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.”
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS