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India protests: six dead as demonstrators vow to continue to fight citizenship changes India: protests grow against citizenship law seen as anti-Muslim
(about 8 hours later)
Thousands chant ‘long live Assam’ during unrest sparked by MPs’ approval of a law that excludes Muslims Six people have died in the north-east and up to 100 reported injured in Delhi
The death toll from bloody clashes sparked by contentious citizenship law has risen to six as protesters in north-east India vowed to continue demonstrations. Fresh protests have rocked India as anger grew over new citizenship legislation widely criticised as anti-Muslim, with six people dead in the north-east and up to 100 reported injured in Delhi.
Tensions remained high at the epicentre of the unrest in Assam state’s biggest city, Guwahati, with troops patrolling the streets on Sunday. The law fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from three neighbouring countries, but critics allege it is part of the prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda to marginalise the 200 million Indians who follow Islam.
In Assam, four people died after being shot by police, while another was killed when a shop he was sleeping in was set on fire and a sixth after he was beaten up during a protest, officials said. In the country’s north-east, however, even allowing non-Muslims citizenship is opposed by many locals who fear their culture is threatened by Bengali-speaking Hindus.
Some 5,000 people took part in a fresh demonstration on Sunday in Guwahati, with hundreds of police watching as they sang, chanted and carried banners with the words “long live Assam”. Modi, who has insisted he is not anti-Muslim, said the citizenship law is “1,000% correct” and that Muslims from the three countries are not covered because they have no need of India’s protection.
The legislation, passed by parliament on Wednesday, allows Delhi to grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants who entered India from three neighbouring countries on or before 31 December 2014 – but not if they are Muslim. Rahul Gandhi, the former opposition Congress chief, tweeted on Monday that the law and a mooted nationwide register of citizens also seen as anti-Muslim were “weapons of mass polarisation unleashed by fascists”.
Besides stoking concern among Muslims, the proposed changes have also led to protests by residents unhappy about an influx of Hindus from Bangladesh, who stand to gain citizenship. On Sunday night in Delhi, police with batons fired teargas and charged protesting students before storming a university.
“Assam will continue to protest. India is a democracy and the government has to listen to us,” said Karan Mili, a colleague of one of the victims, 25-year-old Iswor Nayak, who died on Sunday. On Monday fresh protests took place in Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Lucknow, where hundreds of students – most of them Muslims, television pictures indicated – tried to storm a police station, hurling volleys of stones at officers cowering behind a wall.
“We don’t want violence but protests will continue ... Assamese will not stop until government revokes the law,” another demonstrator, Pratima Sharma, said. In the east in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, thousands gathered for a major demonstration called by the state premier, Mamata Banerjee, an opponent of Modi.
Officials said oil and gas production in the state were hit by the curfew, although the restrictions were eased during the day on Sunday with some shops opening. In recent days empty trains were torched there and on Monday internet access remained suspended.
In West Bengal state, where protests stretched into a third day, chief minister Mamata Banerjee – who has spoken out against the national government’s push for the law – suspended internet service in several districts. In Kerala in the south, another state whose government refuses to implement the citizenship law, several hundred people also protested. Kerala’s finance minister, Thomas Isaac, tweeted: “United action of all secular force is the need of the hour.”
Demonstrators set fire to tyres, staged sit-ins on highways and railway tracks, and torched trains and buses, with riot police brought in to disperse protesters and train services suspended in some parts of the east. Over the weekend, protests were reported in Mumbai, West Bengal, Aligarh, Hyderabad, Patna and Raipur.
In India’s capital, several buses were set on fire and video posted on social media appeared to show police firing tear gas at protesters. Authorities in northern Uttar Pradesh, meanwhile, have cut internet access in western parts of the state following demonstrations in Aligarh, home to a large university and a sizable Muslim population.
Some 35 people injured in the clashes were taken to hospital, the Press Trust of India reported, while authorities said schools in the area would be closed on Monday. The main centre of the protests has been in India’s far-flung north-eastern states, long a seething melting pot of ethnic tensions.
Police also entered Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia university after the clashes to detain some people, although the institution said its students did not take part in the violence. There, where protesters are mostly Hindu, late last week four people died from gunshot wounds, one in a fire and a sixth was beaten to death.
The prime minister, Narendra Modi, blamed the opposition Congress party for the unrest. “To give respect to those who fled to India and were forced to live as refugees, both houses of parliament passed the citizenship amendment bill,” he said at a rally in eastern Jharkhand state. On Sunday night in Assam state – following days of rioting and clashes with police – about 6,000 people protested, with no major incidents reported.
“Congress and its allies are stoking fire over the Citizenship Act but the people of the north-east have rejected violence ... They (Congress supporters) are resorting to arson because they did not get their way.” Modi accused the main opposition Congress party and its allies of “stoking fire”, saying those creating violence “can be identified by their clothes” – a comment interpreted by some as referring to Muslims.
The home minister, Amit Shah, called again for calm. “Culture, language, social identity and political rights of our brothers and sisters from the northeast will remain intact,” News18 television network reported him as saying. The UN human rights office said last week it was concerned the law “would appear to undermine the commitment to equality before the law enshrined in India’s constitution”, while Washington and the European Union have also expressed concern.
For Islamic groups, the opposition, rights activists and others in India, the new law is seen as part of Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda to marginalise India’s 200 million Muslims. He denies the allegation. The new law is being challenged in the supreme court by rights groups and a Muslim political party, arguing that it is against the constitution and India’s cherished secular traditions.
Rights groups and a Muslim political party are challenging the law in the supreme court, arguing that it is against the constitution and India’s secular traditions. Ashok Swain, a professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University, said the scale of the protests had caught Modi’s government, which is presiding over a serious slowdown in economic growth, off-guard.
Asom Gana Parishad – an ally of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party in Assam which had supported the bill in parliament – told local media it now intended to challenge the law in the supreme court. “The protest is getting international attention and also spreading to different parts of the country. This certainly will add pressure on the regime when the economy has failed,” Swain told Agence France-Presse.