Amid citizenship law outcry, Indian authorities ban protests

NEW DELHI (AP) — Police banned public gatherings in parts of the Indian capital and other cities for a third day Friday and cut internet services to try to stop growing protests against a new citizenship law that have left eight people dead and more than 4,000 others detained.

Thousands of protesters stood inside and on the steps of New Delhi’s Jama Masijd, one of India’s largest mosques, after Friday afternoon prayers, waving Indian flags and shouting slogans against the government and the citizenship law, which critics say threatens India’s secular democracy in favour of a Hindu state.

Police had banned a proposed march from the mosque to an area near India’s Parliament, and a large number of officers were waiting outside the mosque.

Late Friday, police sprayed protesters with a water cannon to keep them from marching toward a monument in Central Delhi where protests have been converging, about four kilometres away.

About 10,000 people protested outside New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University, which was the site of weekend clashes in which students accused police of using excessive force that sent dozens to hospitals.

They collected signatures for a petition demanding the new law be scrapped.

Violence erupted in several towns in northern Uttar Pradesh state where protesters set some police posts and vehicles on fire and hurled rocks at security forces. Police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse the protesters in Muzzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Firozabad and Gorakhpur.

State police chief O.P. Singh said more than 100 people had been arrested and 3,305 had been detained since Thursday.

The protests have targeted the new citizenship law, which applies to Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally but can demonstrate religious persecution in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It does not apply to Muslims.

Critics say it’s a violation of the country’s secular constitution and the latest effort by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government to marginalise India’s 200 million Muslims.

Modi has defended it as a humanitarian gesture.

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