‘Go to Pakistan’
Officials in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, including its hardline chief minister, have made controversial remarks while rejecting accusations that police are using “deadly force” against mostly Muslim protesters.
The state, India’s most populous with nearly 20 percent of them Muslims, saw 19 of the 27 deaths so far in nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which critics see as anti-Muslim.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), rebuffed accusations from Muslims and rights groups of police abuses, crediting his tough stance with restoring calm to the streets.
“Every rioter is shocked. Every troublemaker is astonished. Looking at the strictness of the Yogi government, everyone is silent,” one of Adityanath’s verified official accounts on Twitter said late on Friday.
“Do whatever you want to, but the damages will be paid by those who cause damages,” it added, repeating the warning his government had made earlier in the week.
“#TheGreat_CMYogi,” read the hashtag with the tweet, which came hours before a video appeared in which a senior Uttar Pradesh police officer is seen telling a group of Muslims: “Go to Pakistan.”
The video circulating on social media is likely to compound the concerns of those worried about the plight of Muslims, who accuse the police of killing peaceful demonstrators, raiding and ransacking homes, and beating hundreds of people, even children, since protests against the CAA began earlier this month.
“You eat here but sing praises of another place… This lane is now familiar to me. And once I remember, I can even reach your grandmother,” Akhilesh Narayan Singh, a police officer in Meerut district, is seen saying in the video. “Every man from every house will be arrested.”
Singh told Reuters News Agency that some protesters were shouting pro-Pakistan slogans. “It is in this situation I told them to go to Pakistan,” he said yesterday.
Uttar Pradesh has seen the most violent turmoil over Modi’s citizenship law, which activists say is discriminatory towards Muslims, who make up some 14 percent of India’s 1.3 billion population.
The clashes in the state appear to have eased over the past week, however, although small-scale demonstrations are still taking place.
Earlier this week, Adityanath’s government said it was demanding millions of rupees from more than 200 people, threatening to confiscate their property to pay for damage caused during the protests.
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