ISLAMABAD – Mobile internet was cut on Friday in parts of India’s mostpopulous state and thousands of riot police were deployed as authoritiesreadied for fresh protests over a citizenship law seen as anti-Muslim.
Twenty-seven people have died in two weeks of at times violentdemonstrations after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government made iteasier for non-Muslims from three countries to be naturalised.
Coupled with a mooted citizens register, it has stoked fears including inWashington and the UN rights office about the marginalisation of Muslimswho make up 14 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people.
Modi, facing his biggest challenge since storming to power in 2014, said onSunday that Muslims whose “ancestors are the children of mother India” hadnothing to fear.
He has also said that the citizenship law is a humanitarian move, givingrefuge to persecuted religious minorities from Muslim-majority Pakistan,Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
But it has unleashed a wave of protests across the country, and not just byMuslims, with several state governments saying they will refuse toimplement the legislation.
Officials in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 20 percent ofpeople are Muslims, said they have suspended mobile internet and SMSservices in 21 districts out of 75 including the state capital Lucknow.
Access to data on cellphones was only restored in many areas on Tuesdayfollowing a week-long cutoff in a country that activists say is the worldleader in snapping internet access.
The state, home to India’s best-known tourist site the Taj Mahal, witnessedlarge-scale clashes after Muslim prayers last Friday between largelyIslamic protesters and police.
Nineteen people were killed, mostly from gunshot wounds. An eight-year-oldchild was trampled to death in a stampede in the holy city of Varanasi,Modi’s home constituency.
– Thousands detained –
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Heavy-handed police tactics have fuelled anger, with many accusingauthorities of arbitrary force against dissenters.
On Friday thousands of armed policemen were patrolling Muslim-dominatedlocalities across several districts ahead of the weekly congregationalprayers.
The protests in the state, whose chief minister is a Hindu monk from Modi’sright-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, are among the biggest there in decades.
Police in the state have arrested more than 1,000 people and taken morethan 5,000 others into preventive custody, some of them as young as 16according to media reports.
About 200 people have been ordered to pay compensation for damage caused topublic property during the protests, failing which their assets will beconfiscated.
More than 100 people have also been booked over social media posts deemedto be objectionable or misleading, with tens of thousands of messages onTwitter, Facebook and other platforms reported.
Authorities are also keeping a close eye on foreigners with a Norwegiantourist who took part in a protest in the southern state of Kerala told toleave the country, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
This week a German student was also asked to leave after taking part indemonstrations in the southern city of Chennai, according to media reports.
Photos on social media purportedly of the student, named as JakobLindenthal, showed him carrying a placard saying “1933-1945 We have beenthere”, in reference to his country’s Nazi past. -APP/AFP
