By TCN News,
Aligarh: To mark the Minority Rights Day (Dec. 18), a round-table conference on the topic “Minority Rights Day: Policies and Issues” was organized by Dr. Ambedkar Chair in collaboration with the Faculty of Law of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on Saturday.
In his speech, Dr. Arshi Khan, Prof. Dept. of Political Science, AMU, talked about “the present situation of the Muslim minority community” and said that “they are backward, deprived, discriminated and excluded in the public sphere.”
Dr. Khan said that socio-economic and educational backwardness and exclusion of Muslims are self-speaking facts, mentioned by the Gopal Singh Committee (1983), Justice Sachar Committee (2006), Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission (2007) and the Andhra Pradesh Backward Class Commission in 2004.
“The Declaration on rights of minorities which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 18, 1992, unequivocally declared that principle of non-discrimination or equality before the law, was not enough to protect minorities from marginalization and exclusion,” said Dr. Mohibul Haque.
“It called upon states to adopt special measures for the preservation and promotion of the rights of minorities,” he further added.
At the end of the conference a resolution was passed which had several demands including establishment of judicial inquiry in all cases of bomb blasts since 1998, end of the harassment of Muslim youths on the pretext of terrorism, establishment of special tribunal to look into the cases of riots and riots’ related incidents, setting up an national level compensation commission for the riot victims and strengthening of the National Commission for Minorities.