The Washington Post - 03.03.2020

A10 eZ re THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAy, MARCH 3 , 2020

The World

RUSSIA

Putin proposes ban

on same-sex marriage

P resident Vladimir Putin on
Monday submitted a slew of
proposed amendments to the
Russian constitution that include
a mention of God and describe
marriage as a heterosexual union.
Putin first proposed amending
the constitution in a state-of-the-
nation speech in January, s aying it
is necessary to broaden the
powers of parliament and bolster
democracy. His foes view the
proposed changes as part of his
efforts to remain in charge after
his six-year term ends in 2024.
The Kremlin-controlled
parliament last month endorsed
Putin’s d raft i n the first of three
required readings, and it is poised
to give it the final approval next
week, setting the stage for a
nationwide vote on April 22.
Following up on proposals from
a Kremlin working group that
worked in parallel with
lawmakers, Putin on Monday
presented 24 p ages of additional
amendments for the second
reading, set for March 10.
One amendment follows a
proposal by the Russian Orthodox

Church to add a reference to God

to the constitution.

Another describes marriage as

a “union of a man and a woman,” a

wording in sync with Putin’s l ong-

stated opposition to same-sex

marriages.

The president also responded

to a working group member’s

suggestion to add wording that

would prevent any future Russian

ruler from giving away C rimea —

annexed from Ukraine in 2014 —

or any other territory.

— Associated Press

PHILIPPINES

Ex-guard holds dozens

hostage in Manila mall

A recently dismissed s ecurity

guard freed dozens of hostages

and was subdued by police after

walking out of a mall in the

Philippine capital on Monday,

ending a day-long hostage crisis in

an upscale commercial district

near the police and military

headquarters, officials said.

The former guard at t he

Greenhills shopping center left

the mall in San Juan City in

metropolitan Manila with the

remaining hostages, who were

then secured by police. Several

others had managed to escape

earlier, police said.

San Juan Mayor Francis

Zamora has ordered an

investigation, including into how

the gunman was able to enter the

mall with a pistol and grenades.

Instead of being immediately

arrested, the suspect was allowed

to speak for several minutes to

journalists and authorities to

describe his grievances against his

former bosses, whom he accused

of corruption and abuse.

Some 60 to 70 hostages and

others were trapped in the mall

during the standoff, Z amora said.

The gunman shot and w ounded

a security officer before rushing t o

the second floor and taking the

hostages, Zamora said. The officer

was said to be in stable condition.

— Associated Press

U.N. Libya envoy resigns, cites

stress: T he United Nations special

envoy for Libya said he has

resigned because of stress, days

after his latest effort at

peacemaking failed to yield a

breakthrough in the conflict.

Ghassan Salame, appointed in

July 2017, said on Twitter that he

had “sought for two and a half

years to unite Libyans, prevent

foreign intervention and preserve

the unity of the country,” b ut “my

health no longer allows me to take

this much stress.” He resigned

amid an escalation in fighting in

Libya and just days after

announcing the near-breakdown

of a shaky truce between the

country’s two rival governments.

7 suspected Rohingya gangsters

killed in Bangladesh: Security

officials in Bangladesh fatally shot

seven suspected members of a

Rohingya gang allegedly involved

in drug dealing and human

trafficking, officials said. The

killings occurred near a refugee

camp in Cox’s Bazar near the

border with Myanmar, police said.

More than 700,000 Rohingya

Muslims fled Myanmar after the

Buddhist-majority country’s

military launched a crackdown

against them in August 2017 a nd

are staying in refugee camps in

Bangladesh. Separately, police

said another Rohingya man was

killed during a gunfight with

border guards in Cox’s Bazar.

Egypt sentences 37 to death on

terrorism charges: A court in

Egypt sentenced to death 37

defendants, including a high-

profile militant, on terrorism-

related charges. The Cairo

Criminal Court said the

defendants were convicted of

belonging to a local affiliate of the

Islamic State spearheading an

insurgency in Egypt’s S inai

Peninsula. Among those

sentenced to death was Hisham

e l-Ashmawi, a former army officer

turned militant leader. The men

are among more than 200

defendants accused of carrying

out dozens of attacks. The court

also sentenced 61 defendants to

life in prison; 85 were sentenced to

five to 15 years in prison.

— From news services

DIGEST

TOBy MelVIlle/reUTers

Additional f lood barriers line the s wollen Severn River to protect

properties in Bewdley, near Birmingham, England. Communities

continue to deal with rising water after Storm Jorge swept across

Britain over the weekend. The storm, the third in a month, came at

the tail end of the wettest February since records began, with about

eight inches of rain falling, according to the British weather service.

BY JOANNA SLATER

AND NIHA MASIH

new delhi — Lying under a
striped blanket, her face blank
with exhaustion, Shabana Par -
veen described how she and her
family had run for their lives.
Rioters armed with rods and
sticks surged into her lane in
northeast Delhi last week looking
for Muslim homes. Parveen, 26
years old and nine months preg-
nant, said they broke down the
door, punched and beat her,
yelled abuse and told her family
to get out. Then they destroyed
everything inside.
A Hindu neighbor sheltered
the family for the night but urged
them to flee to a Muslim area as
soon as they could. The next day,
Parveen’s son was born in a
rudimentary clinic filled with
people injured or displaced by
the riots. “There is nothing left,”
she said as her tiny son slept
beside her. “If we go back, they
will kill us.”
India’s capital is grappling
with the aftermath of the worst
communal violence in Delhi in
decades. More than 45 people,
the majority of them Muslims,
were killed in the clashes. Hindu
mobs swept through lanes target-
ing Muslim homes and set up
roadblocks looking for Muslims
to attack. Crowds of Hindus and
Muslims threw stones and molo-
tov cocktails.
The violence — which unfold-
ed as President Trump visited the
city — marks a major turning
point for the nation and for the
government of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi. Since winning a
landslide reelection in May, Modi
has pursued his party’s agenda of
Hindu primacy in India amid a
dramatically slowing economy. I n
the last six months, he revoked
Kashmir’s autonomy, jettisoning
decades of policy toward India’s
only Muslim-majority state. His
government said it would move
ahead with the construction of a
grand Hindu temple at the site of
an illegally razed mosque. And he
enacted a controversial law that
excludes Muslim migrants from a
fast track to citizenship.
Now that agenda has sparked
violence along the oldest fault
line in India, a Hindu-majority
nation created as a secular repub-
lic that’s also home to 200 million
Muslims. It’s a defining moment
for Modi, whose government di-
rectly oversees law enforcement
in the national capital. The police
are accused of doing too little to
stop the riots — and, in some
cases, joining in.
The violence erupted late Sun-
day after a local leader of Modi’s
party threatened to clear a pro-
test against the citizenship law.
Modi called for calm on Wednes-
day, but has not mentioned the
violence since.
The riots were “not a tactical
aberration, some absent-minded
lapse of attention,” wrote Pratap
Bhanu Mehta, a prominent politi-
cal scientist. “There is no doubt
that the state could have stopped
the violence more quickly if it had
wanted.”
The consequences for this na-
tion of more than 1.3 billion
people are likely to be far-reach-
ing. Saba Naqvi, the author of a

‘There is nothing left. If we go back, they will kill us.’

Indian Muslims are fearful after Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda sparks deadly violence along the country’s oldest fault line

book on the recent history of the

ruling Bharatiya Janata Party,

said Modi and his party are now

pursuing a path of “complete

polarization” between Hindus

and Muslims “because they have

no other path to offer.”

A BJP spokesman denied that

the party’s policies were polariz-

ing. Muslims are afraid, party

spokesman Sudhanshu Trive-

di said, because “they have been

intimidated by propaganda”

spread by opposition parties. He

said the BJP’s opponents are

fostering a “situation where some

unrest can be created in the

country so the government gets a

bad name at the international

level.”

‘We are helpless’

Inside a narrow lane in Musta-

fabad, a densely packed, predom-

inantly Muslim neighborhood in

northeast Delhi, refugees from

the violence picked through a

mound of donated clothes. Many

had fled Shiv Vihar, another riot-

hit area about two miles away.

Z aitoon, 40, who goes by one

name, half-cried as she rum-

maged through the items. She

said mobs entered her lane shout-

ing “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Victory to

Lord Ram,” a slogan favored by

Modi’s party, and demanded to

know which houses were occu-

pied by Muslims. She said she saw

a neighbor set on fire in front of

her, an account repeated by other

witnesses.

Police arrived Wednesday

morning to escort Muslims to

safety, she said. They had 10 min-

utes to gather whatever they

could carry.

Down a nearby alleyway, plas-

tic chairs were set out to accom-

modate mourners at the home of

two brothers killed in the riots.

Aamir Khan, 30, and his brother

Hashim, 19, were on their way to

Mustafabad on Wednesday night

but never arrived. The next day,

their brother Sheruddin said, po-

lice showed the family photos of

the motorcycle they had been

riding, now burned, and of their

bodies, both with stab wounds.

Their mother sat on the floor in

a cramped room, surrounded by

women, her face contorted by

grief. Aamir’s wife lay next to her,

immobile under a brown blanket.

“We are being killed, we are

being slaughtered, and they are

blaming us,” cried their sister

Naghma Alvi, as a neighbor held

and rocked her. The brothers

were buried on Saturday.

Research on religious violence

in India suggests that Modi’s

party has little political incentive

to prevent such clashes. Re-

searchers at Yale University who

examined Hindu-Muslim riots in

India from 1962 to 2000 found

that when such violence took

place, the BJP increased its share

of votes in the next state-level

election. When state legislators

from the opposition Congress

party were elected, the probabili-

ty of riots in their districts in the

following years fell by a third.

When Modi was elected prime

minister in 2014, Muslim voters

were wary. As chief minister of

the state of Gujarat, he presided

over the worst outbreak of com-

munal violence in recent Indian

history, when more than 1,

people were killed, mostly Mus-

lims, in three days of riots in

2002. A court-appointed investi-
      gation cleared him of any involve-
      ment. For years afterward, the
      United States declined to issue
      Modi a visa.
      Modi’s first term as prime min-
      ister saw increasing reports of
      Muslims being lynched on the
      suspicion of transporting beef or
      slaughtering cows, considered sa-
      cred by many Hindus.
      The passage of the citizenship
      law in December has stoked fears
      that the Modi government in-
      tends to make Muslims prove
      their legal status in the country.
      Trump praised Modi last week for
      his “incredible” efforts to pro-
      mote religious freedom.

Political scientist Sudha Pai

co-authored a recent study on

communal violence in Uttar

Pradesh, India’s largest state. She

said Indian Muslims have now

“reached a point where they real-

ize either they fight back, or

something terrible is going to

happen.”

In the riots that swept north-

eastern Delhi, Muslims mobilized

to counter perceived threats and

clashed with Hindus. A two-lane

road separates Muslim-dominat-

ed Mustafabad from Hindu-dom-

inated Bhagirathi Vihar. Hindus

say a large mob approached from

the Muslim side last Tuesday,

throwing stones and molotov

cocktails and firing guns. “It be-

came difficult to save our lives,”

said Yogesh Kumar, 24, an ac-

countant.

“When the fire spreads, every-

thing gets torched,” Sanjay Ku-

mar, 40, said bitterly as he looked

around at the destroyed store-

fronts and burned facades along

a lane leading from the main

road. He blamed Kapil Mishra,

the BJP leader who issued the

original threat to protesters who

mounted a sit-in.

Mishra “thought he could do

the work of the police,” Kumar

said. “Why did he step in?”

Area residents said that noth-

ing like the violence had ever

occurred there before and that

relations between the two com-

munities were generally peaceful.

Paramilitary troops patrolled the

streets and people began to ven-

ture out on Friday afternoon, but

shops remained shuttered.

The Farukhiya mosque, next to

a canal choked with garbage,

stood deserted and burned. Last

Tuesday, Hindus and Muslims

threw stones at each other from

behind makeshift barriers near

the mosque, witnesses said. The

pitched battle subsided before

the evening prayer. Then the

police arrived.

Officers barged into the

mosque, sending the women wor-

shipers fleeing. Police beat the

imam, the muezzin and an

e lderly caretaker so badly they

were sent to the hospital, accord-

ing to family members and one of

the victims. When Waheeda

Khatoon, 30, the muezzin’s wife,

finally found him, he was “unrec-

ognizable,” she said.

Khatoon said Muslims had no

hope of getting justice. “We are

helpless,” she said. “The govern-

ment and the police belong to

them.”

[email protected]

[email protected]

Tania Dutta contributed to this

report.

NIHA MAsIH/THe WAsHINgTON POsT

Paramilitary troops patrol in northeast Delhi last week. More than 4 5 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in riots in the city, and some families had to flee their homes.