Citizenship Law: Indian police torture protesting Muslim students

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NEW DELHI: Protests over a new Indian citizenship law based on religion spread to student campuses on Monday as critics said the Hindu nationalist government was pushing a partisan agenda in conflict with the country’s founding as a secular republic.Students pelted stones at police who locked up the gates of a college in the northern city of Lucknow to prevent them from taking to the streets. About two dozen students at another college in the city sneaked out to protest.The Jamia Millia university’s vice-chancellor Najma Akhtar said on Monday that 200 people were injured but police put the number at 39 students hurt with 30 officers also injured, one of them critically.The head demanded aninvestigation into how police were allowed to enter the campus. “It is not expected of the police to enter the university and beat up students,” Najma Akhtar told a news conference.Students said police fired tear gas and windows were broken in the library. They ducked under desks and switched off the lights as advised by teachers. Police said they acted with restraint. Anger with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government was stoked by allegations of police brutality at Jamia Millia Islamia University on Sunday, when officers entered the campus in the capital New Delhi and fired tear gas to break up a protest. At least 100 people were wounded, reported a foreign news agency.Under the law passed by parliament last week, religious minorities such as Hindus and Christians in neighboring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who settled in India before 2015 will have a path to citizenship on grounds they faced persecution in those countries.On Monday, fresh protests took place including in Chennai, Bangalore and Lucknow, where hundreds of students -- most of them Muslims, television pictures indicated -- tried to storm a police station. The clashes prompted university students to demonstrate elsewhere including in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and in Bangalore. "I want to make it clear, nobody is scared. Like people in Hong Kong are protesting, in Chile they are protesting, and they are not scared," student Bhumika Saraswati said in the capital.Critics say the law, which does not make the same provision for Muslims, weakens India’s secular foundations. Modi called for calm, saying the protests were deeply distressing. “Debate, discussion and dissent are essential parts of democracy but, never has damage to public property and disturbance of normal life been a part of our ethos,” he said in a tweet. Cars were attacked in Delhi on Sunday and public buses set on fire.Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main opposition Congress party, said the Modi government was dividing the Indian society through the citizenship law and a plan to launch a national citizenship register. “The best defense against these dirty weapons is peaceful, non-violent Satyagraha,” he said in a tweet referring to the strategy of passive political resistance advocated by independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.Rahul Gandhi’s sister Priyanka Gandhi sat down for a protest at the India Gate war memorial in Delhi against the police crackdown on student campuses.Students at Delhi University said right-wing student groups linked to Modi’s party were trying to intimidate them for protesting against the citizenship law.Raniya Zulaikha, a student of political science at Ramjas College, said there were groups of students who entered the campus saying anyone who was protesting should leave the country, or go to Pakistan. Sanija Mithran, another student of the college, said girls who were wearing the hijab were targeted. “They were selecting the girls with hijab and they were pulling their hijab.”Muslims, who make up 14 percent of India’s population, are especially worried as the law follows the revocation of the special status of the Muslim-majority Kashmir region, and a court decision to build a temple on the site of a mosque razed by Hindu zealots in northern India. Both steps are seen advancing a Hindu-first agenda. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party denies any religious bias. It says the new law is meant to help minority groups facing persecution in the three nearby Muslim countries.The most violent protests during the past few days occurred in the northeastern state of Assam, where mobs torched buildings and train stations, angry the law would help thousands of immigrants from Bangladesh become lawful citizens. At least two people were killed.Meanwhile, fresh protests rocked India on Monday as anger grew over new citizenship legislation slammed as anti-Muslim, after six people died in the northeast and up to 200 were injured in New Delhi.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 polarisation 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.Authorities there in Assam’s main city Guwahati lifted a daytime curfew but night-time restrictions remained, as did internet curbs. Ten people remain in hospital with gunshot wounds, while 190 people have been detained. "The curfew is from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am," Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.In the east in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, more than 10,000 people took part on Monday in a march led by state premier Mamata Banerjee, a firebrand Modi opponent. Banerjee told the crowd that the law would be implemented in her state "over my dead body," Indian media reported. "India is being divided," said Meera Hajra, a protester in Kolkata.State police said they fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters elsewhere after they threw stones. More than 350 people were detained. No major incidents were reported nationwide by Monday evening, although several metro stations were closed in Delhi as demonstrations there continued for a second day.On Sunday evening rioters torched vehicles and police with batons fired tear gas and charged protesting students before storming the Delhi´s Jamia Millia Islamia university. Police spokesman MS Randhawa said that four buses, 100 private vehicles and 10 police bikes were damaged, and that officers exercised "maximum restraint, minimum force" despite being "provoked". He denied some media reports that police opened fire. News channel NDTV reported that two people were in hospital with bullet injuries.Fellow student Shree Kumar said that the citizenship law was "against the Muslims. It’s against the ethos of India. It’s against the secular ideas of India."Ashok Swain, a professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University said that the scale of the protests had caught Modi’s government off guard. "This certainly will add pressure on the regime when the economy has failed," Swain said.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/com/cwEr/~4/7Greu1U-MfY

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