Immigration | SabrangIndia News Related to Human Rights Wed, 03 Sep 2025 12:53:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://sabrangindia.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Favicon_0.png Immigration | SabrangIndia 32 32 New Immigration Order 2025: Streamlined rules, old exclusions https://sabrangindia.in/new-immigration-order-2025-streamlined-rules-old-exclusions/ Wed, 03 Sep 2025 12:53:16 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=43394 MHA’s latest notification streamlines exemptions for select groups, formalises detention centres, and echoes religion-based exclusions first introduced in 2015, raising constitutional and human rights concerns

The post New Immigration Order 2025: Streamlined rules, old exclusions appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
On September 2, 2025, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) notified the Immigration and Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 2025, marking a substantial consolidation of India’s immigration framework. Issued under the recently enacted Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, this notification replaces the Registration of Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 1957 and the Immigration (Carriers’ Liability) Order, 2007. According to the report of Hindustan Times, it introduces both liberalised exemptions for certain categories of entrants and stringent mechanisms for detention and deportation of illegal migrants.

This development is significant not only for its immediate regulatory effect but also because it continues a policy trajectory first crystallised in 2015 — privileging certain religious minorities from India’s neighbouring countries while excluding Muslims.

Key features of the 2025 Order

  1. Nepal and Bhutan nationals: Citizens of Nepal and Bhutan are exempt from passport and visa requirements when entering by land or air across their borders. Exemptions also apply for entry via other routes (excluding China, Macau, Hong Kong, and Pakistan) if they carry valid passports.
  2. Members of Indian Armed Forces: Naval, Military, and Air Force personnel entering or exiting India on duty, along with their families accompanying them on government transport, are exempt.
  3. Tibetan refugees: Tibetans registered with Indian authorities and holding valid certificates are permitted entry subject to conditions linked to their date and mode of arrival, with differentiated treatment based on whether entry occurred before 2003, between 2003 and the commencement of the Act, or thereafter.
  4. Minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan: Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who entered India on or before December 31, 2024, due to religious persecution (or fear thereof), are exempted even if they lack valid documents or if their passports/visas have expired.
  5. Sri Lankan Tamil refugees: Registered Sri Lankan Tamils who sought shelter in India up to January 9, 2015, are exempt from restrictions under the Act for purposes of stay and exit.
  6. Biometric and detention provisions: All foreigners applying for visas or Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) registration must submit biometric data. Illegal immigrants apprehended within India will be confined to holding centres or detention camps pending deportation.
  7. Restrictions on mountaineering and protected areas: Foreigners may not climb peaks without prior government approval and liaison supervision. Entry into protected or restricted areas requires permits, with nationals of Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan expressly barred.

The 2015 precedent

The 2025 Order is not novel but rather a continuation of exemptions introduced a decade earlier.

  • In September 2015, the MHA issued twin notifications:
    • The Passport (Entry into India) Amendment Rules, 2015 exempted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Bangladesh and Pakistan who had entered India on or before December 31, 2014, even without valid papers.
    • The Foreigners (Amendment) Order, 2015 granted the same groups exemption from the operation of the Foreigners Act, 1946, insulating them from deportation for overstaying or undocumented entry.

Both orders mirrored each other and systematically excluded Muslims, establishing the legal foundation for the later Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA).

Legal and policy analysis

The 2025 Order consolidates fragmented immigration exemptions into one comprehensive framework. Yet, its real significance lies in what it reveals about the State’s differential treatment of migrants based on religion and nationality.

  • Consolidation with a selective core: While extending administrative clarity, the order entrenches selective humanitarianism. Religious minorities from three Muslim-majority neighbours are explicitly protected, while Muslims facing comparable conditions remain outside its ambit.
  • From ad hoc notifications to statutory consolidation: The 2015 exemptions were executive measures issued under the Passport Act, 1920 and Foreigners Act, 1946. In contrast, the 2025 regime consolidates these fragmented exemptions under the newly enacted Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, thereby giving them a more structured and consolidated statutory footing.
  • Detention architecture: For the first time, the MHA explicitly directs every state and Union Territory to establish dedicated holding centres/detention camps, formalising what was earlier an ad hoc practice.
  • Continuity with CAA: The trajectory from the 2015 notifications → CAA 2019 → 2025 Order underscores a consistent policy of selective inclusion.

Conclusion

The Immigration and Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 2025 represents both continuity and change. It consolidates exemptions for Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamils, and India’s closest neighbours, while codifying detention mechanisms and strengthening biometric surveillance. Yet, at its core, it preserves the religion-based exclusions first articulated in 2015, institutionalising them within a sharper statutory framework.

By aligning immigration control with selective humanitarian relief, India’s new immigration regime advances legal clarity but also raises critical constitutional and human rights questions — especially around the equal treatment of similarly situated groups.

 

Related:

Inside CAA 2019: New Rules & Unresolved Questions

Has implementation of CAA 2019 already begun?

‘Black Acts’: Urmila compares CAA 2019 to Rowlatt Act 1919 at meet

Why the CAA+NPR+NRC is a toxic cocktail for everyone

The post New Immigration Order 2025: Streamlined rules, old exclusions appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Eugenics, immigration, and the far-right https://sabrangindia.in/eugenics-immigration-and-far-right/ Wed, 20 Mar 2019 06:53:38 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2019/03/20/eugenics-immigration-and-far-right/ It is time to develop a holistic approach to tackle far-right ideology and terrorism and immigration lies at the core of it. People pay their respects for the victims of the mosques attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 17, 2019. Guo Lei/Press Association. All rights reserved. The terror attack in Christchurch in New Zealand has […]

The post Eugenics, immigration, and the far-right appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
It is time to develop a holistic approach to tackle far-right ideology and terrorism and immigration lies at the core of it.

People pay their respects for the victims of the mosques attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 17, 2019.
People pay their respects for the victims of the mosques attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 17, 2019. Guo Lei/Press Association. All rights reserved.

The terror attack in Christchurch in New Zealand has raised many questions about the responsibility of the media, particularly social media, in spreading racism, far-right terrorism, and questions about how the values of the West are under threat. A fundamental question, however, is overlooked: the decades-old immigration policies and narratives of Australia, Europe, and the USA that feed into the rhetoric of far-right terrorism on ‘migrants’ invasion’.

The new normal

A poster of the Australian government about the ‘boat people’ says: ‘You will not make Australia home’. The poster is a visual manifestation of the Australian government’s policy of stopping refugee boats before they arrive in Australia and diverging them to other countries for off-shore asylum processing. Off-shore immigration control has been contemplated by European states and the EU and is now partially accepted. The EU border agency Frontex coordinates naval operations in the Mediterranean Sea; the European Commission sends financial help to countries such as Turkey, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, and Senegal to strengthen border enforcement bodies and conditions in camps and detention centres; it also signs bilateral repatriation agreements to send ‘unwanted’ immigrants back. These policies are now the ‘new normal’ in migration management in Europe. They all aim to prevent unwanted immigrants from arriving in European territories.

Probably, the most striking companion of ‘You will not make Australia home’ in Europe is ‘the hostile environment’ formulated by then Home Secretary Theresa May. The ‘Go Home’ vans, as part of Operation Vaken, were underpinned by the same mentality as the Australian poster. This political rhetoric may be beneficial for its formulators, as it gives them a chance to show the voters how tough they are on ‘illegal immigrants’.

However, it also does something else: it reproduces an image of the ‘immigrant’ who does not belong ‘here’: ‘This is not your home; go back where you come from’. And this image, and the political-cultural rhetoric underlined by it, has a long and disturbing history.

Eugenics

The fear of the ‘white race’ becoming overrun by ‘non-white races’ first appeared through the arrivals of slaves in Europe and USA, then deepened and spread through the colonisation and arrival of people from the colonised countries in Europe. Eugenics, which was developed in parallel with Social Darwinism, served to generate ‘scientific’ methods to protect the ‘white race’ through regulating reproducing practices. In this way, it sought to conserve ‘civilisation’ against the ‘barbarians’ who were always ‘at the gate’, who were always lurking in the dark to contaminate ‘us’, ‘our home’.

Although this scientific racism was discredited with the defeat of Nazism, it must be noted that it was powerful in Europe and USA until the late 1930s. Now it is back in far-right ideology, which is globally spreading across Europe, USA, and Australia.

‘This is not your home’ posters and ‘Go Home’ vans allegedly targeting ‘illegal immigrants’ are put into practice in this dangerous and violent historical-cultural context: ‘our’ country was not yours 300 years ago, and it is not yours today so ‘go home’. The ‘manifesto’ of Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, and the statement that allegedly belongs to the Christchurch killer all point at the same direction. Mainly racialised immigrants are constructed as a threat who will outnumber ‘the whites’ in the number games of Eugenics – hence the justification for their harassment, abuse, and extermination.

Taking steps

The rise of global far-right terrorism cannot be thought through independently from the immigration control narrative and policies of the affluent states in Europe, North America, and Australia. There are steps to be taken:

An immigration approach that is historically and culturally conscious: Racism is not a relic of the past. It is well and alive today. Any immigration narrative and discourse that ignores this fact risks reproducing and justifying racism and strengthening far-right ideology. The ‘home’ rhetoric is built upon the painful and violent historical experience of slavery, scientific racism, colonisation, and white supremacy. ‘Home’ is not a static formation; it changes and transforms along with the people in it. Suggesting otherwise is giving a lease of life to the far-right.

Halting immigration is not a solution to the rise of the far-right: In an interview for the Guardian’s series on the rise of populism, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton identified immigration in Europe as the factor that ‘lit the flame’ of far-right populism; she continued that ‘I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part’. This approach justifies and gives a moral ground to the far-right by re-confirming their argument that immigrants are the problem, not racism.

Going beyond the ‘economic assets’ justification: Most immigration management policies are now underlined by an economic mentality. It is argued that some immigrants are economically beneficial to our economies and market needs; therefore, they are welcomed to contribute. This approach significantly ignores the cultural-social dimension of immigration and reduces immigrants into economic assets which can be made redundant once their jobs are considered done. Its ethnocentrism overlooks the needs and demands of immigrants as humans. It dehumanises immigrants and, hence, feeds into the far-right ideology.

It is time to develop a holistic approach to tackle far-right ideology and terrorism and immigration lies at the core of it. It is now time to rebuild ‘the home’ as an ever-expanding inclusive house. The question is: can we trust the politicians who sent out the ‘Go Home’ vans in the first place for this task?

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 

The post Eugenics, immigration, and the far-right appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Immigration, legislation, investigation and child poverty: 4 scholars respond to Trump’s State of the Union https://sabrangindia.in/immigration-legislation-investigation-and-child-poverty-4-scholars-respond-trumps-state/ Thu, 07 Feb 2019 06:46:13 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2019/02/07/immigration-legislation-investigation-and-child-poverty-4-scholars-respond-trumps-state/ Editor’s note: In his second State of the Union address, President Donald Trump ranged from generous to combative, eloquent to blunt. He unexpectedly complimented the wave of recently elected Democratic women in the House, and they responded by applauding for themselves. And he spent a lot of time on a his favorite topic: immigration and the […]

The post Immigration, legislation, investigation and child poverty: 4 scholars respond to Trump’s State of the Union appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Editor’s note: In his second State of the Union address, President Donald Trump ranged from generous to combative, eloquent to blunt. He unexpectedly complimented the wave of recently elected Democratic women in the House, and they responded by applauding for themselves. And he spent a lot of time on a his favorite topic: immigration and the border wall. We asked four scholars to choose what they saw as key quotes and add context to the president’s speech.


Trump before delivering the State of the Union address with Pelosi and Pence. Doug Mills/The New York Times/Pool via REUTERS

Refugees now and refugees in history

Lisa García Bedolla, University of California, Berkeley

“The lawless state of our Southern Border is a threat to the safety, security and financial well-being of all Americans.”

The president framed the status of our southern border as “a moral issue.”

The problem is that his claim of morality flies in the face of history.

It is ironic that, later in the speech, President Trump recognized Holocaust survivors Judah Samet and Joshua Kaufman. Ironic because the international principle of accepting refugees in need arose from the events of World War II.

In June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all of whom were Jewish refugees, were turned away from the port of Miami.

The ship was forced to return to Europe and more than a quarter of the passengers died in the Holocaust. This was just one of the many stories of Jewish refugees being denied a haven in safe countries and subsequently dying at the hands of the Nazis.

Trump tried to turn this history on its head, arguing that Central American women and children walking thousands of miles to claim political asylum in the United States are a threat to American security and well-being.

He conflated their desperate circumstances to the atrocious crimes committed by human traffickers, drug dealers and those that prey on the innocent attempting to find a better life.

These tropes are not new; they have become standard – and repeatedly debunked – rhetorical fare from Trump.

Investigating doesn’t rule out legislating

Robert Speel, Pennsylvania State University

“If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.”

The implication of President Trump’s quote is that Congress will be unable to pass laws while investigations continue of alleged malfeasance related to him, his administration and his 2016 campaign.

However, investigations of recent presidents in U.S. history indicate that is not the case.

In 1973, in the midst of the Watergate investigations of President Richard Nixon, Congress approved and then overrode a presidential veto of the War Powers Act, a law that attempted to redefine presidential military and foreign policy powers in the modern age. During the same period, Congress also passed the Endangered Species Act, signed by President Nixon. Scientists participated in the writing of this landmark environmental legislation, which protected animal and plant species and ecosystems from unregulated development.

Richard Nixon signs a bill July 12, 1974, in the White House, giving Congress tighter control of the budget process. AP Photo
 

July 1974 was a crucial month for the federal government. The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to impeach President Nixon and the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the president had to turn over Oval Office tape recordings subpoenaed as part of the Watergate investigation.

Something else happened that momentous month: Major legislation was passed by Congress.

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974changed the federal budget process to give Congress more control and prevent the president from refusing to spend funds approved by Congress.

And the Legal Services Corporation Act of 1974 was passed to provide legal aid for lower income Americans.

In 1998, Congress and Independent Counsel Ken Starr were investigating allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice by President Bill Clinton.

That year, Congress approved the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to prevent online marketing to children and collection of information from children. The law today continues to have a significant impact in limiting social media use by children.

Congress also approved that year, and President Clinton signed, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which expanded U.S. copyright laws into the digital world and complied with new international treaties on the issue.

So, while congressional investigations of a president, and “war” between the two branches may not make the legislative process particularly smooth, it is still possible for significant and long-lasting laws to pass.

No sign of a deal on immigration

Matthew Wright, American University School of Public Affairs
 

“Simply put, walls work and walls save lives. So let’s work together, compromise, and reach a deal that will truly make America safe.”

Trump wants a “physical barrier” on the U.S.-Mexico border.


Border Patrol agent Vincent Pirro walks near where the border wall ends that separates Tijuana, Mexico, left, from San Diego, right. AP Photo/Gregory Bull

According to recent polling by Morning Consult/Politico, this is something registered voters are divided about in principle.
And it’s something they certainly do not want extracted as ransom for a functioning government. “Where walls go up, illegal crossings go way down,” Trump said.

Leave aside questions of where most illegal immigrants come from, how they arrive in the U.S., and the economic and social consequences of their presence. Forget about asking whether the president’s proposed solution would actually work.

Consider, instead, the politics of the deal President Trump wants to make.

Most importantly, he has offered Democrats nothing in return.

When Congress last seriously considered a bipartisan deal on immigration in January 2018, the Democrats’ price was permanent legal status for “Dreamers,” or children who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Trump refused that deal, which had just under US$2 billion in wall funding attached. He refused again when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, followed up with an offer of even more wall funding.

This January, Trump offered temporary legal status for Dreamers as a means of getting his wall funding and ending what was at that point a 29-day government shutdown. The Democrats rejected it as insufficient.

That deal now seems to be off the table. So besides the president’s word that his latest measure will freeze the Salvadorian street gang MS-13 in its tracks, it is not at all clear what the other side of this “deal” might look like for the Democrats.

The prospect of a deal that includes wall funding are even worse for Trump now than they were after he ended the last shutdown. Democrats remain both a legislative veto and an oversight threat, and they now know that if push comes to shove, Trump will fold. He has even called congressional negotiations a “waste of time.”

Aside from the usual rote appeals to bipartisanship, nothing tonight even hinted in this direction.

So if Trump wants to “get it built,” he will likely declare a national emergency as time runs out. This option is fraught with legal and political challenges, but he has entrenched himself so thoroughly that he may not see any choice.

Missing: A call to fight childhood poverty

Patricia Smith, University of Michigan-Dearborn
 

“Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life. And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: All children – born and unborn – are made in the holy image of God.”

The president said this while calling for an end to late-term abortions. But to me, as an economist who focuses on relationships between health and socioeconomic status, this reasoning calls on Americans to work harder to end childhood poverty.

Despite an economy that generates great wealth, the poverty rate among children in the U.S. is among the highest in the developed world by a variety of measures. Other developed countries, including those with smaller economies and lower average income, do a lot better than the U.S. in protecting their children from poverty.

About one-fifth of U.S. children are poor, and about 8 percent live in deep poverty – meaning their families must survive on income less than half of the poverty line.

It gets worse for children of color. About 28 percent of African-American children under the age of 6 live in high-poverty neighborhoods. The figure is 18 percent for Hispanics and 6 percent for white children.

But their loss isn’t just personal; it affects every American. The estimated annual economic cost of childhood poverty as result of lost productivity and higher rates of illness, crime and homelessness exceeds US$1 trillion.

I believe cherishing children by making sure poverty does not harm their health and opportunities to develop is a good economic investment.

Courtesy: The Conversation
 

The post Immigration, legislation, investigation and child poverty: 4 scholars respond to Trump’s State of the Union appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Dozens of migrants disappear in Mexico as Central American caravan pushes northward https://sabrangindia.in/dozens-migrants-disappear-mexico-central-american-caravan-pushes-northward/ Mon, 19 Nov 2018 09:39:30 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2018/11/19/dozens-migrants-disappear-mexico-central-american-caravan-pushes-northward/ The Hondurans who banded together last month to travel northward to the United States, fleeing gangs, corruption and poverty, were joined by other Central Americans hoping to find safety in numbers on this perilous journey. Migrants travel in groups through Mexico for safety reasons. But Mexico is still one of the world’s most dangerous countries. […]

The post Dozens of migrants disappear in Mexico as Central American caravan pushes northward appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
The Hondurans who banded together last month to travel northward to the United States, fleeing gangs, corruption and poverty, were joined by other Central Americans hoping to find safety in numbers on this perilous journey.


Migrants travel in groups through Mexico for safety reasons. But Mexico is still one of the world’s most dangerous countries. AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd

But group travel couldn’t save everyone.

Earlier this month, two trucks from the caravan disappeared in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. One person who escaped told officials that about “65 children and seven women were sold” by the driver to a group of armed men.

Mexican authorities are searching for the migrants, but history shows that people missing for more than 24 hours are rarely found in Mexico – alive or at all.
 

Mexico’s ambiguous welcome

An average of 12 people disappear each day in Mexico. Most are victims of a raging three-way war among the Mexican armed forces, organized crime and drug cartels.

The military crackdown on criminal activity has actually escalated violence in Mexico since operations began in 2006, my research and other security studies show.

Nearly 22,000 people were murdered in Mexico in the first eight months of this year, a dismal record in one of the world’s deadliest places.

Central Americans fleeing similarly rampant violence back home confront those risks and others on their journey to the United States. Doctors Without Borders found that over two-thirds of migrants surveyed in Mexico in 2014 experienced violence en route. One-third of women had been sexually abused.

Mexico’s security crisis may explain why so few caravan members want to stay there.

In response to President Donald Trump’s demands that Mexico “stop this onslaught,” Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced that migrants who applied for asylum at Mexico’s southern border would be given shelter, medical attention, schooling and jobs.

About 1,700 of the estimated 5,000 caravan members took him up on the offer.

Meanwhile, everyday Mexicans are greeting the migrants as they pass through their towns, donating food, clothing, lodging and transport.

A recent poll shows that 51 percent of Mexicans support the caravan. Thirty-three percent of respondents, many of them affluent members of Mexico’s urban middle class, want the migrants to go back to Central America.


Two trucks carrying an estimated 80 migrants went missing in Mexico in early November. AP Photo/Marco Ugarte
 

Asylum overload

Mexican law, which allows eligible asylum seekers to both request and be granted asylum, exceeds international standards on the rights of migrants.

But reality in Mexico often falls short of the law.

The Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission is supposed to process asylum applications in 45 days. But its offices in Mexico City were damaged by last year’s earthquake, forcing the already overstretched and underfunded agency to suspend processing of open asylum claims for months.

Meanwhile, new applications for asylum in Mexico continued to pour in – a record 14,596 were filed last year. The processing backlog is now two years.

During that period of legal limbo, asylum seekers cannot work, attend school or fully access Mexico’s public health system. President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who takes office on Dec. 1, says he will offer Central American migrants temporary working visas while their claims are processed.

Anti-caravan posts on social media accuse migrants of taking Mexican jobs and violating Mexico’s sovereignty, using nativist language similar to that seen in the United States.

Mexico City, which in 2017 declared itself to be a sanctuary city, nonetheless put thousands of caravan members up in a stadium staffed by medical teams and humanitarian groups.
 

Militarizing the US-Mexico border

The first Central Americans from the caravan are now arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, where they face a far less warm reception.

Calling the caravan an “invasion,” President Trump has ordered the deployment of over 5,000 troops to the border.

U.S. law prohibits the use of the armed forces to enforce domestic laws without specific congressional authorization. That means the troops can only support border agents in deterring migrants.

But Trump’s decision still has symbolic power. This is the first time in over a century that military troops have been summoned to defend the U.S.-Mexico border.

The last deployment occurred during the Mexican Revolution.

On March 9, 1916, a small band of revolutionaries led by Francisco “Pancho” Villa invaded Columbus, New Mexico.


After Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico, President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to the border – and into Mexican territory. United States Air Force

Officially, the group assaulted the border city in retaliation for then-President Woodrow Wilson’s support of Venustiano Carranza, Villa’s political rival. Villa also had a personal vendetta against Sam Ravel, a local man who had swindled money from him.

President Wilson responded by summoning General John J. Pershing, who assembled a force of 6,000 U.S. troops to chase Villa deep inside Mexico’s northern territory. Pershing’s “punitive expedition” returned in early 1917 after failing to capture the revolutionary leader.
 

No relief at the border

Central Americans who reach the militarized United States border can still apply for asylum there, despite President Trump’s recent executive order limiting where they may do so. But they face stiff odds.


The Central American caravan includes many women asylum seekers hoping to give their children a safer life in the United States. AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd

After an evaluation process that can take months or years, the majority of Central American asylum claims filed in the United States – 75 percent – are denied. Caravan members rejected will be sent back to the same perilous place they fled last month.

With 60 percent of its population living in poverty, Honduras is the poorest country in Latin America. It also has the world’s second-highest homicide rate – 43.6 murders per 100,000 people – trailing only El Salvador.

The U.S. contributed to the instability that created these hardships.

Honduras has been in turmoil since 2009, when the military overthrew leftist President Manuel Zelaya. Rather than join the United Nations and European Union in demanding Zelaya’s reinstatement, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for new elections, effectively endorsing a coup.

The country entered a prolonged political crisis. Honduras’s November 2017 presidential election was contested, with the U.S.-backed President Juan Orlando Hernández accused of rigging the vote. Seventeen opposition protesters were killed in the unrest that followed.
The Central American caravan that started in Honduras seeks in the U.S. a life free of such violence. Its steady progress toward the border shows that even kidnappings, Trump’s threats and soldiers cannot deter them.

Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong
 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Dozens of migrants disappear in Mexico as Central American caravan pushes northward appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Violent evictions of refugees in Rome reveal inhumanity of modern democracy https://sabrangindia.in/violent-evictions-refugees-rome-reveal-inhumanity-modern-democracy/ Thu, 31 Aug 2017 07:45:58 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2017/08/31/violent-evictions-refugees-rome-reveal-inhumanity-modern-democracy/ “If they throw something, break their arm,” a police officer was overhead on video saying to anti-riot police on August 24 who were running after refugees and migrants near Rome’s central train station. The migrants were gathering there after police violently removed a group who had been occupying the city’s Piazza Indipendenza. Five days earlier, […]

The post Violent evictions of refugees in Rome reveal inhumanity of modern democracy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
“If they throw something, break their arm,” a police officer was overhead on video saying to anti-riot police on August 24 who were running after refugees and migrants near Rome’s central train station. The migrants were gathering there after police violently removed a group who had been occupying the city’s Piazza Indipendenza. Five days earlier, when around 800 Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants and refugees were forcibly evicted from a nearby squat on via Curtatone, some emptied out into the piazza with all their belongings and occupied it.


A protest in Rome on August 26 after violent evictions from Piazza Indipendenza. Angelo Carconi/EPA

Unjustified and disproportionate state violence was exercised on these vulnerable people from dawn to dusk by the Italian police. They used tear gas, batons and water cannons to clear people from the square. It was a spectacle of violence and human misery: women crying out in protest were swept away by water cannons, children and elderly people wrapped in blankets had to run for safety.

Most of the 800 or so residents of the squat on via Curtatone were refugees. But there has been no safety for them, and no sanctuary for those who should be protected under international law. The authorities said the migrants had refused to accept alternative accommodation and pointed to the risk of cooking gas canisters they were using.

After the Piazza Indipendenza events, a mass protest took place in Rome on August 26, attended by over 5,000 people. A group of 40 elderly, sick and young refugees were subsequently permitted to return to the building for six months.

The violent manner of the original eviction was aimed at erasing the presence of migrants and refugees from the city centre: they apparently must disappear, become invisible in the name of public decorum and order. This is a war on migrants, on the poor, on the vulnerable, on those whose lives are precarious and disposable.

This eviction is part of several recent state interventions in Rome against refugees and migrants. In June, the city’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, announced that the city was “facing a new migrant emergency” and that it could not take new arrivals. This is a marked contrast to comments she made in December 2016 about the need to offer refugees human warmth in Rome.

As migration scholar Nando Sigona argued on The Conversation, this shift in approach was made within the context of pre-election political opportunism in Italy. The issue of migration is moving centre stage as parties look to woo voters.
 

From warmth to water cannons

The inhumane treatment and denial of most basic rights to those in Piazza Indipendenza is the fruit of emergency politics to address migration rather than of a continued approach to sanctuary. Democracies are treating their vulnerable with violence instead of protection and eviction instead of sanctuary. The mayor’s idea of “human warmth” has quickly morphed into water cannons.

Migrants are dying at sea and disappearing from visible public spaces because their presence poses uncomfortable questions about the human condition, and about Western democracies. This is not a migration crisis, it is a crisis of human values – and these events signal that democracy is ailing and failing.

American philosopher Judith Butler observes that we approach certain forms of violence with horror, and other forms of violence with acceptance. This schism in moral evaluations occurs because certain lives are regarded as liveable, worthy of protection and worthy fighting for. But other lives are seen as unworthy of protection, not quite lives, at the limits of humanity. They are disposable.
 

Moral disintegration

Across the world, people who live precarious lives at the margins of society and at the limit of humanity continue to be met with violence. In the words of the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, this is “the normalisation of a social state of warfare” – when the social state is weakened and ultimately erased.

The failing democracies of the West are plunging into what the Jamaican cultural philosopher Stuart Hall called “authoritarian populism”, marking the end of the world as we know it. When asked about this social system and the fate of our species, the American philosopher Noam Chomsky replied that: “It’s terminal disaster. We have constructed a perfect storm.” Under these conditions, our moral compass has been readjusted and our humanity – in the sense of being humane – is compromised.

Resistance, like that staged by the residents of via Curtatone who occupied the piazza after their eviction, can claw back shreds of democracy, dignity and rights. But it is the dominant cultural norms which must be resisted, the very ones regulating and influencing society’s biased moral response towards refugees and migrants. In the era of post-truths, when knowledge is overtly, unquestionably and routinely assailed, critical thinking is more crucial than ever to halt the moral disintegration of human kind.

Unlike the cowardly, brute force which can break arms like lifeless sticks, knowledge and critical thinking can be used to stem the tide of oppressive powers. Challenging the inhumanity of police brutality and society’s acceptance of it is a transformative, emancipatory form of resistance. As the American writer Toni Morrison put it, it is “critical to refuse to succumb to [the world’s] malevolence … that is how civilisations heal.”

Mariangela Palladino, Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies (Migration, Mobilities, Diaspora), Keele University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Violent evictions of refugees in Rome reveal inhumanity of modern democracy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>