Assam: Phase-wise transfer of ‘foreigners’ to Matia detention centre completed
Pubali Gohain, Assam inspector general of prisons, told The Indian Express that the camp now houses 217 “foreigners” in total.
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The entrance to Matia Transit Camp in Assam's Goalpara. (Express photo by Tora Agarwala) The Assam government Sunday completed the phase-wise transfer of all “foreigners” to the newly-built detention centre — now officially known as ‘transit camp’ — at Goalpara’s Matia, 150 km from Guwahati.
Pubali Gohain, Assam inspector general of prisons, told The Indian Express that the camp now houses 217 “foreigners” in total. This includes both people declared “foreigners” by foreigner tribunals (FTs) in Assam as well as those convicted by judicial courts for violating visa provisions. The latter make up the majority in the camp.
“The process was completed by Sunday… the detainees were brought from other centres in Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Silchar, among others,” she said.
The camp in Matia is the state’s first centre to exclusively house “illegal foreigners”, built at a budget of Rs 46 crore as per guidelines laid down by the Centre.
It became operational on January 27, when, after several missed deadlines and following the orders of the Gauhati High Court, the Assam government moved at least 68 people into the camp. Until then, the detainees had been lodged in six detention centres that were all situated inside jails (in Kokrajhar, Goalpara, Tezpur, Silchar, Dibrugarh, and Jorhat) across Assam. “Now all ‘foreigners’ are accommodated in Matia itself,” added Gohain.
For some time now, civil society activists have described the condition at the six detention centres inside prisons as “a gross violation of human rights”. In 2020, challenging the notifications by which jails were converted into detention centres, a team of lawyers and activists, facilitated by Studio Nilima, a research collective, filed a series of petitions in the Gauhati High Court seeking the release of the detainees. They challenged the detention of convicted and declared foreign nationals inside the prisons of Assam. The order to move the detainees to Matia came in November 2022, during the hearing of the same batch of petitions.
While the government did begin the phase-wise transfer to Matia in January, a week later, the state Home Department officially notified a part of it as a “temporary jail” to accommodate mass arrests on the heels of an anti-child marriage drive, again drawing the ire of civil society activists and even the Gauhati High Court.
On February 28, the Court pulled up the Assam government for converting Matia into a “temporary prison”, describing it as “prima facie unacceptable”.
On March 2, the state government said the need to make the camp a temporary prison arose because of the “emergent situation caused by the drive against child marriage”.
At least 350 people, booked in the wake of the drive, have been imprisoned in Matia since February 5, along with the foreigners — although they reside in separate quarters.
Gohain said child marriage convicts are being moved from Matia to their respective home districts.
The next hearing is scheduled for March 14.
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