Hundreds defy ban on protests against Indian citizenship law

[December 19, 2019]  By Devjyot Ghoshal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Hundreds of Indians held for defying a ban on demonstrating against a controversial new citizenship law continued their protest in police detention on Thursday.

Public anger over the new law widely considered to be discriminatory is building across the country, with marches and rallies planned despite bans on public gatherings in several areas, raising the possibility of further violence and arrests.

The government ban has been imposed in parts of the capital New Delhi, and throughout the states of Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.

Police detained hundreds of people in Delhi and the southern city of Bengaluru on Thursday and shut down the internet in some places as protests entered a second week over a law that critics say undermines India's secular constitution.

In the eastern state of Bihar, a senior police official said more than 200 protesters detained in a police campus in Patna started chanting slogans against the law.

"We have detained the protesters but they cannot be silenced and we don't want to threaten or use force to stop them," said senior police officer Dhiraj Sinha.

FLIGHTS CANCELED

Airline IndiGO canceled 19 flights from Delhi as road traffic disruption in the capital affected crew availability, an airport official said.

A further 16 flights were delayed, a number of metro stations in Delhi were shut, as protests caused massive traffic disruption in the capital.

A senior home ministry official said maintaining law and order was a state responsibility but reserve forces were ready to provide immediate assistance.

Rights group Amnesty International has asked federal and state governments to stop the crackdown on peaceful protests against what it called a "discriminatory" citizenship law.

Defying the bans, protesters held rallies at Delhi's historic Red Fort and a town hall in Bengaluru, but police rounded up people in the vanguard of those demonstrations as they tried to get underway.

In Bengaluru, Ramchandra Guha, a respected historian and intellectual, was taken away by police along with several other professors, according to an aide.

"I am protesting non-violently, but look they are stopping us," said Guha.

Police said they had detained around 200 people in the city, where protest organizers said thousands attended four demonstrations on Thursday.

Demonstrator display placards and shout slogans during a protest against a new citizenship law, in New Delhi, India, December 19, 2019. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis

"We are here to peacefully demonstrate against this law," Mohammed Maz, a bearded middle-aged protester, told Reuters as he was led away by police in Delhi.

CONTROVERSIAL LAW

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dug his heels in over the law that lays out a path for people from minority religions in neighboring Muslim countries - Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan - who had settled in India before 2015 to obtain Indian citizenship.

Opponents of the law say the exclusion of Muslims betrays a deep-seated bias against the community, which makes up 14% of India's population, and that the law is the latest move by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to marginalize them.

Train stations around Red Fort were shut to prevent protesters joining the rally, and authorities also ordered mobile carriers to suspend internet services in some parts of the capital.

"As per the directive received from the government, data services are stopped at a few locations," Vodafone Idea's customer care tweeted in response to a user's question about its network in Delhi.

On Sunday, police stormed New Delhi's Jamia Millia University, firing tear gas and wielding batons to break up a protest by hundreds of students, injuring scores.

During a violent protest in another part of the capital this week, protesters, some masked, fought pitched battles with police.

Anger against Modi's government has burst into the open after a series of moves that were seen as advancing a Hindu-first agenda in a country that has long celebrated its diversity and secular constitution.

(Additional reporting by Chandini Monappa and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru, Neha Dasgupta, Aditi Shah in New Delhi, Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow, Zarir Hussain in Guwahati, Rupam Jain in Mumbai, Writing by Aftab Ahmed, Sanjeev Miglani and Rupam Jain; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Giles Elgood)

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