SC delays hearing citizenship law pleas

India rejects final death sentence appeal in 2012 gang rape

NEW DELHI, Dec 18, (AP): India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed hearing pleas challenging the constitutionality of a new citizenship law that has sparked opposition and massive protests across the country. The court said it would consider the pleas on Jan 22.

Protests and widespread condemnation have been growing against the Citizenship Amendment Act, with demonstrations erupting in India over the last week.

The new law applies to Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally but can demonstrate religious persecution in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It does not apply to Muslims.

Critics say that the new law is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government’s agenda to marginalize India’s 200 million Muslims, and that it goes against the spirit of the country’s secular constitution. Modi has defended it as a humanitarian gesture.

The law’s passage last week follows a contentious process in northeastern India’s Assam state intended to weed out people who entered the country illegally known as the National Register

strations in Hong Kong. (AP)

US opposes lifting sanctions:

The United States said Tuesday that it opposes a draft resolution proposed by China and Russia that would terminate UN sanctions on key North Korean exports, calling the measure “premature” at a time when Pyongyang is threatening to conduct “an escalated provocation” and is refusing to meet with US officials to discuss denuclearization. of Citizens, or NRC. Nearly 2 million people in Assam were excluded from the list, about half Hindu and half Muslim, and have been asked to prove their citizenship or else be considered foreign. India is building a detention center for some of the tens of thousands of people the courts are expected to ultimately determine have entered illegally. Modi’s home minister, Amit Shah, has pledged to roll out the exercise nationwide.

Fear

Some Indian Muslims fear it’s a means by which Hindu nationalists can put them in detention or deport them from the country.

“Overthrow NRC!” protesters chanted Wednesday outside New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University.

The citizen law was also passed as an unprecedented crackdown continued in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority area, after the region was stripped of special constitutional protections and its statehood in August. Since then, movement and communications have been restricted in the region.

Students have led a week of protests since the law’s passage, including at predominantly Muslim Jamia Millia University, where a march on Sunday descended into chaos when demonstrators set three buses ablaze. Police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. Video showed officers chasing unarmed protesters and beating them with sticks.

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India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the final appeal of one of the four men sentenced to death for the 2012 fatal gang rape of a woman on a moving bus in New Delhi, paving the way for the four to be hanged.

The gruesome case made international headlines and exposed the scope of sexual violence against women in India, prompting lawmakers to stiffen penalties in rape cases.

The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student whom Indian media dubbed “Nirbhaya,” or “Fearless,” because Indian law prohibits rape victims from being identified, was heading home with a male friend from a movie theater when six men lured them onto a bus.

The US State Department said President Donald Trump “remains committed to making progress toward commitments” he made with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their first summit in Singapore in June 2018 on transforming relations between the two countries, building lasting peace and ensuring complete denuclearization.

A State Department statement said the US remains committed to diplomacy to make progress toward these goals, but it “cannot do this alone.” (AP)