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Journalism of Courage
Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday for his claim that there were no detention centres in India, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi alleged that “RSS’s Prime Minister lies to Bharat Mata”.
Gandhi attached a video, which purportedly shows an under-construction detention centre in Assam. “RSS’s Prime Minister lies to Bharat Mata,” Gandhi said in the tweet in Hindi with the hashtag ‘Jhoot Jhoot Jhoot (lies, lies, lies).
https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/1210062130415693825
On Sunday, during his speech at Delhi’s Ramlila maidan, PM Modi had said Congress, its allies and “Urban Naxals” were spreading “lies and misinformation” about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), but no Indian Muslim had anything to fear from them, and there were no detention centres in India.
“Jo Hindustan ki mitti ke musalman hain, jinke purkhe Ma Bharati ki santaan hein… un par nagarikta kanoon aur NRC, dono ka koi lena dena nahin hain. Koi desh ke musalmanon ko na detention centre mein bheja ja raha hai, na Hindustan main koi detention centre hai, yeh safed jhooth hai, yeh badiraade vaala khel hai, ye naapaak khel hai. (Both the CAB and NRC do not have any implications for Muslims who are sons of India’s soil, whose forefathers are sons of Mother India. No one is sending Muslims of this country to detention centres, nor is there any detention centre in India. This is a clear lie, it is a game with wrong intentions, a nefarious game),” the PM had said.
In response, the Congress said that a “simple google search” could fact-check his “lies”. “Does PM Modi believe Indians can’t do a simple google search to fact check his lies? Detention Centres are extremely real and will continue to grow as long as this govt is in power,” the Congress had tweeted.
The Indian Express had previously reported on a detention centre being built in Assam to house ‘illegal foreigners’. The detention centre at Matia, around 150 km from Guwahati, is being built as per guidelines circulated by the Centre in January 2019. It is the first such centre in the state to be built exclusively for the purpose of detaining those declared ‘illegal foreigners’ by the state’s Foreigners’ Tribunals. This detention centre plan includes amenities like electricity, drinking water, toilets/baths with running water, communication facilities, provision for kitchen.
Assam currently has six detention centres to hold ‘illegal foreigners’, but these are all located inside jails. Together they house 1,000-odd detainees, in conditions that have been deplored by activists. According to a reply by the MHA in Parliament this month, 289 ‘declared foreigners’ have been detained this year.
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