{"id":20723,"date":"2018-11-01T22:23:38","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T22:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20723"},"modified":"2018-11-01T22:23:38","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T22:23:38","slug":"india-suspected-separatists-shoot-dead-five-in-assam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20723","title":{"rendered":"India: Suspected separatists shoot dead five in Assam"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Suspected separatist gunmen have shot dead five people they singled out in northeastern India’s Assam<\/a> state where ethnic tensions are simmering over the government’s plans to amend a law on citizenship<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Authorities said they suspected a faction of the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) of carrying out the killings on Thursday<\/span>, as well as a bomb attack in the state’s largest city, Guwahati, last month.<\/p>\n

ULFA rebels, who want a breakaway homeland for ethnic Assamese people, have threatened attacks over proposed amendments to India’s citizenship law that would grant citizenship to Bengali-speaking Hindus.<\/p>\n

Gunmen in military fatigues entered the village in Tinsukia district and ordered ethnic Bengalis out of their home, officials said.<\/p>\n

Four people were killed on the spot and a fifth died in hospital, they said.<\/p>\n

ULFA chief Paresh Baruah had recently threatened Bengalis who wanted to stage a rally in support of the citizenship amendment bill being pushed in parliament by right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).<\/p>\n

The bill aims to give citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Christian minorities from India<\/a>‘s neighbouring countries who arrived in the country before 2015.<\/p>\n

Activists and opposition leaders say the bill discriminates against Muslims and violates the secular constitution of India.<\/p>\n

\n

In protest against the brutal killings in Assam @AITCofficial<\/a> will organise protest rallies tomorrow ( Fri Nov 2) in different parts of north and south Bengal including Siliguri and Kolkata<\/p>\n

\u2014 Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) 1 November 2018<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Political and social groups in Assam have accused the BJP of seeking to use the law to naturalise citizenship of Bengali-origin Hindus to get their votes.<\/p>\n

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said “strong action” would be taken against the killers, but also appealed for calm.<\/p>\n

Assam’s migrants question<\/h2>\n

The state of Assam has been rocked by protests over undocumented immigration from Bangladesh for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

India this year published<\/a> a provisional list of people in Assam eligible for citizenship, called the National Register of Citizens (NRC),<\/span>\u00a0in a bid to identify undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

The draft list effectively stripped nearly four million people<\/a> of the 32 million in Assam of their citizenship<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Those who proved they came to the state by March 24, 1971 – the cut off date to be eligible for Indian citizenship – were included in the NRC.<\/p>\n

The people whose names were not included in the NRC have been allowed to file their claims and objections by December 15.<\/p>\n

Experts, meanwhile, say it will take several years to produce a final version of the list.<\/p>\n

Bengali Muslims still fear they could be deported while rights groups have said there could be attacks on Assam’s ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n

In February 1983, more than 2,000 Bengali-speaking people were killed in Nellie in central Assam. In recent years, hundreds of people have been thrown in detention camps in the border state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suspected separatist gunmen have shot dead five people they singled out in northeastern India’s Assam state where ethnic tensions are simmering over the government’s plans to amend a law on citizenship.\u00a0 Authorities said they suspected a faction of the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) of carrying out the killings on Thursday, as well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}