[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 Muslim-majority countries.]
By Joanna
Slater and Niha Masih
 |
|
People
hold placards and shout slogans in Mumbai on Friday during a demonstration
against
a measure that expedites citizenship for migrants who entered the country
illegally
and belong to one of six religions — excluding Islam.
(Francis
Mascarenhas/Reuters)
|
NEW
DELHI — Protests broke out
for a third day in northeastern India over the country's new citizenship law,
forcing the postponement of an upcoming summit between India and Japan.
The citizenship measure, which was approved
by the country's Parliament on Wednesday, 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
Muslim-majority countries.
In India’s northeast — a collection of seven
states that share borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar (also known as Burma) and
China — passage of the bill sparked violent protests in which two people were
killed Thursday and 25 injured by security forces, according to a senior police
official in the state of Assam. Police also detained more than 1,000 people
across the state.
The unrest prompted the cancellation of a
three-day visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was scheduled to
meet with Modi starting Sunday in Guwahati, the largest city in Assam. The
governments said they would reschedule the meeting. The U.S. and British
governments urged their citizens Friday to “exercise caution” if traveling to
India’s northeast.
Many in the region 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 Bengali-speaking
migrants who have crossed a porous border with Bangladesh.
But the scale and ferocity of the
demonstrations against the citizenship law appeared to take local authorities
and the central government by surprise. While the law includes a nod to their
concerns — the migrants are not allowed to settle in certain areas designated
for indigenous people — protesters said the measure was still intolerable.
On Friday, several thousand people gathered
in Guwahati in defiance of an official curfew to conduct a day-long hunger
strike to protest the citizenship act. Tanmoy Das, 22, a university student,
wore a traditional Assamese scarf as well as a placard expressing opposition to
the citizenship law.
“The people of the northeast are different;
our fears are different,” he said. “We don’t want any Bangladeshis.”
The protest leaders said that this was just
the start. “The movement in Assam will intensify, and the legal fight against
[the citizenship act] will continue,” said Lurin Jyoti Gogoi, general secretary
of the All Assam Students’ Union.
Thousands of people also marched Friday 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.
Earlier, protests also erupted in other parts
of Assam, as well as the states of Tripura, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and
Arunachal Pradesh. Some burned vehicles and threw stones. Flights were
canceled, a railway station was torched and offices of political parties
attacked.
“Never have the people of the Northeast felt
so helpless,” wrote Patricia Mukhim, editor of the Shillong Times. “As small
tribes struggling to fit into a nation, the only safety valve we had up until
now was the Indian Constitution.”
To quell the protests, authorities shut down
mobile and broadband Internet connections and called for help from the Indian
army. They imposed curfews that restricted movement, although such measures
were relaxed in certain areas Friday. Protests also spread across the country.
There were demonstrations against the new law Friday in New Delhi, Kolkata and
Aligarh.
Modi tried to calm the furor in the
northeast. “I want to assure my brothers and sisters of Assam that they have
nothing to worry,” he wrote Thursday. The government is “totally committed” to
safeguarding the “political, linguistic, cultural and land rights of the
Assamese.”
Modi accused the opposition Congress party of
spreading fear and said Indian citizens should not be alarmed by the new
citizenship law, which focuses on migrants.
But Modi’s second-in-command, Home Affairs
Minister Amit Shah, has repeatedly stated that the new law is a precursor to
carrying out a nationwide registry of citizens. The registry would be modeled
on an exercise carried out in Assam, where residents were forced to provide
documents going back decades. Nearly 2 million people were left off the final
list and risk becoming stateless or being deported.
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