Citizens for Justice and Peace
Lakhi: Luckless in Assam She grew up an orphan in Assam, and is now, a D Voter
12-Aug-2021
Lakshmi is considered the goddess of wealth and good luck in India. An eastern Indian variant of this name is Lakhi. Often little girls are given this name to bless them with both these things. But wealth and luck have forever eluded Lakhi who grew up in a Guwahati orphanage, and is not saddled with…
Beauty and the bumbling Beast of Bureaucracy A nonagenarian is forced to defend her citizenship!
26-Jun-2021
Moyna Barman, a Koch Rajbongshi woman in her 90s, was once the village belle. So much so that people started calling her Devi meaning goddess or angel in light of her divine looks, and that’s how her name got distorted in official records. Now the unlettered woman, who belongs to a community that is seen among the…
Victory! Two more inmates released from Assam detention camp with CJP’s help They were languishing in the Goalpara Detention Camp for two years
05-May-2021
CJP helps two men, hailing from economically weak backgrounds, secure release on bail from Goalpara detention camp in Assam. Despite facing challenges due to Covid surge, lockdown, curfew and in the middle of heavy rainfall and an earthquake, team CJP completed all formalities to help these two men so that they can return to their…
Empowering Assam in 2020 An honour and a privilege for CJP
23-Dec-2020
The year 2020 has been challenging for people across the world due to the Coronavirus pandemic. But for those in Assam, it was particularly excruciating in light of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, the Covid-19 related lockdown, the floods and the ongoing crisis related to the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Amidst all this…
NRC-excluded Assam man flees home CJP has reached out immediately
20-Nov-2020
The citizenship crisis has already claimed 107 lives in Assam. As impoverished and marginalised people face new struggles everyday, they end up taking extreme steps. Upon being devastated at the exclusion from the final NRC, Zabbar Ali fled home fearing the prospect of life behind bars in a Detention Camp while his wife and four…
CJP Impact: Four people released from Tezpur Detention Camp Previously released detainees pay it forward by referring new cases to CJP
03-Jun-2020
In yet another victory, CJP has been able to secure the release of three men and one woman from an Assam detention camp. The inmates were released on conditional bail in accordance with a Supreme Court order. Banesha Khatun, Banamali Das, Rajendra Das and Binod Das, had all been languishing behind bars for over two…
Ten new detention camps proposed in Assam Submission made before state assembly also says there are over one lakh each of Declared Foreigners and D-Voters in the state
17-Apr-2020
In a submission made before the Assam Assembly on July 29, 2019, Chandra Mohan Patowary, Minister of Industry and Transportation, revealed that as many as ten new detention centers are being planned across Assam, though the central government was yet to green-light the project. The submission was in response to a series of questions raised…
Allegations of inclusion of ‘ineligible’ people in Assam NRC State coordinator seeks details from DRCRs of all districts
25-Feb-2020
There appears to be no respite for people of Assam. Some are likely to suffer even though their names have been included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was published in August last year. Now, in a letter addressed to all Deputy Commissioners and District Registrars of Citizens Registration (DRCR) of all districts,…
Assam man forced to rot in Detention Camp for over 3 years Migrant labourer declared ‘foreigner’ for going to Delhi in search of a job!
26-Nov-2019
63-year-old Majibur Rahman has just been released from a detention camp in Assam. But the poor man is still clueless as to why he was sent there in the first place. “My grandfather’s name was included in the 1951 NRC. But I was served notice for being a D-Voter and then declared a ‘foreigner’ by…
Disasters, Displacement and Political Dis-enfranchisement in a warming world Exclusive Blog: How flood displacement leads to uneducated and destitute women becoming D Voters in Assam
23-Sep-2019
Hannah Ardent in her work on The Origins of Totalitarianism, interrogated the contradiction in the modern conception of rights. Based on her experience of statelessness, she pointed that despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was membership of a nation-state that gave humans the right to have rights. This ‘right to have a right’ is…