NEW DELHI: Six more protesters died in India in fresh clashes between police and demonstrators, taking the death toll to 15 in more than a week of unrest as people were on streets against the controversial legislation of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The law, which makes it easier for persecuted minorities from three neighbouring countries to gain citizenship, but not if they are Muslim, has stoked fears Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to remould the world’s biggest democracy India as a Hindu nation, which he denies.
Fresh clashes claims six lives and the latest deaths, in northern Uttar Pradesh where almost 20 per cent of the state’s 200-million population are Muslim, followed the loss of three lives when police opened fire on protesters in the northern city of Lucknow and the southern city of Mangalore.
Four of the demonstrators — two from Meerut and two from neighbouring Muzaffarnagar, both in Uttar Pradesh — died Friday from “gunshot wounds”, Meerut chief medical officer Rajkumar told media.
Another demonstrator died of a gunshot wound in Bijnor district while the cause of the sixth death in Firozabad city was not yet known, police officials said.
In the heart of India’s capital demonstrators held a sit-in protest at the Delhi Gate in the Old Delhi district, then marched to the country’s biggest mosque Jama Masjid in the afternoon. The protesters later returned to Delhi Gate, where they clashed with baton-wielding police who deployed a water cannon to disperse the crowd.
The marchers, many chanting anti-Modi slogans, threw rocks at police in the street battle. At least one car was set on fire, and demonstrators bleeding from their heads and mouths during the clashes. “All the people here, be it those who are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian — they are all out on the streets,” Tanvi Gudiya at another Delhi rally in a Muslim neighbourhood after Friday prayers.
“So doesn’t it affect Modi at all? Does Modi not like anyone? Why is he becoming like Hitler?” In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, there were new clashes between security forces and protesters in Vadodara city, a day after battles in the largest city Ahmedabad left 20 policemen and 10 locals injured.
Authorities have scrambled to contain the situation, imposing emergency laws, blocking internet access, and shutting down shops and restaurants in sensitive pockets across the country.
Amid the protests, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Karnataka minister Chikkamagaravalli Thimme Gowda Ravi warned of a ‘Godhra-like’ situation if the Hindu majority of the state lost patience with the demonstrating people.
Opposition parties in India, as well as international rights groups, have raised concerns about the law and the growing protests. Congress party president Sonia Gandhi on Friday slammed Modi’s Hindu-nationalist BJP, saying it showed “utter disregard for people´s voices and chosen to use brute force to suppress dissent”. “This is unacceptable in a democracy,” she added in a video posted on Twitter.
West Bengal state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while addressing a rally of more than 20,000 people in the state capital Kolkata Friday, said she “will not allow the federal government to implement” the law.
“India is burning. This is time for waking up,” she said, urging people to unite behind her movement. More than 200 Christian leaders in India issued a joint statement Friday saying the laws passed since the BJP was re-elected in May have led “to the collapse of the democratic institutions of India… carefully and painstakingly built by enlightened leaders over the last seven decades”.
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