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HRW: Stop Using Lethal Force against Indian Protesters

reporter 1222 — Tue, 24 Dec 2019 11:38:51 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – HRW said on Tuesday that the Indian authorities should cease using unnecessary lethal force against Indian protesters demonstrating over a law that discriminates against Muslims, said Tuesday.

According to the official website of HRW “Indian police, in many areas, have been cracking down on anti-citizenship law protests with force, including unnecessary deadly force against Indian protesters,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director.

“The authorities should prosecute violent protesters, but they also need to hold police officers to account for using excessive force.”

Since protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act began on December 12, 2019, at least 25 people have been killed and hundreds have been arrested.

Police have used excessive force only against demonstrators protesting the law, including many students. All the deaths have occurred in states governed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Most of those killed have been Muslims, including an 8-year-old boy in Uttar Pradesh. Scores of police officers have been injured. The authorities have also used a colonial-era law, internet shutdowns, and limits on public transportation to prevent peaceful anti-citizenship law protests.

The police have, however, not interfered with demonstrators supporting the law, including ruling party leaders who have advocated violence, HRW said.

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Indians in Iran ask to meet visiting FM over citizenship bill

reporter 1222 — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 14:00:41 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – The Indians living in Iran have called on their foreign minister to hold a meeting with them during his trip to Tehran and explain the recent developments occurring in the country after the New Delhi government proposed a controversial citizenship bill.

In an open letter to Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who is in Tehran for a two-day visit (December 22-23), a number of Indians, as businesspersons, professionals, university and seminary students and scholars living in Iran have requested a meeting to voice their concern over the recent incidents in India that happened due to the controversial citizenship bill.

Anger has been growing in India over the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), which gives refugees of all of South Asia’s major religions, such as Buddhists and Hindus — but excluding Muslims — from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh a clear path to Indian citizenship.

Human rights activists say the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has designed the discriminatory law explicitly to exclude Muslims from the possibility of acquiring refugee status in India and, eventually, citizenship.

India’s 200 million Muslims view the measure as the government’s first step toward making them second class citizens.

Protests in India against the controversial bill have spread to universities across the country, with police storming student campuses and firing tear gas at protesters. Video captured by students shows baton-wielding police storming the campuses while firing tear gas at them. Police officers were also seen beating up students inside campus areas like bathrooms and the library. On one occasion, police locked up the gates of a college in the northern city of Lucknow to prevent students from taking to the streets.

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Modi summons to discuss citizenship law protests

reporter 1222 — Sat, 21 Dec 2019 12:47:27 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has summoned his government ministers to hold a meeting and discuss the security situation in the country following citizenship law protests.

Government sources said Modi met his council of ministers in the capital, New Delhi, on Saturday to discuss security measures to end violent and contentious citizenship law protests that the parliament passed last week, which critics say discriminates against Muslims and undermines the country’s secular constitution.

Under the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan will be allowed to claim Indian citizenship — but not if they are Muslims.

Media reports said at least 14 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in clashes between police and protesters since December 11, when the country’s parliament passed the citizenship act.

Modi held the meeting as demonstrations continued on Saturday despite curfews and a draconian regulation to shut down protests.

India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, has seen the worst violence with nine people killed so far and several more in critical condition in hospital.

Rights activists in Uttar Pradesh, ruled by Modi’s nationalist party, said police had raided their houses and offices to prevent them from planning fresh demonstrations. Authorities also shut schools across the state as fresh protests erupted on Saturday.

The heart of India’s capital also witnessed street battles late Friday as police used water cannon and charged at protesters with batons.

A car was set ablaze and demonstrators were injured during the clashes at the Delhi Gate in the Old Delhi district. The altercations came as thousands reconvened at the Delhi Gate, following an earlier sit-in in the same area, after marching from India’s biggest mosque, Jama Masjid, in the afternoon.

In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, fresh clashes were also reported between security forces and demonstrators in Vadodara City.

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India protests against ‘anti-Muslim’ law

reporter 1222 — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 04:56:15 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – India fresh protests raged on Monday as anger grew over new citizenship legislation slammed as anti-Muslim law after six people died in the northeast and up to 200 were injured in New Delhi.

The law that raged India protests is fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslims from three neighboring countries, which is essentially an anti-muslim law. Critics say it is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda to marginalize the 200-million-strong Islamic minority, AFP reported.

Modi on Monday denied this, tweeting that the new law “does not affect any citizen of India of any religion,” while accusing “vested interest groups” of stoking the “deeply distressing” unrest.

Rahul Gandhi, former opposition Congress chief, tweeted that the law and a mooted nationwide register of citizens also seen as anti-Muslim were “weapons of mass polarization unleashed by fascists.”

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 unease.

On Monday fresh protests took place including in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore 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.

The northeast, where even allowing non-Muslims citizenship is opposed by many locals and which in recent days has been the epicenter of protests with six people dead, also saw fresh demonstrations.

In the east in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, thousands took part in a march led by state premier, Mamata Banerjee, a firebrand opponent of Modi. Protestors set fire to tires on train lines.

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Indian Citizenship Law Takes 5 Lives in Protests

reporter 1222 — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 09:35:04 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Five people died, including three after being shot by police, following violent protests in northeast of the county over a contentious Indian citizenship law, with authorities maintaining internet bans and curfews in some regions.

Tension remained high at the epicenter of the unrest in Assam state’s biggest city, Guwahati, with a fresh demonstration expected Sunday over the Indian Citizenship Law even as some shops opened amid an easing of the curfew during the day.

The legislation, passed by the national parliament on Wednesday, allows New Delhi to grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants who entered India from three neighboring countries on or before December 31, 2014 — but not if they are Muslim.

In Assam, three people died in hospital after being shot, while another died when a shop he was sleeping in was set on fire and a fifth after he was beaten up during a protest, officials said, AFP reported.

Train services were also suspended in some parts of the east on Sunday after violence in eastern West Bengal state, with demonstrators torching trains and buses.

Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday called again for calm, saying local cultures in northeastern states were not under threat, amid fears the new law will grant citizenship to large numbers of immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

“Culture, language, social identity and political rights of our brothers and sisters from the northeast will remain intact,” Shah told a rally in eastern Jharkhand state, News18 television network reported him as saying.

For Islamic groups, the opposition, rights activists and others in India, the new law is seen as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist agenda to marginalize India’s 200 million Muslims. He denies the allegation.

Rights groups and a Muslim political party are challenging the Indian Citizenship Law in the Supreme Court, arguing that it is against the constitution and India’s secular traditions.

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