America Leads and Others Follow… By Building Detention Camps

March 12, 2020

Guest blogger: Gaganpreet Kaur, second-year law student, University of San Francisco:

When the USA breaks a law, it gets little attention by the UN or world leaders and then continues to be a leader and dominate. Because of the example it has set, other countries have followed suit, not expecting to face repercussions. Other countries have seen the US put immigrants in detention camps and centers and followed suit, for example, 8,000 miles away, in India.

The world is watching and eyes are on the USA because the USA is putting immigrants in cages. In a way it’s fantastic for the largest democracy in the world to get away with it. Not talking about the United States but more so India. India has its own cages and detention camps that resemble US customs and border detention centers.

India’s government, controlled by the Hindu Nationalist Party, passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) last year. With the passing of CAA in India, there has been upheaval, burning, lynching, displacement of Muslims in India. CAA grants Indian citizenship to six religious groups, except Muslims, from the neighboring countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who came to the country before 2015. When we consider putting people into cages because of their national origin, one automatically jumps to the United States with its relations with Central America, meanwhile India has constructed its latest center surrounded by a high boundary wall with watchtowers. The center will be able to hold 3,000 people found to be “foreigners” illegally staying in Assam by the state government, essentially putting them into concentration camps for “Muslims” regardless if they have been “Indian” for generations.

National Register of Citizens (NRC), a list published in Assam this year declared 1.9 million people as “illegal” migrants. India, as of 2020, detained 1,200 people who failed to comply with their assembly rules. India is putting Muslim Indians in detention camps with the intention to send them back to where? They are Indians, with Indian nationalism, so taking away their citizenship places them in a dilemma of not having a country to go to.

When an immigrant is placed in a detention camp in the US, they are awaiting removal and/or deportation. Asylum seekers in the U.S. face being sent back to countries where they could be persecuted. In India, Muslims are put into detention camps with no other country they belong to, no country their grandparents have ever resided in. If an Indian cannot prove their citizenship in India, they face the fearful fate of being placed in a detention camp. To prove their citizenship they have to show they were in the country by 1971, which is no easy task for an average villager in India.

In a developing country, where many regions do not have modern water and electricity systems, let alone a recording system, documentation is scarce. People do not have adequate records dating back in time of individual’s families arriving in India. There are no proper papers filed after the 1947 partition when people fled from Pakistan and settled in India. There has been no legal or diplomatic recourse by any foreign power to stop the CAA or stop India from publishing a full NRC list which would entice India’s Hindu nationalist party to eradicate any Muslims not on the list, a clear human rights violation.

Nonprofits and agencies are suing the administration, but there have been no repercussions. Immigrants fleeing and humans being putting humans in detention camps was seen not too long ago in concentration camps during WWII. History is repeating itself and the world is watching, but because the world’s biggest leaders are not being held accountable, it is allowing other countries to follow suit.