Please Click on Link to Support Petition !
Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil
President of India
presidentofindia@rb.nic.in
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister of India
manmohan@sansad.nic.in
Granting of Citizenship to Ms Taslima Nasreen
Honourable President, Honourable Prime Minister:
We are writing this petition to you for granting citizenship to Ms Taslima Nasreen, the exiled Bangladeshi writer & a human rights defender, who currently lives in Kolkata.
Nasreen has been terrorised in Kolkata during the week beginning 17 November 2007 by certain groups of Islamic fanatics. The latter’s methods of terrorising included assaulting police, burning cars, and holding school children hostage.
In August 2007, a group of Muslim fundamentalist MLAs & their party political cadres committed criminal acts with impunity by targeting Nasreen in Hyderabad where she was invited to speak.
Hate crimes come naturally to these violent & criminally inclined people and, they pose a great danger to & bring instability in a civilized democratic country that value pluralism, human rights, freedom of expression & peaceful assembly. Such people should be regarded as unfit for public office & continual citizenship in any democracy because of deliberately violating the constitution or charter of rights. Further, they should be charged with criminal activities committed against a lawful resident.
Nasreen, a writer & a human rights defender, has a right to live in an Indian city of her choice, doesn’t have to go into hiding in a free country & should be protected from terrorism. (Terrorism needn't always be committed through use of firearms & bombing of civilian targets but can also be perpetrated by violent bigots threatening civilians through assaults, death threats, eviction threats, inciting hate, & spreading fear.)
.
(Dr.) Talisman Nasreen (a child specialist turned writer & human rights defender) should be given favourable consideration for Indian citizenship, as well as honoured for her exemplary courage with which she expresses her thoughts on abuse of human rights
Indians of all faith should admire her unique work "Lajja” (“Shame”.) It's not just a novel (as some Bengali writers & readers tend to make out), Lajja reveals more including a vivid account of the atrocities at the time that led to 2,500+ Hindu women being attacked & brutally raped in one single week of December 1992. (Indians of all faith groups and, the world media/ politicians/ governments should be ashamed of themselves for not condemning such heinous crimes.) There is more. 3000+ Hindu temples were razed/ desecrated in that same week, and, there were murders and burning down of Hindu owned shops & businesses located a short distance away from the seat of the then Government & Dhaka Police head quarters.
Taslima received fatwa not for insulting Islam (although it’s never difficult to whip up one) but for telling the truth for which Bangladeshi Islamic cadres, mullahs & politicians should be held to account. One can charge the Pakistani Sunni army for raping 200,000 Hindu girls & women as their ‘comfort women” and for slaughtering 2 million Hindu civilians between March & Dec 1971: but in December 1992, thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims, who could have been annihilated by the West Pakistani army without India’s help & intervention, committed crimes against humanity.
Nasreen has been facing death threats & fatwas in Bangladesh, her country of birth, for last 15 years. So we understand why she is restrained in expressing her outrage on the unprecedented level of minority cleansing & the thousands of gang rapes of minority women in Bangladesh that have been ongoing since October 2001.
It is unacceptable the way Nasreen is being moved around at this time. The Government of the Indian state of West Bengal is wrong on not safeguarding her as a human being & for sending her to Rajasthan. India should not cowed by any home grown &/or imported religious extremists.
India has accommodated millions of persecuted people (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Sufi Muslims) over many centuries and, during last 50 years, India has incurred the wrath & enmity of China for welcoming Dalai Lama, given shelter to Burmese dissidents & refugees, housed 10 million displaced East Pakistanis during 1971, and, taken Tamils fleeing earlier atrocities in Sri Lanka.
Nasreen is a naturalised Indian and should be favourably considered for citizenship. She should be allowed to live and write without fear of persecution and any kind of threats from religious fanatics. A freethinking citizen from any faith or a human being who seeks justice & freedom would strongly support the cause of granting Indian citizenship to her. It’s only to save her from the bigots and religious zealots, Taslima, the writer & the human rights defender, is now a "saranagata" in India.
Taslima Nasrin: 'India is my home. I would like to keep living in this country until I die'. Photograph: Getty
Ultimately, the Indian Government should protect Nasreen adequately through all available means. In Indian citizenship law there simply is no place of taking the side of one faith that discriminates or terrorises.
We urge you to grant Taslima Nasren citizenship rights, and, protect India’s core values of pluralism, individual human rights, and freedom of expression.
Yours truly:
Copy to:
Shri Pranab Mukherjee, Leader of the House
psm@sansad.nic.in
Shri Lal Krishna Advani, Leader of Opposition
advanik@sansad.nic.in
H.E. Dr. Louise Arbour
larbour@ohchr.org
Ms Irene Khan
ikhan@amnesty.org
Ms Catherine Baber
cbaber@amnesty.org
KennethRoth<hrwnyc@hrw.org>
HRWLondon<rattazc@hrw.org>
HRWToronto<herltj@hrw.org>
CarolineMcCormick<excecutivedirector@internationalpen.org.uk>
WritersInExileNetwork<pen@pencanada.ca>
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