Before a new day of protests, the indian authorities have suspended the Internet connection in 21 districts in the State of Uttar Pradesh, in the north of the country. Since last week, this region has recorded 19 deaths in the wake of the violent clashes between security forces and demonstrators protesting against the amendment to the citizenship law that discriminates against muslim citizens without papers. Since the adoption of the legislative reform, the past 11 of December, some 1,100 people have been arrested and more than 5,500 are under preventive detention because of the protests. Given the intensity of the protests in the most populous State in India, the authorities will maintain the disconnection of the Network during the hour of prayer muslim of today, Friday and until late in the afternoon. In Lucknow, the capital, the cuts affect the whole of mobile communication.
“The Internet services have been suspended since Thursday morning and will remain so until today at night to avoid rumors,” he told the Hindustan Times, Satish Ganesh, inspector general of police of Agra, city of Taj Mahal. The police presence has increased throughout the area and several special units to investigate the violence unleashed over the past few days. “We talked with many, mainly muslims, to explain that the CAA [Citizenship Act] does not annul the citizenship of anyone but benefits to minorities”, said the agent Santosh Kumar Singh, from Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh.
The amendment to the citizenship act, allows undocumented immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh seek asylum in India, provided that they have entered the country before 2015, and non-muslims. Although it does not affect the indian muslims, protesters, and even the UN, have called the rule discriminatory. According to activists, the religious minority -170 million indians, according to the 2011 census – is being threatened both by this legislative reform as a review of the National Registration of Citizenship in the State of Assam, which compelled its citizens, many muslim immigrants, to prove their residency with a date before march 24, 1971. 90% of indian muslims are poor and 74% were illiterate, so that their stay would be at risk by not having documents nor be able to ask for asylum.
Since the adoption of the citizenship law, the protests have resulted in violence in Uttar Pradesh and three other northern regions, which are concentrated to half the muslim population of India. Specifically, Uttar Pradesh is the second indian State, after Kashmir (the only region with a muslim majority), which has a greater presence of this religious group. The animosity between these and the hindu majority is compounded by the socio-economic situation of the region, one of the least developed of India and one of the administrations most radical of the conservative and hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), also in the central government.
Muzaffarnagar, district disconnected today and that has killed a person, lived in one of the episodes bloodiest in the recent history of India. In 2013, half a hundred of muslims and scores of hindus were killed and another 50,000 were displaced. Two decades before, the neighboring Ayodya lived a spiral of sectarian violence that occurred 2,000 people were killed when hindu radicals tore down a mosque of the XVI century, under which they believed that there was a hindu temple. A month ago little, the Supreme court of India gave the land on which the building the mosque to the hindus after years of litigation. Then, there was extraordinary security measures by the possible reaction of the muslim community, which accepted the opinion.
