New Delhi: Eminent scientists and writers from across the world, including renowned thinker Noam Chomsky and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, have joined the chorus of protest against the arrest of JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar in a sedition case.

A statement signed by 86 academicians from renowned universities abroad condemns "the culture of authoritarian menace that the present government in India has generated" and said those in power are replicating the dark times of an oppressive colonial period and of the Emergency of the mid-1970s.