Citizenship law unrest spreading
Protests broke out for a third day in northeastern India yesterday over the country’s new citizenship law, forcing the postponement of an upcoming summit between India and Japan.
The law, approved by parliament on Thursday, makes religion a criterion for nationality for the first time. It creates an expedited path to citizenship for migrants who entered the country illegally and belong to one of six religions – excluding Islam.
Opponents say the law is discriminatory and violates India’s constitution. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended the measure, which is limited to migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, as an effort to help persecuted religious minorities from those Muslimmajority countries.
In the northeast, the bill’s passage sparked violent protests in which two people were killed by security forces. Police also detained more than 1000 people across Assam state.
The unrest prompted the cancellation yesterday of a three-day visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was scheduled to meet Modi starting tomorrow.
Many in the northeast see the law as a threat to their indigenous cultures and languages because it allows migrants who arrived in India before 2014 to become citizens. In Assam, the region’s biggest state, tensions have existed for years between
Assamese speakers and Bengalispeaking migrants who have crossed a porous border with Bangladesh.
Several thousand people gathered in Guwahati yesterday, in defiance of an official curfew, to conduct a day-long hunger strike to protest the citizenship act.
Thousands of people also marched in Shillong, capital of the state of Meghalaya. Security forces fired tear gas and charged the crowd while swinging batons, injuring at least 60 protesters.
Protests also erupted in other parts of Assam, as well as the states of Tripura, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. Some demonstrators burned vehicles and threw stones. Flights were cancelled, a railway station was torched, and the offices of political parties were attacked.
To quell the protests, authorities have shut down mobile and broadband internet connections and imposed curfews, and have called for help from the Indian army.
The protests have spread across the country, with demonstrations yesterday in Delhi, Kolkata and Aligarh.
Modi’s second-in-command, Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, has repeatedly stated that the new citizenship law is a precursor to carrying out a nationwide registry of citizens. This would be modelled on an exercise carried out in Assam, where nearly 2 million people were left off the final list and risk becoming stateless or being deported.