By MAHIBUL HOQUE / Maktoob Media
With a small chunk of land allotted at Shyampur in Dalgaon revenue circle, Asar Uddin has been living a difficult life at the new place after he was forced to remove his habitat at No 1 Dhalpur village in Sipajhar revenue circle of Darrang district a year ago.
Without any land to cultivate, he is broke. To sustain the family of seven members, he has to work as a daily wager.
He earns around Rs 500 when he gets work as a daily labourer and as the area has been reeling under recurring floods, he does not get work every day. The difficulties add to the woes of Asar, as well as around 700 families relocated to the new place when they have to incur extra expenses for unforeseen document-related changes for various government aid.
Asar’s family is one of the 2051 families the Assam government has been evicting from the Gorukhuti area since September 2021.
On 23 September that year, two Muslim persons were killed in Dhalpur village when the heavily armed security persons started the eviction drive and the peasants resisted. On the fateful day, 28-year-old Moinul Haque was shot dead and stomped up by a government photographer as he charged towards the armed officers while his house was being demolished. Caught on camera, the incident made upheavals internationally for xenophobic hatred towards the Bangali-speaking Muslims of Assam— pejoratively called Miyas by other sections of Assamese society but asserted as group identity by the persecuted people.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here