Thousands of people have been arrested, and at least 23 people have been killed in the last 10 days, as police tried to quash widespread protests over a new citizenship law in India.

Protests erupted throughout the country following passage of the Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) on December 11 by India’s parliament. The bill clears a path to citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who came to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

But it does not do the same for Muslim immigrants, prompting critics to call it a discriminatory threat to democracy that violates the secularism enshrined in India’s Constitution.

Initial protests were held by students and youth living in country’s larger cities, but anger over the bill has grown in recent days, leading the demonstrations to become more widespread. Protests have been held all over the nation, from Bangalore in the south to New Delhi in the north.

The protests in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh have drawn particular attention for the casualties sustained there — according to the Associated Press, 15 people were killed in the state’s protests Friday and Saturday, including an 8-year-old boy.

The state is India’s most populous, home to 204 million people, and a large population of Muslims; it is also notably controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BPJ). Both Modi and the BJP has been vocal proponents of the Citizen Amendment Bill.

The government has responded to the protests with mass arrests — more than 1,500 have been arrested in the first 10 days of protest, and police say another 4,000 were detained and then released. On Saturday, in Uttar Pradesh alone, more than 600 people were detained (but not arrested) as part of what law enforcement officials called a “preventive action.”

The government has also cracked down on media, directing television stations not to broadcast content that could heighten tensions, and shut off the internet in certain locales, including the Muslim-heavy states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Assam, and in the cities of New Delhi and Aligarh. In some states, including Uttar Pradesh, officials have tried to limit demonstrations by invoking Section 144, a British colonial law barring public gatherings of more than four people.

These measures have drawn condemnation from protesters; after a police crackdown on demonstrators at a New Delhi university, one woman asked: “Is this democracy? Where are we living?”

The protesters argue the bill — and Modi’s government — discriminate against Muslims

The protests come amid rising tensions as Modi and his party — which controls the Indian government following a historic victory in May’s elections — enact policies critics see as anti-Muslim.

Modi has long promoted Hindu nationalism and has used his new mandate to make radical changes affecting his Muslim constituents, from taking away the semi-autonomous status of majority-Muslim state Kashmir (and enforcing that decision with thousands of troops) to his recent rollout of an initiative tied to the CAB: the National Register of Citizens.

As explained by Vox’s Sigal Samuel:

The CAB has many Muslims frightened in part because it’s closely linked with another contentious document: India’s National Register of Citizens (NRC). The NRC is part of the government’s effort to identify and weed out people it claims are illegal immigrants in the northeastern state of Assam. India says many Muslims whose families originally came from neighboring Bangladesh are not rightful citizens, even though they’ve lived in Assam for decades. When the NRC was published in August, around 2 million people — many of them Muslims, some of them Hindus — found that their names were not on it. They were told they had a limited time in which to prove that they are, in fact, citizens. Otherwise, they can be rounded up into massive new detention camps and, ultimately, deported. So far, this measure affects potentially 2 million people, not all 200 million Muslims in India. However, Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said it plans to extend the NRC process across the country.

The looming threat of the internment camps, and concerns both over citizenship and the general direction Modi’s government seems poised to take, have a number of India’s 200 million Muslims — and their allies of other faiths — deeply concerned.

The protest movement these concerned citizens have launched represents the largest rebuke of Modi since he became prime minister in 2014. But as Vox’s Samuel notes, the CAB and NRC are in essence in keeping with both Modi’s politics and promises he made during the most recent campaign cycle:

As the protests continue in India, observers outside the country are warning Modi’s government that its policies could lead to a massive humanitarian disaster: Together, the NRC and the CAB could create tens thousands of stateless Muslim refugees — if not more. These stateless people could find themselves incarcerated in Indian detention centers, or flee to nearby nations, one of which — Bangladesh — is already struggling with a refugee crisis.

The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom have all cautioned the Indian government about the policies.

But Modi is pressing ahead, and is celebrating the CAB’s passage. He tweeted Wednesday that the bill’s passage was “A landmark day for India and our nation’s ethos of compassion and brotherhood!”