Category: Uncategorized

The act seeks to amend the definition of illegal immigrants for Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist and Christian immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who have lived in India without documentation.

Protests have broken out across India, a few of them violent, against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019. The Act seeks to amend the definition of illegal immigrant for Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist and Christian immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who have lived in India without documentation. They will be granted fast track Indian citizenship in six years. So far 12 years of residence has been the standard eligibility requirement for naturalisation. At the first hearing on petitions challenging the CAA, the Supreme Court declined to stay the contentious law but asked the Centre to file its reply against the petitions that say it violates the Constitution. The petitioners say the Bill discriminates against Muslims and violates the right to equality enshrined in the Constitution. Here’s a primer.

Who makes the cut?

The legislation applies to those who were “forced or compelled to seek shelter in India due to persecution on the ground of religion”. It aims to protect such people from proceedings of illegal migration. The cut-off date for citizenship is December 31, 2014 which means the applicant should have entered India on or before that date. Indian citizenship, under present law, is given either to those born in India or if they have resided in the country for a minimum of 11 years. The Bill also proposes to incorporate a sub-section (d) to Section 7, providing for cancellation of Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) registration where the OCI card-holder has violated any provision of the Citizenship Act or any other law in force.

What is Centre’s logic behind the bill?

Centre says these minority groups have come escaping persecution in Muslim-majority nations. However, the logic is not consistent – the bill does not protect all religious minorities, nor does it apply to all neighbours. The Ahmedia Muslim sect and even Shias face discrimination in Pakistan. Rohingya Muslims and Hindus face persecution in neighbouring Burma, and Hindu and Christian Tamils in neighbouring Sri Lanka. The government responds that Muslims can seek refuge in Islamic nations, but has not answered the other questions.

Some say it is like Partition, is that true?

Amit Shah says that the Bill would not have been necessary if the Congress did not agree to Partition on the basis of religion. However, India was not created on the basis of religion, Pakistan was. Only the Muslim League and the Hindu Right advocated the two nation theory of Hindu and Muslim nations, which led to Partition. All the founders of India were committed to a secular state, where all citizens irrespective of religion enjoyed full membership. Either way, this logic for the CAB also collapses because Afghanistan was not part of pre-Partition India.

How much of Northeast does the Bill cover?

CAB won’t apply to areas under the sixth schedule of the Constitution – which deals with autonomous tribal-dominated regions in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. The bill will also not apply to states that have the inner-line permit regime (Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram).

Why is Assam angry about it?

Among the states in the Northeast, the outrage against CAG has been the most intense in Assam. While a chunk of these states have been exempted from the legislation, CAB overs a large part of Assam. The protests stem from the fear that illegal Bengali Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, if regularised under CAB, will threaten cultural and linguistic identities of the state.

Pakistan Army (Amendment) Act, 2020 seeks to amend the Pakistan Army Act, 1952. It provides a measure to President of Pakistan acting on advice of Prime Minister of Pakistan to extend the tenure of Chief of Army Staff (COAS) by three years. The amendment also bars the act of the extension of tenure from being challenged in any court. The Act sets an upper age limit of 64 years for COAS.

Background

On 19 August 2019, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan announced that he has extended the tenure of Chief of Army Staff, Qamar Javed Bajwa for another three years. The original tenure was supposed to end on 29 November 2019, on which date Bajwa would have been retired sans this extension.

Soon after the announcement of extension, a petition was filed into Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) requesting the court to look into the matter as the petitioner believed that the Government of Pakistan did not follow proper procedures outlined in law and the Constitution of Pakistan.

On 28 November 2019, Just one day before Bajwa’s potential retirement, a three member bench of SCP headed by then Chief Justice of Pakistan, Asif Saeed Khosa and composed of justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Mazhar Alam Miankhel issued a short order nullifying the government’s extension notification while temporarily extending Bajwa’s tenure for six months. SCP ordered the government to put the matter of extension into the law in under six months sans which Bajwa will stand retired as of 29 November 2019. This was first time in history of Pakistan that a court questioned the extension of an Army Chief. On 16 December 2019, the SCP issued the detailed judgement.

On 26 December 2019, the Government of Pakistan filed a review petition in SCP against the 16 December judgement and requested composition of a larger bench to hear the review petition. This gave an indication that the government might not be looking into complying with the original order until the review petition is decided.

Days after President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the powerful commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, the US is bracing for possible retaliatory actions by Iran.

Before the strike, the US had been pushed to the brink of retaliation against Iran or its proxies on multiple occasions, specifically after attacks last summer on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and Iran’s downing of a US drone in June.

Here’s how tensions between the two nations have escalated in recent weeks:

December 27: A rocket attack believed to be linked to a Shiite militia group, backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killed a US civilian contractor and wounded several US and Iraq military personnel on a base near Kirkuk, Iraq.

December 29: According to the Pentagon, US forces conducted airstrikes at five facilities in Iraq and Syria controlled by a Shiite military group known as Kataib Hezbollah — the group that American officials blamed for the attack on a base near Kirkuk.

December 31: Pro-Iranian protesters, demonstrating against the American airstrikes, attacked the US Embassy in Baghdad, scaling walls and forcing the gates open.

January 3: Trump said he ordered a precision drone strike at the Baghdad airport to “terminate” Soleimani, a top Iranian commander who was plotting “imminent and sinister attacks on Americans diplomats and military personnel.” Others were killed in the attack.

January 4: Iran vowed retaliation against the US, in response to the strike. If Iran targets “any Americans or American assets,” Trump has said he would sanction specific military strikes against Iranian cultural sites, which could amount to a war crime.

January 5: Soleimani’s body arrived in his home country, where thousands mourned him. Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, the military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, told CNN in an exclusive interview that Tehran would retaliate directly against US “military sites.”

People are angry at the Indian government for revoking the special status of the part of Kashmir that it rules over.

The Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir region has been disputed ever since the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.

It was expected to go to Pakistan. It’s Hindu ruler at the time wanted to stay independent but, faced with an invasion of Muslim tribes from Pakistan, acceded to India later that year in return for protection.

Since then India and Pakistan have fought over the territory.

A UN-monitored ceasefire line agreed in 1972, called the Line of Control (LOC), splits Kashmir into two areas: one administered by India, one by Pakistan.

Their armies have for decades faced off over the LOC. In 1999, the two were involved in a battle along the LOC that some analysts called an undeclared war.

Their forces exchanged regular gunfire over the LOC until a truce in late 2003, which has largely held since.

So where did all that leave Indian-administered Kashmir?

It left Kashmir with de-facto political autonomy.

Under its special status (sometimes known as Article 370) it empowered the Jammu and Kashmir state parliament to grant special rights and privileges to permanent residents such as the right to buy property.

And it’s the loss of those rights that’s making Kashmiris angry?

Basically yes, they’re concerned about an influx of Indian citizens and losing their control of state government jobs and college places.

What does India say?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has said the revocation of Kashmir’s special status was necessary to ensure its full integration into India and speed up development. He was also delivering on longstanding pledges to his nationalist BJP party.

What does Pakistan say?

Protests have been taking place across Pakistan ever since India announced its decision to scrap Kashmir’s special status. The government declared a symbolic “black day” in protest at the move by Delhi.

What about the UN?

The United Nations said the security lockdown and restrictions that have been introduced are deeply concerning and will exacerbate the human rights situation

What is the potential for the situation to escalate?

Enough for India to have deployed an extra 35,000 troops to the region ahead of the decision and cut off the internet.

Some political leaders in Kashmir have warned that the repeal of Article 370 will trigger major unrest as they say it amounts to aggression against the region’s people.

To complicate matters, there’s been a long-running insurgency against what many Muslims living in Kashmir have seen as heavy-handed rule by Delhi. It’s estimated that around 50.000 people have died as a result. Some commentators now say the separatists will become more militant.

But perhaps the biggest problem could be India’s neighbour Pakistan.

The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two of their three wars over the territory

What’s the latest?

In the latest development in Kashmir, the Indian authorities imposed strict restrictions in the region’s main city of Srinagar ahead of Friday prayers.

New Delhi says the move was to prevent any protests and that curbs on movement and communications in the region would be lifted in the next few days.

Telephone and internet links were cut and public assembly banned in Kashmir this month, just before New Delhi removed the decades-old autonomy the Muslim-majority territory enjoyed under the Indian constitution.

Security forces were deployed outside mosques across Srinagar, while police vans fitted with speakers asked people not to venture out, according to witnesses.

Earlier this week thousands of people protested outside the Indian High Commission in London. Many waved Pakistani and Kashmiri flags.