Assam’s Detention Centres: Harrowing tales recorded by Amnesty documentary

Rashminara Begum was three months pregnant when Assam Border Police arrested and sent her to a detention centre meant for ‘foreigners’.

She gave birth in captivity, where 70-80 women were confined, several of them with their children, in a cell with a capacity of 40. Many women, who had spent eight to nine years under detention and had no hope of securing their release, have gone insane and would speak to the trees and the walls, never getting the opportunity to venture out and see the sunlight.

This testimony was one among many in a documentary prepared by Amnesty International India.

“The government of Assam should remember that the constitutional right to life and personal liberty is available to all persons, including foreigners. Our study found a number of persons who have been in detention centres for months and even years. They are separated from their families and have limited contact with the outside world. Other than severely restricting movement and access to livelihood, indefinite detention has devastating effects on the mental health of those detained and their families,” said Aakar Patel, head of Amnesty India.

Harsh Mander, who was earlier appointed by the NHRC to monitor the conditions at Assam’s detention centres (which are nothing but separate enclosures in regular prisons) termed the actions of the government as “the most comprehensive and protracted violation of fundamental rights and international law principles and standards.” The NHRC did not make Mander’s report public, nor submitted it to the government, compelling him to release it in the public domain.

Amnesty Report A report prepared by Amnesty, based on interviews with the detained, their family members, doctors who work in prisons in Assam, academicians, lawyers who practise in the Foreigners Tribunals and Gauhati High Court, a former member of a Foreigners Tribunal and a former Special Monitor of the National Human Rights Commission, records:

• There is no statutory limit on the period for which individuals declared as foreigners can be detained.

• Individuals declared as foreigners are kept inside criminal prisons along with convicts and undertrial prisoners.

• Circumstances and conditions of detention cause harm to individuals’ mental and physical health.

• Foreigners Tribunals, which adjudicate citizenship cases, follow flawed processes to identify irregular foreigners.

As on 25 September 2018, 1,037 persons declared foreigners were in detention centres.

“We saw very high levels of depression. They were lonely, desperately lonely. There is no arrangement to deal with the mental health burdens that exist,” said Mander.

Aman Wadud, a lawyer who has represented many of the detenues, said that an IPS officer told him on record that every month the tribunals and the police are given “detention targets” to meet. He said most tribunals were manned by lawyers appointed on a contract-basis by the government.

“In fact, 30% of the 1,037 detainees in detention centres, as on 25 September, 2018, were declared foreigners in proceedings they were not even aware of.

The authorities have totally failed to consider non-custodial alternatives to detention,” said Leah Verghese, an Amnesty India researcher.

Kismat Ali from Uttar Pradesh, and Ashraf from Bihar, who had migrated to Assam and lived there since childhood, were picked up by the police in 2015 and spent a total of two years, two months and 17 days at the Goalpara Detention Centre till the Supreme Court finally came to their rescue, thanks to the untiring efforts of senior advocate Sanjay Hegde and his colleague lawyer Anas Tanwir.

Kismat said that the police forced him to sign a confessional statement saying he is a Bangladeshi. Tara, Ashraf’s wife said that despite repeated pleadings and presentation of documentary evidence that they were Indians, the police repeatedly taunted them for not being able to speak in Assamese. When Kismat took out his Voter’s Identity Card, the policemen just threw it away.