Pakistan condemns crackdown on Muslim students in India

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Monday condemned the Indian government for a violent crackdown in New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh on students and activists protesting against India’s new citizenship law, which has been widely seen as anti-Muslim.
Qureshi said a tweet on Monday that he was “concerned about the brutal and indiscriminate use of force by the state on Indian Muslim students of Jamia Millia Islamia & Aligarh Muslim University, protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Bill.”
He cited the use of force as evidence that the Indian PM Narendra Modi’s government “continues to curb and undermine the rights of minorities” in accordance with its “Hindutva supremacist ideology.”
Reuters reported on Monday that protests over the new citizenship law based on religion spread to campuses where students clashed with police. Critics said the Hindu nationalist government was pushing a partisan agenda in conflict with the country’s founding as a secular republic.
Anger with Modi’s government was fueled by allegations of police brutality at Jamia Millia Islamia University on Sunday, when officers entered the campus in the capital New Delhi and fired tear gas to break up a protest. At least 100 people were wounded.
Many international human rights organizations and neutral observers even from within India have characterized the legislation as discriminatory against Muslims and unconstitutional.
“We reiterate that this Indian legislation is premised on a falsehood, both with regard to the alleged decline in non-Muslim population in Pakistan as well as their alleged persecution in the country,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry had said in a statement last week.