Artists protest against CAA in Guwahati; At Delhi Jantar Mantar protests

Guwahati (Assam), New Delhi [India], Dec 15 (ANI): Several artists in Assam on Sunday staged a protest against the amended Citizenship Act at the Assam Engineering Institute ground in Chandmari here.
The theme of the protest was 'NO CAA, Concert for Peace and Harmony'.
Speaking to ANI, Varsha, an artist, said: "We have moved the Supreme Court to take legal action against this controversial act. It is a threat to our identity and our culture."
Another protestor stated that the artists will keep on protesting against the act in different ways until the act is taken down.
"People coming from neighboring countries will be legally staying in our state, which will create several problems for the country," said another protestor.
Protests broke out in many parts of Assam and North-East following the passage of Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 in Parliament and it later became an Act thereupon after Presidential assent on December 12.
Around 3 people have died and 27 people have been injured in the state so far in protests.
Meanwhile, in the national capital Delhi, a number of Assamese including students and professionals participated in a demonstration at Jantar Mantar against the amended Act.
Speaking to ANI, Dibyashnata Talukdar,a protestor said, "We Assamese are not protesting against this bill on the basis of Hindu and Muslim because that is never an Assamese narrative. Assamese is fighting for their own identity, language. For us our language, culture and heritage are much more important.? ".
"We are anyways a minority, a very small community but look at us, this small community with 18 tribes with individual language and culture is together fighting today", she further added.
"In the last 50 years we have been fighting, regarding this issue, people had shed their blood already and it's repeating again. We do not want this to happen, we are fighting for the cause that there should not be any 'illegal Bangladeshis' regardless of the fact that you are a Muslim or a Hindu, we are not playing any religious game. We do not want to be a minority in our own state. We fear we are going to lose our cultural and linguistic identity. That's the reason we are fighting", another protestor stated.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, seeks to grant Indian citizenship to refugees from Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Parsi communities fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh and who entered India on or before December 31, 2014. (ANI)