Syeda Hameed to People's Tribunal: Targeted Hate For Those Speaking Out on Assam

An event recently held by APCR and team was disrupted by a mob chanting "Desh ke Gaddaro ko..." slogans.

Syeda Hameed and APCR and their team have been attacked for speaking up on Assam.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

Activists and human rights advocates speaking out against the humanitarian crisis in Assam — the dehumanisation and attacks against Bengali-speaking Muslims — are facing a coordinated campaign of hate and threats from both the state machinery and right-wing groups.

The Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) and Karwan-e-Mohabbat jointly convened a public tribunal titled 'People's Tribunal on Assam: Evictions, Detentions and the Right to Belong' at the Constitution Club of India on 26 August.

However, the event was soon disrupted by a mob with aggressive and communal sloganeering, including the "Desh ke Gaddaro ko..." remark as was popularised by BJP's Anurag Thakur in 2020.

The tribunal mainly looked at how Assam has been at the centre of such attacks, marked by a surge in state-led evictions and targeted harassment against Bengali-speaking Muslim families.

In the past month alone, at least five major eviction drives have been conducted, displacing thousands of families and razing homes, with authorities often resorting to bulldozers to clear what they claim are "encroached" government and forest lands.

Mob Targets Event

The tribunal led by Former Planning Commission Member Syeda Hameed, Former Rajya Sabha MP Jawahar Sircar, Former CIC Wajahat Habibullah, Activist Harsh Mander, Advocate Prashant Bhushan and researcher Fawaz Shaheen published a ground report on serious human rights violations committed against the Bengali origin Muslim community in Assam.

According to the tribunal's findings, the BJP-led state government has arbitrarily ordered evictions that exclusively target Bengali Muslims, branding them as "foreigners" and leaving homeless. The report claims that these actions have created a dangerous and vulnerable situation for the community.

A right-wing mob of 100-150 people forcibly disrupted the event assaulting the delegation and chanting communal slogans. This mob was led by Vishnu Gupta of the Hindu Sena and Chaudhary Parvez Alam Baliyan of Muzaffarnagar, UP along with their associates whose faces could be seen in videos recorded online.

Assam CM's Attacks Against Syeda Hameed & The Team

The mob assault on the People's Tribunal did not occur in a vacuum but was preceded by a series of media statements and social media posts by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who publicly targeted the tribunal's members.

In the days leading up to the event, Sarma launched a public campaign against the fact-finding team. He accused the members, including Mander, Habibullah, and Bhushan, of a "planned attempt to weaken our fight against illegal encroachers" and to "create unrest" in the state.

At the event, the mob chanted slogans such as, "Goli Maro Saalon ko, Desh ke gaddaron ko," "Joote Maro Saalon ko," "Jai Shri Ram," and "Har Har Mahadev". The shouting created panic among the audience and panelists, drowning out testimonies from survivors, as per the report.

The CM's rhetoric was particularly sharp against Syeda Hameed, former member of the Planning Commission, whom he mentioned as “Congress loyalist” and “close associate of Sonia Gandhi”, accusing her of "legitimising illegal infiltrators" and seeking to "realise Jinnah's dream of making Assam a part of Pakistan". He tweeted that "Bangladeshis are not welcome in Assam, it is not their land."

The reason for this was Hameed's statement at the APCR event, wherein she said: "I have the most beautiful experience of Assam... Since 1997, as part of the Women's Commission and Planning Commission, I have been to every part of Assam. But I was never conscious of the fact that I am a Muslim and a woman... Suddenly, my name is all over India...Bangladeshi has become a curse word now. It has become a horrendous word now."

"Even if a few Bangladeshis have come in, sit down with them, negotiate with them, and escort them back," she added.

On Wednesday, while responding to the media regarding Hameed, CM Sarma said, “If she wants to come back to Assam again, she will be handled with due respect as per law, and respect of our kind,” which was later posted on his X (formerly Twitter) account.

'Criminalising Solidarity': Team Speaks Out

Meanwhile, the tribunal's organizers asserted that the disruption was not merely an isolated incident, but a "coordinated campaign to shrink democratic space and criminalise solidarity."

A detailed police complaint has been lodged at Sansad Marg Police Station by Mander of Karwan-e-Mohabbat and Nadeem Khan of APCR. The complaint lists offenses under multiple sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and demands immediate registration of an FIR and decisive action against the identified individuals.

"It was an attack on the rights to free speech, peaceful assembly, and dissent. It was an attempt to erase the voices of Assam's marginalised communities, already silenced in their own state, from even being heard in the nation's capital," reads APCR and Karwan-e-Mohabbat's statement.