The photographer’s hateful wrath in Assam is not an isolated crime – it has government sanction
In a video from Sipajhar in Assam that appeared on social media on Thursday, a photographer pounces on a man lying motionless on the ground, a circle of blood spreading on his chest. The photographer is accompanied by a group of policemen. He is Bijay Baniya, employed by the Darrang district administration, brought to the spot to take pictures of an eviction drive in Sipajhar.
The man lying on the ground is 33-year-old Moinul Haque. In the first few seconds of the video, he had rushed towards a group of policemen, a stick in his hand, and the group of policemen, armed with guns and clad in riot gear, had fallen upon him. Gunshots rang out soon afterwards. Haque was killed in the attack….
Decades of politics in Assam have led up to this moment. It has been enabled by the government’s obsession with hunting down so-called foreigners in the name of championing indigenous interests. A poisonous lexicon has flowed from this politics…. months before the general elections of 2019, Union Home Minister Amit Shah described migrants from Bangladesh as “termites”….
