Selasa, 17 Desember 2019

Why are so many Indians protesting against the citizenship law? - Al Jazeera English

It has been a week of violent protests across India over a controversial "anti-Muslim" citizenship law, which critics say violates the country's secular constitution.

The law passed last week aims to grant citizenship to "persecuted" Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians - and not Muslims - who arrived in India before December 31, 2014, from Bangladesh, Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The opposition parties argue the law is discriminatory - even the United Nations has said so - and singles out nearly 15 percent Muslim minority among India's 1.3 billion people.

Although the law has triggered protests across the country, the protesters have different reasons to take to the streets. Here are the three main reasons:

Anger against 'foreign migrants'

In the northeastern state of Assam, which shares borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar and China, protesters in the main city of Guwahati and other areas hit the streets fearing the new law will encourage Hindus from Bangladesh to settle in the region.

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The citizenship law protests began in Assam, where six people have died so far, four of them in police firing as mobs torched buildings and train stations.

Troops were deployed in the state and mobile internet had to be suspended in at least 10 districts. The ban has now been lifted, though the state remains tense.

Assamese say the citizenship law allowing Hindus from Bangladesh to settle there will burden resources and threaten their language, culture and tradition.

In Assam, the anger over the citizenship law follows a contentious National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise that was intended to weed out undocumented immigrants mainly from Bangladesh.

Nearly 2 million people were excluded from the NRC list, who now face a long and arduous legal process to prove their citizenship or be detained or deported.

Residents now fear the new citizenship law will provide protection to Bengali-speaking Hindus left off Assam's NRC list and leave Bengali-speaking Muslim migrants vulnerable to deportation.

Tripura, another northeastern state, also witnessed protests against the citizenship law.

200 million Muslims fear marginalisation

The second reason why there is deep resentment and anger against the citizenship law, especially among Muslim students, is because the legislation is seen as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's agenda to marginalise India's 200 million Muslims.

India's Home Minister Amit Shah has pledged to apply the NRC process nationwide to rid India of "infiltrators" and "termites" as a follow-up to the citizenship legislation, triggering widespread fears among Indian Muslims of being targeted and harassed by the Hindu nationalist government.

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Since the law was passed on December 12, thousands of Muslims across India hit the streets, responding to calls made by Muslim and civil society groups against the government's move.

At New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) and Uttar Pradesh state's Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) - India's largest minority institution situated 130km (81 miles) from the Indian capital - thousands of students have been agitating against the law.

On Sunday, in near-simultaneous attacks, police in riot gear stormed into the two campuses, firing tear gas shells and launching a baton charge on the protesting students. More than 100 students were wounded in the police action, some critically.

At JMI, multiple videos shot by students showed police smashing their way into the main library and mosque as hundreds of terrified students barricaded doors and hid inside bathrooms to protect themselves.

Various media outlets, including The Washington Post, reported on Monday that at least two JMI demonstrators were taken to hospitals with bullet wounds. 

Dozens of students were detained despite their injury and taken to police stations, triggering a major night-long demonstration outside the headquarters of the Delhi police.

"India's constitution is against any such law that discriminates on the basis religion, caste, creed or gender. This [citizenship law] is a clear attempt to declare Muslims as second-class citizens," Anupam Tiwari, a 21-year-old JMI student, told Al Jazeera.

Solidarity protests across India

A third and final form of protests essentially grew out of anger among university students and teachers over the attacks on JMI and AMU.

As soon as photos and videos shot by students under siege at JMI and AMU spread on social media, a rash of protests broke out in universities and colleges in other parts of India, including JMI.

Thousands of students marched on their campuses or on the streets on Monday in solidarity with JMI and AMU students, and to uphold the secular principles of the Indian constitution.

Even the end of the academic session did not deter many students as they forced the cancellation of examinations in several universities and colleges, according to Indian media reports.

Solidarity protests are being organised in nearly two dozen cities across India, including New Delhi, the financial hub of Mumbai, Ahmedabad in Gujarat state and Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.

A number of civil society organisations and individuals have also joined the protests in these cities, in what has become the biggest political challenge for Prime Minister Modi's government since it came to power nearly six years ago.

India protests spread across universities

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2019-12-17 12:36:00Z
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Pope abolishes 'pontifical secret' in clergy sex abuse cases - The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has abolished the “pontifical secret” used in clergy sexual abuse cases, after mounting criticism that the high degree of confidentiality has been used to protect pedophiles, silence victims and keep law enforcement from investigating crimes.

In a new document, Francis decreed that information in abuse cases must be protected by church leaders to ensure its “security, integrity and confidentiality.” But he said “pontifical secret” no longer applies to abuse-related accusations, trials and decisions under the Catholic Church’s canon law.

The Vatican’s leading sex crimes investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, called the reform an “epochal decision” that will facilitate coordination with civil law enforcement and open up lines of communication with victims.

While documentation from the church’s in-house legal proceedings will still not become public, Scicluna said, the reform now removes any excuse to not cooperate with legitimate legal requests from civil law enforcement authorities.

Prominent Irish survivor Marie Collins said the reform was “excellent news” that abuse survivors and their advocates had been pressing for. “At last a real and positive change,” she tweeted.

Francis also raised from 14 to 18 the cutoff age below which the Vatican considers pornographic images to be child pornography.

The new laws were issued Tuesday, Francis’ 83rd birthday, as he struggles to respond to the global explosion of the abuse scandal, his own missteps and demands for greater transparency and accountability from victims, law enforcement and ordinary Catholics alike.

The new norms are the latest amendment to the Catholic Church’s in-house canon law — a parallel legal code that metes out ecclesial justice for crimes against the faith — in this case relating to the sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable people by priests, bishops or cardinals. In this legal system, the worst punishment a priest can incur is being defrocked, or dismissed from the clerical state.

Pope Benedict XVI had decreed in 2001 that these cases must be dealt with under “pontifical secret,” the highest form of secrecy in the church. The Vatican had long insisted that such confidentiality was necessary to protect the privacy of the victim, the reputation of the accused and the integrity of the canonical process.

However, such secrecy also served to keep the scandal hidden, prevent law enforcement from accessing documents and silence victims, many of whom often believed that “pontifical secret” prevented them from going to the police to report their priestly abusers.

While the Vatican has long tried to insist this was not the case, it also never mandated that bishops and religious superiors report sex crimes to police, and in the past has encouraged bishops not to do so.

According to the new instruction, which was signed by the Vatican secretary of state but authorized by the pope, the Vatican still doesn’t mandate reporting the crimes to police, saying religious superiors are obliged to do so where civil reporting laws require it.

But it goes further than the Vatican has gone before, saying: “Office confidentiality shall not prevent the fulfillment of the obligations laid down in all places by civil laws, including any reporting obligations, and the execution of enforceable requests of civil judicial authorities.”

The Vatican has been under increasing pressure to cooperate more with law enforcement, and its failure to do so has resulted in unprecedented raids in recent years on diocesan chanceries by police from Belgium to Texas and Chile.

But even under the penalty of subpoenas and raids, bishops have sometimes felt compelled to withhold canonical proceedings given the “pontifical secret,” unless given permission to hand documents over by the Vatican. The new law makes that explicit permission no longer required.

“The freedom of information to statutory authorities and to victims is something that is being facilitated by this new law,” Scicluna told Vatican media.

The Vatican in May issued another law explicitly saying victims cannot be silenced and have a right to learn the outcome of canonical trials. The new document repeats that, and expands the point by saying not only the victim, but any witnesses or the person who lodged the accusation cannot be compelled to silence.

Individual scandals, national inquiries, grand jury investigations, U.N. denunciations and increasingly costly civil litigation have devastated the Catholic hierarchy’s credibility across the globe, and Francis’ own failures and missteps have emboldened his critics.

In February, he summoned the presidents of bishops conferences from around the globe to a four-day summit on preventing abuse, where several speakers called for a reform of the pontifical secret. Francis himself said he intended to raise the age for which pornography was considered child porn.

The Vatican’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, said the new law is a “historical” follow-up to the February summit and a sign of openness and transparency.

“The breadth of Pope Francis’ decision is evident: the well-being of children and young people must always come before any protection of a secret, even the ‘’pontifical secret,’” he said in a statement.

Also Tuesday, Francis accepted the resignation of the Vatican’s ambassador to France, Archbishop Luigi Ventura, who is accused of making unwanted sexual advances to young men.

Ventura turned 75 last week, the mandatory retirement age for bishops, but the fact that his resignation was announced on the same day as Francis’ abuse reforms didn’t seem to be a coincidence.

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2019-12-17 11:11:28Z
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Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf sentenced to death for high treason - CNN

A three-member special court in Islamabad on Tuesday convicted Musharraf of violating the constitution by unlawfully declaring emergency rule while he was in power, in a case that had been pending since 2013.
The 76-year-old former leader, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for more than three years, has the option to appeal the verdict.
Musharraf seized power in a military coup in 1999 and ruled Pakistan as President until 2008.
He was indicted in 2014 on a total of five charges, including three counts of subverting, suspending and changing the country's constitution, firing Pakistan's chief justice, and imposing emergency rule.
It's the first time in Pakistan's history that an army chief has been tried and found guilty of treason. Under Pakistan's constitution, high treason is a crime that carries the death penalty or life imprisonment.
The special court ruled on the death sentence by a two to one majority, with one of the three judges not backing the death sentence but agreeing on a conviction.
Musharraf has been living in Dubai since 2016 after Pakistan's Supreme Court lifted a travel ban allowing him to leave the country to seek medical treatment. From his hospital bed in Dubai earlier this month, the former leader said in a video statement that he was innocent and the treason case was "baseless."

Web of court cases

Musharraf earlier went into exile in 2008, returning to Pakistan in 2013 with the aim of running in the country's national elections. But his plans unraveled as he became entangled in a web of court cases relating to his time in power.
In 2007, Musharraf declared a state of emergency, suspended Pakistan's constitution, replaced the chief judge and blacked out independent TV outlets.
Musharraf said he did so to stabilize the country and to fight rising Islamist extremism. The action drew sharp criticism from the United States and democracy advocates. Pakistanis openly called for his removal.
Under pressure from the West, Musharraf later lifted the state of emergency and called elections in which his party fared badly.
Musharraf stepped down in August 2008 after the governing coalition began taking steps to impeach him. Prosecutors say Musharraf violated Pakistan's constitution by imposing the state of emergency.

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2019-12-17 09:46:00Z
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Why Are People Protesting in India? - The New York Times

A wave of protests against a new citizenship law has broken out in cities across India, as demonstrators fear it could endanger the nation’s Muslim minority and chip away at the government’s secular identity.

The unrest has spread to more than a dozen cities, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has responded by deploying troops, enacting a curfew and shutting down the internet. Violent police confrontations have followed; the police fatally shot several young men in Assam State, beat unarmed students with wooden poles in New Delhi, and used tear gas and batons to disperse protests elsewhere.

The citizenship law, which passed both houses of Parliament last week, was seen by critics as part of Mr. Modi’s broader push to transform India into a place where being Indian is synonymous with being Hindu. India, with a population of 1.3 billion, is about 80 percent Hindu and about 14 percent Muslim.

The law, paired with a citizenship test that has left nearly two million people in danger of being declared stateless, has Indian Muslims fearing they are being targeted at a time when there has been a surge of anti-Muslim sentiment.

Here is the background to understand what is happening.

The law, called the Citizenship Amendment Act, applies a religious test to whether illegal migrants from neighboring countries can be fast-tracked for Indian citizenship. It would apply to Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsees and Jains — but not Muslims.

Government officials have said the law is intended to protect persecuted religious minorities in some neighboring countries. But it would not protect persecuted Muslims, including the Rohingya in neighboring Myanmar.

All 33 million residents of Assam, a state bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh, had to provide documentary evidence, such as a property deed or a birth certificate, showing that they or their ancestors lived in India before 1971. Those who could not would be declared foreign migrants, at risk of being sent to huge new detention camps.

More than two million people, many of them Muslims, failed to pass the test and could end up stateless. The governing party of Mr. Modi has vowed to extend the test to other parts of India.

The government has said the test was intended to root out undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. India’s home minister, Amit Shah, has repeatedly referred to these migrants as “termites.”

Many of India’s roughly 200 million Muslims see the new citizenship law as blatantly anti-Muslim. Constitutional scholars say that it is the first time India has passed a law that treats people differently based on their religion, and that it flies in the face of the country’s commitment to equality.

Some worry that the citizenship test and the new citizenship law could be used in tandem to strip them of rights they’ve held for decades and send them off to detention camps. They could be declared foreign migrants by failing the citizenship test, then denied protection from the new citizenship law because it doesn’t include Muslims.

There’s growing concern among progressives and Indians of other faiths that Mr. Modi is trying to dismantle India’s secular traditions and turn the country into a religious state as a homeland for Hindus. Many of Mr. Modi’s supporters among the Hindu right support the nationalist push, and Mr. Modi himself comes from an ideological background that emphasizes Hindu supremacy. But there are many Hindus who want to keep India secular, as India’s founders, such as Mohandas K. Gandhi, had wanted.

In Assam, protests were led by Hindus who feared that the citizenship law could allow migrants to settle there and take their land. In this state, it’s not so much a rivalry between Hindus and Muslims. It’s more a case of locals versus foreigners. Many of the indigenous Assamese don’t want any new migrants, no matter what religion they subscribe to.

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2019-12-17 09:01:00Z
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The Citizenship law causing nationwide protests in India - BBC News - BBC News

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2019-12-17 07:42:48Z
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Senin, 16 Desember 2019

General election 2019: Boris Johnson's Brexit bill planned for Friday - BBC News

The government plans to ask MPs to vote on Boris Johnson's Brexit bill on Friday, Downing Street has said.

The PM's spokesman said the government planned to start the process in Parliament before Christmas and will do so "in discussion with the Speaker".

The withdrawal agreement bill is the legislation that will enable Brexit to happen - the UK is due to leave the EU on 31 January.

It comes as the PM prepares to address his new MPs in Westminster later.

Many of the 109 new Conservative MPs won in areas traditionally held by Labour in Thursday's election, which saw the Conservatives gain an 80-seat majority.

Mr Johnson is also expected to carry out a mini cabinet reshuffle.

He needs to fill posts made vacant by those who stood down ahead of the general election, including the culture and Welsh secretary posts.

The prime minister has also cleared a parliamentary report into alleged Russian interference in UK democracy for publication.

The Queen will formally open Parliament on Thursday when she sets out the government's legislative programme.

On Monday, the prime minister's official spokesman told a Westminster briefing: "We plan to start the process [of the withdrawal agreement bill] before Christmas and will do so in the proper constitutional way in discussion with the Speaker."

Asked if the legislation would be identical to that introduced in the last Parliament, the spokesman said: "You will have to wait for it to be published but it will reflect the agreement that we made with the EU on our withdrawal."

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With the large majority, the bill is expected to pass through Parliament in time to meet Boris Johnson's promise for the UK to leave the EU on 31 January.

Mr Johnson then has to negotiate a new trade agreement with the EU and have it ratified before the end of the post-Brexit transition period that ends on 31 December 2020. He has repeatedly said that the transition period will not be extended.

The Queen's Speech is also expected to include legislation linked to pledges made during the election campaign - most notably a guarantee on NHS funding.

The prime minister's spokesman has also said Mr Johnson has "carefully considered" a report from the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee into alleged Russian interference in UK democracy.

"He is content publication would not prejudice the functions of those bodies that safeguard our national security," the spokesman said.

"Publication will be a matter for the new ISC in due course."

Elsewhere, moves to get the Northern Ireland government at Stormont up and running again are also expected, with talks resuming on Monday.

New Conservative MPs have been posting pictures of themselves on their first day including the members for Bishop Auckland and Stoke-on-Trent North - Dehenna Davison and Jonathan Gullis.

Meanwhile, the fallout from Labour's defeat continues.

Labour's general secretary says party officials are likely to meet early in the new year to agree the timetable for replacing Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

Mr Corbyn wants the process to begin "swiftly", Jennie Formby said, so his successor can be in place by the end of March.

She has written to members of Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) recommending a provisional date of 6 January for the meeting, with the process beginning the following day.

Both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell said on Sunday that they took the blame for Labour's "catastrophic" defeat in Thursday's election.

Speaking to the Today programme, shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald accused the BBC of having "played your part" in Mr Corbyn's defeat and said the corporation needed to "have a look in the mirror".

Meanwhile, MP Stephen Kinnock told BBC Breakfast the main problems were "weak and incompetent leadership" as well as the decision to support another Brexit referendum and a "Christmas wishlist" manifesto.

The race for their replacements has already begun, with Wigan MP Lisa Nandy saying for the first time she was "seriously thinking about" running.

Other possible contenders are shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner, Jess Phillips, who is an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn, and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry.

A new intake of 47 SNP MPs will also be taking their seats on Tuesday.

Leader Nicola Sturgeon has insisted this number gives her a mandate for a second referendum on Scottish independence - something the prime minster has told her he remains opposed to.

She said the Conservatives, who lost seven of their 13 seats in Scotland, had been "defeated comprehensively" and that the new MPs would continue to press for independence.

What will happen this week?

Tuesday

Proceedings begin when MPs gather for their first duty: to elect the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who replaced John Bercow in November. Technically, MPs can hold a vote on this motion but this has never happened in practice.

Later in the day, the Speaker will begin the process of swearing in MPs, who are required to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown, or, if they object to this, a solemn affirmation. Those who speak or vote without having done so are deprived of their seat "as if they were dead" under the Parliamentary Oaths Act of 1866.

Two to three days are usually set aside for this process.

Thursday

The state opening of Parliament. The Queen's Speech is the centrepiece of this, when she will read a speech written by ministers setting out the government's programme of legislation for the parliamentary session. A couple of hours after the speech is delivered, MPs will begin debating its contents - a process which usually takes days.

Friday

Depending on how rapidly Boris Johnson wants to move, the debate on the Queen's Speech could continue into Friday.

The government will introduce the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - the legislation that will implement Brexit - to Parliament.

MPs in the previous Parliament backed Boris Johnson's bill at its first stage but rejected his plan to fast-track the legislation through Parliament in three days in order to leave the EU by the then 31 October Brexit deadline.

After the debate on the Queen's Speech is concluded, MPs will vote on whether to approve it. Not since 1924 has a government's Queen Speech been defeated.

Read more from the BBC's parliamentary correspondent, Mark D'Arcy

Find a constituency

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2019-12-16 12:43:20Z
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Protests Spread Across India Over Divisive Citizenship Bill - The New York Times

NEW DELHI — The Indian police cracked down heavily on protesting students Sunday night, blasting tear gas into a library and beating up dozens of young people as violent demonstrations against a contentious citizenship bill spread across the country.

Last week, the Indian Parliament passed a measure that would give special treatment to Hindu and other non-Muslim migrants in India, which many critics said was blatantly discriminatory and a blow to India’s founding as a secular democracy.

The legislation is a core piece of a Hindu-centric agenda pursued by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, and many analysts predicted trouble. India’s large Muslim minority, around 200 million people, has become increasingly desperate and angry, certain that many of Mr. Modi’s recent initiatives are intended to marginalize them.

Protests immediately broke out in northeastern India, where several demonstrators were killed, and spread to Bhopal, Jaipur, Ladakh and Kolkata. Cars, buses and railway stations have been set on fire in an explosion of anti-government feeling.

On Sunday, when students at Jamia Millia Islamia University, a primarily Muslim university in New Delhi, organized a large demonstration, which many witnesses said started out peacefully, the police responded with force.

Videos widely circulated on social media show officers beating students with wooden sticks, smashing some on their heads even after they had been knocked down. In one video, a group of female students tries to rescue a young man from the grasp of the police. A squad of officers in riot gear tears him away and knocks him down with heavy blows. Even after the women form a protective circle around the downed student, officers can be seen trying to jab the young man with their wooden poles.

Dozen of students were hospitalized, some with broken bones, according to news media reports. Some witnesses said that gangs of older men appeared on campus to battle students, possibly an echo of past episodes of organized Hindu-Muslim clashes. Some students raced to seek shelter in a library where they were tear-gassed by the police.

Lokesh Devraj, a product designer who lives near the university, said he exited a metro station on Sunday afternoon and saw a stampede of terrified university students running toward him as the police charged, sticks in hand, beating at whatever crush of people they could find. The students did not resist, Mr. Devraj said, and had no sticks or stones in their hands.

A police officer ran at Mr. Devraj and his 65-year-old father, he said, waving a baton in his clenched fist. Mr. Devraj shielded his father from the blows and was beaten himself, he said. The police officer backed off only after Mr. Devraj explained that he was simply a resident trying to return home.

India, at around 80 percent Hindu and 14 percent Muslim, has a history of explosions of religious violence. With this citizenship measure, the Modi government has been pushing legislation guaranteed to create anger and despair in India’s minority Muslim community.

It comes against a steady drumbeat of anti-Muslim moves by Mr. Modi’s government and its allies across India’s states including: changing historic place names from Muslim names to Hindu ones; editing government-issued textbooks to remove mentions of historic Muslim rulers; and stripping away statehood from what was India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, and indefinitely incarcerating hundreds of Kashmiris.

The new citizenship legislation, called the Citizenship Amendment Bill, expedites Indian citizenship for migrants from some of India’s neighboring countries if they are Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Parsee or Jain. Only one major religion in South Asia was conspicuously left off: Islam.

The legislation, which passed through both houses of Parliament and now awaits the president’s signature, which is expected, follows hand in hand with a divisive citizenship test conducted this summer in one state in northern India and possibly soon to be expanded nationwide.

All residents of the state of Assam, along the Bangladesh border, had to produce documentary proof that they or their ancestors had lived in India since 1971. Around two million of Assam’s population of 33 million — a mix of Hindus and Muslims — failed to pass the test, and these people now risk being rendered stateless. Huge new prisons are being built to incarcerate anyone determined to be an illegal immigrant.

Amit Shah, India’s powerful home minister and Mr. Modi’s right-hand man, has vowed to bring citizenship tests nationwide. A widespread belief is that the Indian government will use both these measures — the citizenship tests and the new citizenship legislation — to render millions of Muslims who have been living in India for generations stateless.

International organizations have sharply criticized the direction India is headed.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called the new bill “fundamentally discriminatory.”

And the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal body, called the measure a “dangerous turn in the wrong direction” and said that the United States should consider sanctions against India if the bill passes.

Maria Abi-Habib contributed from New Delhi.

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2019-12-16 07:54:00Z
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