Ahmer Khan Profile picture
Award-winning & 2x Emmy-nominated Independent Multimedia Journalist | Work: Vice News, The Guardian, The New York Times, CS Monitor, RFI, TIME, LATimes, & more.

Apr 24, 2022, 10 tweets

We report how Muslim families in India’s northeastern state of Assam are being stripped of their citizenship & evicted from their ancestral homes.

Watch our latest documentary for
@VICENews

The Hindu nationalist government says they are reclaiming state land from encroachers, but those impacted say it's because they are Muslim.

Just a few kms from the protests, we met Hindu families who told us the police let them stay despite their eviction orders.

Activists say this is the latest step in a nation-wide campaign by the ruling party to turn India into a Hindu nation by going-after religious minorities.

Last Sept, about 5000 Muslim villagers tried to fight back after authorities gave them less than a day to leave their homes.

In a viral video, a photographer hired by the government can be seen assaulting the body of a man who was shot dead. A 12-year-old child was also killed while several officers were injured.

But the State's Chief Minister put the blame squarely on the Muslim community.

After the eviction, nearly 2000 Muslim families were forced to move to a temporary camp next to the Brahmaputra River.

In 2019, Assam removed 1.9 million people from its citizenship register. The state now considers them illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Those who can't prove citizenship could end up in a detention center, being built in another part of the state.

"It would've been better if we had died instead of living so miserably."
#IndianMuslimUnderAttack

Many people in India have reported our film as "inappropriate or offensive" on Youtube.

As Muslims and other minorities continue to suffer in new India, bringing a narrative as important as this required a lot of hard work and team effort. @vicenews

Please watch and share this crucial reporting: #IndianMuslimUnderAttack

@mehdirhasan Since you just did a show on India under Modi & new warnings of an anti-Muslim genocide. Here’s my latest doc for @VICENews on the same issue.

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