India’s NRC, citizenship law is a threat to Bangladesh, says BNP's Mirza Fakhrul

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir believes India’s National Register of Citizens or NRC and the newly-enacted citizenship law pose a threat to the independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh.

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 14 Dec 2019, 10:06 AM
Updated : 14 Dec 2019, 10:06 AM

He aired his concerns after paying tribute to martyred intellectuals at the Martyred Intellectuals Memorial in Mirpur on Saturday morning.

“We’ve had concerns about it from the very beginning. We see this as a threat to our freedom and sovereignty,” said the BNP leader in response to a question.

Describing the citizenship law as "communal", Fakhrul said, "It has been done to establish communal politics by destroying liberal democratic and secular politics."

“The NRC will not only destabilise Bangladesh but it will also affect the entire subcontinent,” he said.

India signed the controversial citizenship bill into law on Dec 13 amid violent protests particularly in the northeastern state of Assam.

The citizenship exercise in Assam has been similarly divisive as it set out to detect and deport illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

To establish citizenship, people in Assam had to furnish proof of residence in India going back decades, before March 24, 1971, the year in which hundreds of thousands of people fled Bangladesh as it split from Pakistan.

Over 1.9 million people were subsequently excluded from the final NRC published on Aug 30, sparking fears of their deportation to Bangladesh.