India’s new citizenship law is “fundamentally discriminatory in nature,” the United Nations Human Rights Office said on Friday.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill does not extend the same protection to Muslim migrants as to other religious minorities, and this undermines India’s commitment to equality before the law, enshrined in the constitution, UN human rights spokesman Jeremy Laurence said in Geneva.
“We understand the new law will be reviewed by the Supreme Court of India and hope it will consider carefully the compatibility of the law with India’s international human rights obligations,” Reuters quoted Laurence as saying.
PM Narendra Modi’s government has said the bill was meant to protect besieged minorities.