 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. In this show off around the world, we are on ground at New Delhi. This is 24 December 2019. There are hundreds of people who are protesting against the Discriminatory Citizenship Act, which is also known as the Citizenship Amendment Bill or CAA. And they are also protesting against the National Register of Citizens which, according to the far right Indian government, will soon be implemented to ensure that what is known as the illegal migrants will be thrown out of the country. The protesters here are also demanding that the police brutality, which we have seen in the last few days, should end. More than 20 people have been killed in police action across India. Now let's go and talk to a few of the protesters who have joined in this Citizen March. The immediate trigger for these protests is these two acts. But I would say before getting into the two acts and the two new laws that have been brought in by the government is that what we are also seeing is a bottled up anger of many years. We have seen a steady communalization of Indian society where along religious lines the society has been divided and massive violence has been unleashed and impunity has been granted to that. So what we are seeing today is that bottled up anger coming out. So the trigger of it was these two acts, one of them which has become a law, Citizenship Amendment Act. That act claims to provide refuge for immigrants from other countries, only three countries, that is Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. And it says that except for Muslims, every other community, every other religious community can seek refuge in India because they are facing religious discrimination in these three countries. And it only cherry picks three countries. It does not pick up other countries which are in India's neighbors. That in itself is a preposterous idea that you are only allowing refuge to people of certain faiths in India and discriminating and simply excluding Muslims. And that also is not the complete picture. The complete picture is that they are saying that we are now going to bring a national register of citizens which was also implemented in one state of India by the Supreme Court. Now they are saying they are going to make it nationwide according to which you need to produce 30, 40 year old documents to prove your citizenship. And if you cannot prove your citizenship and if you are a Muslim you will not be saved. But if you are someone else then you can easily be dubbed as an immigrant from another country, a Hindu, a Sikh, a Christian and will be given citizenship. A Muslim on the other hand will be sent to a detention camp which is a 21st century version of Nazi concentration camps. So that is what is the immediate trigger for these. I mean what we are seeing today right now is a threat on the very existence of minorities, Muslims in India. So people are saying that what we are seeing today in India is something which can be compared with the fascism in Germany during the 1930s. So what is your comment on it? There is definitely an attempt and let me say this, the signs are unmistakably same. The metaphors that are being used by the and the imageries that are being used by the government, the symbols that are being used by the government is the same as Nazi Germany. Nationalism, they use race pride here, they use religious pride there, they attack Jews here, they are talking about Muslims. And let's not be in any illusion that the forefathers, the ideological forefathers of the present ruling dispensation in India, they drew inspiration from Hitler when the Holocaust was happening in Germany. In 1930s, MS Gholwalkar, whom Narendra Modi claims to be inspired by, said that we need to take inspiration and race pride is at its best in Germany and we need to take inspiration and implement that in India. And the minority in India has to live at the mercy of the majority. That's exactly his statements. So the signs are unmistakably same, but I would say there is also one more similarity with another country that Indian resistance is showing. What is happening in Indian resistance? India right now is similar to what was happening in Arab spring some years ago. It is an uprising. It's a peaceful uprising of the people of India. It's not a protest that you're covering. It's happening across the country. Lacks of people are being mobilized. The Prime Minister of one rally has to spend crores of rupees to bring people for the publicity of Israelis. Here people are turning out in in lakhs and lakhs of numbers on their own because they feel a threat to their existence. And right now when they're coming out, they will also demand those fundamental questions of justice. It's not just about citizenship act. All the instances of violence which have seen people being killed because of the religion, we demand justice. Thank you, Arun. The right wing government in Narendra Modi seems determined to push ahead with the exercise, despite the overwhelming opposition from all sections of Indian society. In the coming days, the protests are set to become bigger as the people of the country reject the divisive Hindu supremacist vision that Modi and his acolytes are trying to impose. For our next story, we go to Bolivia, where the coup regime was joining in addition to inflicting violence on its own people is now targeting Mexico, one of the progressive governments of the region. On Monday noon, as many as 150 civilian and uniformed officers surrounded the Mexican embassy in La Paz. Incidentally, Mexico is a country which offered asylum to the legitimately elected President Evo Morales after he was overthrown on November 10th in a coup. I had the coup enduring it. A large scale violent campaign was launched against Morales, his ministers, and anyone associated with this party, the movement for socialism. Many of the ministers were forced to resign after a campaign of threats, violence and intimidation. Even Morales own houses attacked. After Morales and his vice president, Alvaro Garcia-Linera stepped down to avoid further targeting of the supporters, reports emerged of a bid by security forces to arrest him. At this point, it was a progressive government of Mexico that came forward to offer him sanctuary in its embassy in La Paz. And subsequently he flew to Mexico after being offered asylum. In the last week of November, the coup regime issued arrest warrants for five of the ministers of Morales who are believed to be seeking asylum in the Mexican embassy. These include the former ministers of the presidency and culture, the governor of Aurora and two officials. Thus, the surrounding of the embassy by Bolivian security forces is a clear act of intimidation. The Mexican government has warned Bolivia that any incursion would be a violation of the Vienna Convention. Evo Morales also condemned the move by the coup authorities and said that it puts the security of the asylum seekers at risk. Next, we go to Swaziland, where the crackdown against leftist and pro democracy leaders by the tyrannical regime of King Maswati III continues. On December 20th, five pro democracy leaders were arrested by the police allegedly on the orders of the king. They have been released, but the arrests were yet another indicator of the violent and repressive nature of the regime. The raids on December 20th, so documents, laptops, organizational banners and t-shirts being confiscated by the police from the house of the activists. The first to be arrested was the national chairperson of the communist party of Swaziland, Dumisani Fakudze. Leaders of the people's united democratic movement were also targeted. Political parties remained banned in Swaziland since April 12th, 1973, when the former king Subuza II unilaterally repealed the constitution, banned political parties and bestowed all executive, legislative and judicial power upon himself. Swaziland is the only absolute monarchy in Africa. And Maswati's regime has been spending millions of dollars and luxuries for the royal family, even as the country is in the midst of a full-fledged economic crisis. Various sections of Swaziland society are in complete protest with one demand. Maswati must fall. Finally, let's take a look at the antifascist march in Germany. On December 21st, Saturday, hundreds of people marched in New Col, South Berlin, against the rise in hate crimes by neo-Nazis in the area and protesting the failure of the police in curbing it. The demonstration was called by the Alliance Nukon, and around 800 people took part with the slogan, No Place for Nazis from Hermann Plaths to Nukon Town Hall. Several leftist, antifascist groups and other organizations, including Berlin against Nazis, participated in the march. A number of right-wing attacks have taken place in the area in the past three years. These include incidents of arson, vandalism, hate speech and threats against leftists and antifascists. The police has allegedly failed to identify the perpetrators in most of these cases. Just last week, swastikas and nazi slogans were painted on the walls of several shops in the region. The mobile advice against right-wing extremism, MBR, has recorded at least 55 right-wing attacks in the area since March 2016. Germany has been witnessing the rise of hypernationalist and far right groups, including neo-Nazi organizations and the Islamophobic Pegida. The far right political party alternative for Germany, AFD, has gained considerable support in the country and has won a number of seats in various parliaments by conducting an anti-immigrant and hypernationalist campaign. The failure of the economic policies of the Angela Merkel regime has also created a wider discontent and unrest among the common people in Germany. The ultra- right has been able to influence a section of these people who are disenchanted with the austerity-driven regime. For Germany's anti-fascist and leftist forces, a long battle lies ahead, as they must stall the advance of the far right brigades. That's all we have in this episode of Around the World in 8 Minutes. To find out more about these stories, visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thanks for watching.