NEW DELHI: Pakistan on Thursday slammed the Indian government’s move to implement the 2019 controversial citizenship law, saying the discriminatory legislation “further expose the sinister agenda” of the Modi-led regime.
India on Monday moved to implement the controversial law dubbed as discriminating against Muslims, weeks before PM Modi seeks a rare third term for his Hindu nationalist government.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants Indian nationality to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jaains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India due to religious “persecution from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before December 31, 2014”.
Modi’s government did not implement the law following its December 2019 enactment as protests and sectarian violence broke out in New Delhi and elsewhere.
Scores were killed and hundreds injured during days of clashes.
“Yes, we have seen the reports on notification of certain news pursuant to the Indian Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 and the ugly debate that is currently taking place in India with regards to Mus-lims, minorities and immigrants,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zehra Baloch said at a weekly press briefing.
The spokesperson said legislation and relevant rules are discriminatory in nature as they differentiate amongst people on the basis of their faith.
These regulations and laws are premised on a false assumption that minorities are being persecuted in Muslim countries of the region and the facade of India being a safe haven for minorities, she said.
“The rising wave of Hindutva under the BJP government has led to rapid political, economic and social victimisation of Muslims and other religious and social minorities, including Dalits.”
The FO spokesperson added: “The discriminatory steps further expose the sinister agenda of trans-forming India into a Hindu Rashtra.”
The spokesperson also referred to a statement of group of UN Special Rapporteurs urging corrective actions to protect human rights and attacks against minorities in the run-up to India’s national elec-tions. In the same vein, the FO spokesperson said the UN high commissioner for Human Rights has also termed this Act and the regulations as fundamentally discriminatory in nature and in breach of interna-tional obligations of India. –Agencies
