TCN News
San Francisco has become the sixth US city to denounce India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) in its city council meet on Tuesday.
The Alliance for Justice and Accountability (AJA), along with local San Francisco organizations such as the American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, San Francisco Interfaith Council, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and the San Francisco Muslim Community Center worked on this resolution that declares CAA-NRC as an act “to render millions of people among minorities and caste oppressed stateless.”
“We are proud of the City and County of San Francisco for standing on the right side of history today. San Francisco is leading the moral consensus in the global outcry against the CAA,” said Hala Hijazi, Commissioner on the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and a board member of the San Francisco Muslim Community Center as well as the San Francisco Interfaith Council. “When genocidal campaigns begin, one important intervention is the international condemnation, and the Bay Area community feels a deep sense of solidarity with their electeds, as the time to stand against the Indian government’s Islamophobic policies is now,” Hijazi added.
AJA also said that the use of religion as a criterion for granting citizenship is a “flagrant violation of all norms of secular democracies besides being inconsistent with India’s Constitution that guarantees equality before the law for people of all faiths.” Thenmozhi Soundarajan of Equality Labs stated that “These genocidal projects happen in the shadows and this resolution highlights the significance of standing up for South Asian minorities, Muslims, and caste oppressed communities.” She highlighted that thousands of organizers across the country have called, e-mailed, and organized to amplify this Resolution, and it sets an example to cities across the United States – that they do not stand on the side of genocide.
The council has also noted that the Acts are “discriminatory to Muslims, caste oppressed, women, indigenous peoples and the LGBTQ community” and are in fact a larger part of India’s Hindu nationalist government to “persecute minorities and marginalize entire sections of India’s population.” South Asians from San Francisco welcomed the move calling it a “welcoming city.”
Other cities to denounce CAA-NRC are Seattle, Albany, St. Paul, Hamtramck and Cambridge, who passed similar resolutions against the CAA and NRC opposing the laws as “exclusionary and bigoted worldview they represent.” In addition, international human rights bodies as well as the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) had recently outlined that CAA-NRC “were poised to put citizenships of millions into question, but Muslims alone would bear the indignities and consequences of potential statelessness.”