India yesterday rolled out the red carpet for US President Donald Trump on the second day of a visit high on spectacular optics, but deadly unrest exposed religious tensions that his host is accused of stoking.
The violence in New Delhi on Monday just as Trump arrived began as a standoff between supporters and opponents of a new citizenship law, but degenerated into running battles between Hindus and Muslims, local media reported.
The law, which critics say forms part of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda — which he denies — has sparked weeks of protests and violence, but the fatalities were the first since December last year.
Photo: Reuters
The seven dead in Delhi’s northeastern fringes included a police officer.
More than 150 people were also wounded, police and hospital sources said, as the rioters armed with stones and even guns went on the rampage, setting fire to buildings and vehicles.
The authorities responded with tear gas and smoke grenades, sending in paramilitary security forces, shutting schools and banning the assembly of more than four people in the areas affected. Further rioting was reported yesterday.
The law has raised worries abroad — including in Washington — that Modi wants to remould secular India into a Hindu nation while marginalizing the country’s 200 million Muslims, a claim Modi denies.
A senior US official told reporters that Trump would raise concerns about religious freedom during his lightning visit, calling them “extremely important to this administration.”
Yesterday, Trump and first lady Melania Trump were given a ceremonial welcome with red-coated and turbaned mounted troops and booming cannons.
Shedding their shoes they then laid a wreath and showered petals at the open-air memorial where Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi was cremated before they planted a tree, but then Trump and Modi got down to brass tacks.
However, Trump failed to strike any major trade deal with India at the end of a visit big on photograph opportunities but short on substance.
Speaking after talks in New Delhi with Modi, the US president said only that they had made “tremendous progress” toward a comprehensive agreement and that he was “optimistic we can reach a deal.”
While minor compared to his trade dispute with China, Trump has slapped tariffs on Indian steel and aluminium and suspended duty-free access for certain goods in an effort to cut the US$25 billion US trade deficit with Asia’s third-biggest economy.
Under pressure to deliver ahead of elections in November, he has pressed for greater access to the vast Indian market of 1.3 billion people for US dairy producers, makers of medical goods and for Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
But Modi, who has a lot in common with Trump with his “Make in India” mantra echoing Trump’s “America first” slogan, has responded with higher tariffs on US goods including US$600 million worth of Californian almonds.
Modi, speaking alongside Trump, said only that both sides “have agreed to start negotiating for a big trade deal.”
However, Trump and Modi did announce US$3 billion in defence deals, including for the sale of naval helicopters, proof of their deepening strategic alliance to counter the rise of China in the region.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS