🇧🇩 THE SILENT SCREAM OF THE BORDER
In the dead of night, families are torn apart. Citizens are stripped of their documents, beaten, and forced across an international border at gunpoint. This is not a scene from a dystopian film—this is the grim reality unfolding along the India-Bangladesh border right now.
Over the past several weeks, Indian authorities, led by the BJP-run central and state governments, have escalated a brutal crackdown. Masked as a crackdown on “illegal immigrants,” the campaign has resulted in the mass expulsion of hundreds of ethnic Bengali Muslims. The devastating truth? Many of them are Indian citizens. They hold voter IDs, land records, and pending appeals in Indian courts. Yet, they have been bundled into trucks, threatened with firearms, and shoved into Bangladesh without a shred of due process.
⚖️ International law is being violated. India is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees the right to a fair hearing and protection from arbitrary expulsion. The principle of non-refoulement—which prohibits returning anyone to a place where they face threats to life or freedom—has been trampled.
📊 The Shocking Numbers
😭 ‘I walked into Bangladesh like a dead body’
These are not statistics. These are human beings. Human Rights Watch interviewed 18 affected individuals. Their testimonies paint a harrowing picture of state-sponsored cruelty.
“The BSF officer beat me when I refused to cross the border into Bangladesh and fired rubber bullets four times in the air.”
— Khairul Islam, 51, Indian citizen & former schoolteacher from Assam (expelled despite a pending Supreme Court appeal)
“The [BSF] did not listen to us when we told them we are Indian. If we spoke too much, they beat us. They hit me with sticks on my back and hands.”
— Nazimuddin Sheikh, 34, migrant worker from West Bengal (expelled from Mumbai)
“I have no idea how to bring her back. My mother cannot walk unassisted and has weak eyesight. She was pushed into Bangladesh at 3 a.m.”
— Imran Ali Khan, son of Maleka Khatun, 67 (expelled despite pending High Court case)
🧾 The Assam Nightmare: A Flawed Process
The root of this crisis lies in India’s deeply flawed citizenship verification processes, particularly in Assam. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) update in 2019 excluded over 1.9 million people, many of whom had lived in India their entire lives. In May 2025, Assam’s Chief Minister openly declared: “We won’t send them to a tribunal; we will just keep pushing them back.”
Lawyers in Assam have confirmed that people are being declared "foreigners" through ex-parte (in their absence) orders without proper notice. The system is so broken that a person cleared by one tribunal can be dragged before another and declared illegal based on minor spelling mismatches in their documents.
🤝 Bangladesh’s Position and the International Outcry
Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry has rightly called these “push-ins” “unacceptable,” stating that Dhaka will only accept individuals confirmed as Bangladeshi citizens through proper channels. The United Nations has condemned the actions, with the UN Special Rapporteur calling the forced return of Rohingya to the sea “an affront to human decency.”
India’s Supreme Court initially refused to block deportations, ironically calling detailed accounts of Rohingya being forced into the sea a “beautifully crafted story”—a dismissive comment that highlights the judicial apathy towards this humanitarian catastrophe.
🕌 Targeting Bengali Muslims & Migrant Workers
This is not a neutral immigration policy. It is systematic, discriminatory, and fueled by Hindu nationalist rhetoric. Senior BJP officials have routinely referred to Bengali Muslims as “infiltrators” to galvanize political support. In Gujarat, authorities demolished over 10,000 structures, including homes and mosques, without due process, and paraded 890 detainees (including women and children) through the streets.
In Odisha, 444 migrant workers—mostly men working in construction—were rounded up. In Rajasthan, authorities detained over 1,000, expelling at least 148. Many of these individuals are from West Bengal or Assam, speaking Bengali, which has now been criminalized by these draconian sweeps.
🗣️ The West Bengal Chief Minister asked: “Is speaking Bengali a crime? You should be ashamed that by doing this, you’re making everyone who speaks Bengali appear to be Bangladeshi.”
⚖️ Our Demand: Justice and Humanity
The strength of any democracy is reflected not only in its sovereignty but in its commitment to fairness. India has long been a beacon of refuge for the persecuted. Today, that legacy is being destroyed.
We, the citizens of Bangladesh and the global human rights community, demand:
- 🛑 Immediate cessation of all unlawful "push-ins" and informal expulsions.
- 🧑⚖️ Full due process — access to legal representation, transparent nationality verification, and appellate rights.
- 🤲 Protection of the vulnerable — women, children, the elderly, and refugees must be treated with dignity.
- 🤝 Bilateral cooperation — repatriations must occur only via established diplomatic mechanisms between India and Bangladesh.
📢 RAISE YOUR VOICE.
Silence is complicity. The world must know what is happening at the border.
#StopPushIns #JusticeForBengalis #HumanRights
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