing in Pakistan and urged the UN to issue an early warning of the humanitarian crisis that could unfold in Assam. She has two masters degrees in Mass Communication and International Affairs, and a Bachelors in English Literature.

Photograph courtesy of Avaaz

China has 55 recognised minority groups. Although Beijing demands state control over all faiths – including Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism and even ‘Chinese’ religions such as Taoism – it is the country’s 20 million Muslims that are facing the hardest clampdown on religious, cultural, linguistic and even culinary activities. Styled as ‘re-education’ centres by central government, over one million Uighurs are incarcerated in mass internments camps in Xinjiang. As accounts from inside trickle through China and across the world, other groups are now looking over their shoulders, fearing what could be to come.

Join a panel of experts and reporters to discuss what’s happening to the edifice of minority culture in China and whether – in the face of intensifying Han nationalism – the ‘flowers in the backyard’ can ever blossom.

Chair:

Isabel Hilton is a London-based international journalist and broadcaster. She studied at the Beijing Foreign Language and Culture University and at Fudan University in Shanghai before taking up a career in written and broadcast journalism, working for The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Guardian, and the New Yorker. In 1992 she became a presenter of the BBC’s flagship news program, “The World Tonight” then BBC Radio Three’s cultural program “Night Waves.” She is a columnist for The Guardian and her work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Granta, the New Statesman, El Pais, Index on Censorship, and many other publications. She is the author and co-author of several books and is founder and editor of chinadialogue.net, a non-profit, fully bilingual online publication based in London, Beijing, and Delhi that focuses on the environment and climate change. Hilton holds two honorary doctorates and was awarded the OBE for her work in raising environmental awareness in China.

Speakers:

James Palmer is a senior editor at Foreign Policy. Palmer is the author of The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia and The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China. He won the Shiva Naipaul prize for travel writing in 2003.

Emily Feng is NPR’s incoming international correspondent in Beijing. For the last two years, she was a China correspondent at the Financial Times, covering everything from technology to human rights. Her reportage on the ongoing detention campaign in the Xinjiang region was shortlisted for best international reporting and best young journalist by the Press Awards, the UK’s equivalent to the Pulitzer, as well the Anthony Lewis Prize. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in Public Policy.

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