Citizenship law protests are banned as death toll hits 14
NEW DELHI >> Police banned public gatherings in parts of the Indian capital and other cities for a third day Friday and cut internet services to counter growing protests against a new law that critics say marginalizes Muslims. Fourteen people have died so far and more than 4,000 have been detained, officials said.
Thousands of protesters stood inside and on the steps of New Delhi’s Jama Masijd, one of India’s largest mosques, after Friday afternoon prayers. They waved Indian flags and shouted slogans against the government and the citizenship law, which opponents contend threatens India’s secular democracy in favor of a Hindu state.
Police banned a proposed march from the mosque to an area near Parliament and sprayed protesters with water cannon blasts to prevent them from meeting up with more demonstrators about 2½ miles away in central Delhi.
Much of the violence was in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where protesters set fire to police posts and vehicles and hurled rocks at security forces. The death toll rose to 14 after Avanish Awasthi, a spokesman for Uttar Pradesh, said late Friday that six people had died during clashes between demonstrators and police. Most of the detentions also were in Uttar Pradesh, where more than 100 have been arrested and 3,305 detained since Thursday, said state police chief O.P. Singh.
Many of the protesters are angered by a new law that allows Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally to become citizens if they can show they were persecuted because of their religion in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The law does not apply to Muslims.
Critics have slammed it as a violation of the country’s secular constitution. and label it the latest effort by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government to marginalize India’s 200 million Muslims. Modi has defended the law as a humanitarian gesture.