AFP :
Mobile internet was cut on Friday in parts of India’s most populous state and thousands of riot police were deployed as authorities readied for fresh protests over a citizenship law seen as anti-Muslim.
Twenty-seven people have died in two weeks of at times violent demonstrations after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government made it easier for non-Muslims from three countries to be naturalised.
Coupled with a mooted citizens register, it has stoked fears including in Washington and the UN rights office about the marginalisation of Muslims who make up 14 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people.
Modi, facing his biggest challenge since storming to power in 2014, said on Sunday that Muslims whose “ancestors are the children of mother India” had nothing to fear.
He has also said that the citizenship law is a humanitarian move, giving refuge 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 by Muslims, with several state governments saying they will refuse to implement the legislation.
Officials in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 20 percent of people are Muslims, said they have suspended mobile internet and SMS services in 21 districts out of 75 including the state capital Lucknow.
Mobile internet was cut on Friday in parts of India’s most populous state and thousands of riot police were deployed as authorities readied for fresh protests over a citizenship law seen as anti-Muslim.
Twenty-seven people have died in two weeks of at times violent demonstrations after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government made it easier for non-Muslims from three countries to be naturalised.
Coupled with a mooted citizens register, it has stoked fears including in Washington and the UN rights office about the marginalisation of Muslims who make up 14 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people.
Modi, facing his biggest challenge since storming to power in 2014, said on Sunday that Muslims whose “ancestors are the children of mother India” had nothing to fear.
He has also said that the citizenship law is a humanitarian move, giving refuge 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 by Muslims, with several state governments saying they will refuse to implement the legislation.
Officials in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 20 percent of people are Muslims, said they have suspended mobile internet and SMS services in 21 districts out of 75 including the state capital Lucknow.
