Masked assailants on Sunday stormed India’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi in a violent attack on students that risked escalating protests against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Members of students groups allegedly affiliated with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party attacked hostels in the university with rods and batons, injuring dozens of students and some professors, All India Students’ Association president N. Sai Balaji said.
As video clips and photographs of the attacks spread on social media, groups of students in Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad and Uttar Pradesh gathered to protest the violence, NDTV reported.
Bharatiya Janata Party student union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad general-secretary Nidhi Tripathi in a tweet blamed leftist students’ unions for the attack.
The attack at India’s second-highest ranked university could worsen weeks of tensions between the government and students, who have taken to the streets to protest India’s plans to implement a religion-based citizenship law and a citizens’ registry, which protesters say contravenes the nation’s secular constitution and discriminates against Muslims.
Swaraj India party president Yogendra Yadav, who was injured in the violence, tweeted that police took no action to stop the attacks.
“This attack is bound to galvanize a growing protest movement that has already been motivated by earlier violent assaults against students, including another attack at JNU,” Washington-based Wilson Center senior associate for South Asia Michael Kugelman said. “The takeaway here is that tensions between students and their government will intensify, and with no off-ramps in sight.”
Indian Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah ordered a probe into the JNU attacks.
The JNU attack was condemned by Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman, both alumni of the university.
The strong condemnations are important “given that the government has maintained a radio silence about the toll that the violence has taken on peaceful protesters,” Kugelman said. “This certainly doesn’t indicate any forthcoming course correction at the top, but at the least it may signify a recognition from senior officials of the troubling trend lines in India today.”
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
REVELRY ON HOLD: Students marched in Belgrade amid New Year’s events, saying that ‘there is nothing to celebrate’ after the train station tragedy killed 15 Thousands of students marched in Belgrade and two other Serbian cities during a New Year’s Eve protest that went into yesterday, demanding accountability over the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November. The incident in the city of Novi Sad occurred on Nov. 1 at a newly renovated train facility, killing 14 people — aged six to 74 — at the scene, while a 15th person died in hospital weeks later. Public outrage over the tragedy has sparked nationwide protests, with many blaming the deaths on corruption and inadequate oversight of construction projects. In Belgrade, university students marched through the capital
RSS