Brussels; 27 January 2020 (UMM): Six contemptuous resolutions on both Jammu and Kashmir and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) have been filed by an overwhelming majority of members in the European Parliament, which will be taken up for discussion and voting this week.
The outcome of these resolutions could have a deep impact on ties between India and the European Union.
Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has declined any official comment but sources in the government, reported by The Hindu 26 January, said “We are informed that some members of the EU Parliament intend to move a draft resolution on the CAA. The CAA is a matter that is entirely internal to India.”
The draft resolutions (numbering from B9-0077/2020 to B9-0082/2020), introduced by six different political groups representing a total of 626 of the total 751 members of the European Parliament, are due to be taken up during the plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels on January 29 for discussion (around 6 p.m. local time) and January 30 for a vote.
Indian government facilitated a visit by 22 EU MEPs, mostly extreme right politicians, to Delhi and Srinagar, in October last year, but the effort doesn’t appear to have had the desired effect on the EU Parliament.
According to The Hindu 26 January, these resolutions list more than a dozen different counts of actions by the government that are allegedly in violation of international norms and India’s international commitments on Human Rights and at the UN Security Council, including actions in Jammu and Kashmir after the dilution of Article 370, police firing on protestors against the CAA in Uttar Pradesh, reports of “torture during detention” and the potential for creating what it calls the “largest statelessness crisis in the world and cause immense human suffering” through the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
These issues were discussed between Mr. Borrell, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on the sidelines of the Raisina Dialogue conference earlier this month.
In their recommendations to the European Council and to Mr. Borell, the MEP groups have condemned state actions that have resulted in the loss of life of anti-CAA protesters, and called on the government to lift restrictions in Jammu and Kashmir, reconsider the Citizenship Act, “in the spirit of equality and non-discrimination and in the light of its international obligations”, and to “engage with the protestors”, reporterd The Hindu.
Two of the resolutions state that the CAA marks a “dangerous shift” in the way citizenship will be determined and will create the “largest statelessness crisis in the world”.
Another resolution refers to the January 5 violence in JNU and letters by more than 100 retired senior civil servants. The CAA, it claims, has “sparked massive protests against it, with 27 reported deaths, 175 injured and thousands arrested; whereas the Indian authorities have also used internet shutdowns, imposed curfews and placed limits on public transportation to prevent peaceful protests; whereas reports have emerged of hundreds of protesters being beaten, shot, and tortured, in particular in Uttar Pradesh”.
Yet another resolution “regrets the fact that India has incorporated religious criteria into its naturalisation and refugee policies”.
