It is now out in the open.There seems to be quite a lot of dissatisfaction in the higher judiciary about the burden placed on their shoulders by the rising number of UAPA cases.The phrasing of the act is so wide and sweeping that it gives a government powers to practically put under arrest and detain anyone it finds inconvenient or[Read More…]
Aisha Sultana, a native of Lakshadweep’s Chetlat island, is today one of India’s visible faces in the cry for justice! She is a well-known actor and director and an activist. Lakshadweep, a Union Territory, is an archipelago of 36 islands in the Arabian Sea: a paradise with pristine beauty. Its 70,000-strong population is predominantly Muslim (with smaller percentages of Hindus[Read More…]
A most encouraging phenomena has emerged in Punjab in the last week with 4most qualitative protests engulfing Punjab in Bathinda , Amritsar ,Sangrur and Nawanshahr against the detention of the intellectuals fabricated as Maoists. The speakers at the very core exposed link between saffron Hindutva politics and the patronage to corporate groups like Ambani or Adani.They portrayed how the trend[Read More…]
NAPM Condemns the unjustifiable order of the Supreme Court to Evict around One Lakh Residents of Khori Gaon, Haryana, without Rehabilitation in the Middle of the Pandemic Right to Housing of Working-Class people Living in Precarious Conditions is inalienable: ‘Environmental Protection’ cannot be an excuse to deprive vulnerable people of shelter 15th June, 2021: National Alliance of People’s Movements denounces[Read More…]
Australian officials and paper mad types are running out of ideas as to how to be cruel towards refugees. We need to give them some credit: for years they have tried to do what most autocratic and murderous regimes do in a heartbeat: ignore international law, treat it with disdain and use those feeble excuses in the service of sovereignty.[Read More…]
Q-Who are the workers who perform the most essential tasks, also earn the highest appreciation but get the least justice? Ans. -Sanitation workers. Since historical times, sanitation workers have suffered the most injustice in India. Perhaps oppressor sections thought that the most effective, even though highly unjust , means to ensure the ready availability of this essential service at a[Read More…]
Undergoing the process of having to screen our bodies invaded by an external touch also makes us vulnerable to unidentified sexual perversion. But does having to undergo the same if exercised by people of our respective genders make us any less vulnerable? Established heterosexual foundations so far has led to the screening of women and men bodies by their gender[Read More…]
It was the virtual ‘midnight knock’! The irony was that the knock took place in broad daylight, and expectedly in a blatantly unjust, uncivilised and unconstitutional manner. On 6 June 2018, Sudhir Dhawale, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Shoma Sen and Rona Wilson were arrested from their residences in various parts of the country. The arrests of others then continued in[Read More…]
Over 50 eminent international figures including members of several European parliaments academics, lawyers, Nobel laureates, civil society leaders, and diasporic organisations have signed a joint statement urging the Indian government to show compassion and responsibility in the current Covid emergency, and call upon the authorities to release all arrested human rights defenders into safe conditions in the light of the[Read More…]
“Unbearable.” That’s the title of Reza Khandan’s gut-wrenching Ms. Magazine report from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) Qarchak prison for women. Khandan is the husband of attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is imprisoned there for the “crime” of representing activists for human and women’s rights. What is so “unbearable”? “Entering these cells is like being transported back to the Middle Ages,” Khandan writes,[Read More…]
I am writing this tribute to Jailed Professor G.N.Saibaba, commemorating the third anniversary of the attack on the Urban intellectuals in Mumbai. Professor G.N.Saibaba is in my view today the best son of our land today. It is hard to visualize a physically impaired person face and resist the iron feet of oppression with the same magnitude. Professor G.N.Saibaba is[Read More…]
This has been a fantasy of Danish governments for some time. There have been gazes of admiration towards countries like Australia, where processing refugees and asylum-seekers is a task offloaded, with cash incentives, to third countries (Papua New Guinea and Nauru come to mind). Danish politicians, notably a good number among the Social Democrats, have dreamed about doing the same[Read More…]
We, the members of various Human Rights Organisations and Concerned individuals, condemn the appointment of former SC Judge, Shri Arun Kumar Mishra, as the next Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India by the selection Committee headed by the Prime Minister. What is troubling is that the decision to appoint Justice Arun Kumar Mishra as NHRC Head[Read More…]
The second wave in recent weeks has overwhelmed the healthcare system, leaving hospitals and people both struggling to cope with critical drugs and oxygen in short supply. The situation now seems a little under control with infections slowing down. Pandemic has revealed a lot of mismanagement on the part of the government. Many sections of the society have skipped the[Read More…]
Written by Thomas Klikauer and Catherine Link At the end May 2021, Australian media reported on a multinational company receiving a $121 million contract to keep asylum seekers locked away on a remote island of Papua New Guinea (PNG) for good. Ever since Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and even more so since Karl Marx’s Value, Price and Profits (1865),[Read More…]
At the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Colombia, Canada, remains of 215 children were found buried. Some of the children were as young as three years old when they died, the First Nation said. Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation hired a specialist in ground-penetrating radar to carry out the work and believes the deaths of the children are undocumented. Chief Rosanne[Read More…]
Written by Bela Bhatia and Jean Drèze Mass protests against the proliferation of CRPF camps have been happening all over Bastar during the last two years, without attracting much media coverage. It is only because of the death of three protestors in police firing on 17 May 2021 that the Silger protest came to light. Silger is a small adivasi[Read More…]
PUCL feels a deep sense of loss over the sad demise of Prof. Dinesh Mohan on 21st May. Prof. Dinesh Mohan’s passing away marks the loss of a multifaceted personality: an outstanding academician, a visionary thinker, pioneer in the field of traffic studies and sustainable infrastructure development and a staunch champion of human rights. Prof. Dinesh Mohan was a member[Read More…]
Written by Saheli Chowdhury and Stephen Lalla Venezuelan businessman and diplomatic envoy Alex Saab, held in the African island nation of Cape Verde and facing extradition to the United States, is a victim of political persecution and his case is comparable to that of Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning. Saab, who had engaged in brokering deals that would evade the[Read More…]
Stan Swamy, 84-year old Adivasi rights activist from Jharkhand, was arrested by NIA under UAPA in the Bhima Koregaon case on the 8th of October 2020 and has been lodged in Taloja jail, near Mumbai, Maharashtra. He has spent his entire life fighting for Adivasi rights and the rights of the underprivileged. Stan Swamy is a Parkinson’s disease patient with[Read More…]
Though India is one of the worst hit covid affected countries in the world, the plight and plea of political prisoners under trial gets no attention from the state or central governments. So many people including students, activists, journalists, academicians, and political leaders are still behind the bars many of whom are tested Covid postive while some others got serious[Read More…]
It is the duty of all patriotic citizens to protect the international reputation of their country. For the greater part of its post-independence period India has experienced a reasonably good reputation in terms of democracy and human rights. There were always some problems, things were never perfect, there were ups and downs, but on the whole there was a reasonably[Read More…]
On May 13 Thailand released data of record increase in Covid cases, but perhaps even more worrying was the fact that over half of the new cases were reported from two prisons located in Bangkok which also house quite a few political prisoners who had been arrested mainly for their protests against the government and the monarchy. This is just[Read More…]
Till some time back Sudha Bharadwaj was known to many friends and admirers as a public interest lawyer who had protected many vulnerable and poor persons, particularly workers from injustice. She also taught law at prestigious institutions and was a source of inspiration for many of her students. How have conditions changed? Now her only daughter Maaysha has been moving[Read More…]
Last week the academic community in Haryana, Punjab, Delhi and other states was greatly distress by the news of the death of Dr. Mahavir Narwal. Many of his former students, particularly those in Hissar , were reduced to tears. He was remembered by teachers as well as students not only for his learning and teaching but also for the important[Read More…]
Hany Babu, an undertrial prisoner in the Bhima Koregaon case, who has been in custody since July 2020 without trial has now been diagnosed as COVID Positive. Hany had developed an acute eye infection in Taloja Jail. He has little or no vision in his left eye due to the swelling, which has spread to the cheek, ear and forehead[Read More…]
Family and friends of activists arrested in Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case write to Hon’ble Chief Minister, Maharashtra state for immediate release of the Bhima Koregaon under trial detainees in light of the threats posed to their life and health due to the raging Covid 19 pandemic. Letter attached. —————–Letter——————— Date: 11/05/21 To, The Honorable CM, Maharshtra Mr. Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray,[Read More…]
An Appeal to Chief Minister of Kerala Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan Sir, Please Intervene… To The Honourable Chief Minister of Kerala Dear Sir, We, the family members of Hany Babu M.T., who is the 12th person to be arrested in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case (NIA Case No. RC-02/2020/NIA/MUM), write to you in desperation and to bring to your kind attention[Read More…]
US Condemns China’s Uighur Policy, while Providing Billions in Foreign Aid to Israel Condemned for Apartheid Policies The US has a long-standing double standard when it comes to condemning nations for human rights violations, including state-terrorist acts, if it considers them enemies. At the same time, the US strongly supports and in some cases provides billions in foreign aid, guaranteed[Read More…]
A video in which Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev is interviewed by Orla Guerin has resurfaced; the interview took place in November 2020. (The BBC version.) Revealing is what is not seen in the BBC version. When Aliyev held up the mirror to Guerin’s “accusation” that there was no free media in Azerbaijan, the BBC responded by censoring Aliyev’s reference to[Read More…]
Dealing with the Forever Prison of America’s Forever Wars The Guantánamo conundrum never seems to end. Twelve years ago, I had other expectations. I envisioned a writing project that I had no doubt would be part of my future: an account of Guantánamo’s last 100 days. I expected to narrate in reverse, the episodes in a book I had just[Read More…]
One of the lesser known aspects of recent Assembly elections which deserves to be known more widely is that the well-known social activist Akhil Gogoi has won the election from Sivasagar constituency from Assam even though he fought the election from behind the bars as he had been arrested following his opposition to Citizens’ Amendment Act ( CAA). Despite being[Read More…]
If you ask those of us living in the Africa, almost all of us will tell you that the “human rights” that matter most are those that are basic to the right to life; food, water, shelter, medical care and education for your children. If you and you family are cold, hungry, sick and illiterate do you think “freedom of[Read More…]
PART I A Poem symptomatic of the Theme of Political Prisoners Let me invert the structure of this article a bit. I have referred to some of the poems in the anthalogy of poems “Dissenting Voices” (1977) which accompanied the 1977 – PUCLDR National Convention of Political Prisoners, at the end of this piece. However, let me begin with one[Read More…]
Blatant Human Rights violations and forcible takeover of land in Mikir Bamuni Grant village for a 15MW Solar Power Project of Azure Power. State officials, especially form local and district administration, facilitated the illegal and unjust takeover of the land. The Land and Forests of Assam belong to the indigenous and adivasi people of Assam and must be returned back[Read More…]
CDRO strongly condemns the declaration of Civil Liberties Committee (CLC) and 15 other organisations by the Telangana state government as unlawful associations under Telangana Public security Act. The Telangana Government, recently through a G. O. Ms.73 dt. 30-3-2021, declared that the following organisations, 1) Telangana Praja Front (TPF), 2.Telangana Asanghatitha Karmika Samkhya (TAKS), 3.Telangana Vidyarthi Vedika (TW), 4.Democratic Students Organisation[Read More…]
Dear Stan, It is rather unusual and certainly not normal to wish someone who is in prison “A Happy Birthday!” One’s birthday cannot be ‘happy’ in prison; however, in wishing you – we celebrate your life: your mission and your message and above all, those whom you have so closely identified with, all these years so “Birthday Greetings to[Read More…]
1,000 + activists, academics, concerned citizens from 20+ states in India and across the globe write to Chief Minister Chhattisgarh. Call for immediate release of Hidme Markam and end state excess on adivasis in Bastar Deeply outraged by the arbitrary incarceration of Hidme Markam, an adivasi human rights defender and environmental activist, for over 40 days, more than a thousand[Read More…]
Written by Saheli Chowdhury and Stephen Lalla “You cannot claim to protect human rights by violating human rights,” asserted Alena Douhan, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Negative Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures on the Enjoyment of Human Rights, while detailing the human cost of the unilateral sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the United States and its allies. Prof. Douhan,[Read More…]
Close to the first anniversary of the arrest of a renowned Indian scholar, members of Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) held a demonstration in Surrey on Sunday, April 18. Anand Teltumbde, a well-known author and columnist, was arrested last year on April 14 under trumped up charges for merely questioning the power and standing up for the poor and[Read More…]
(PHOTO: Pam Africa presents the first issue of The Jamal Journal outside of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office on March 12, 2021. Pam has repeatedly attempted to meet with DA Krasner but he has always refused to meet with her. Photo by Jamal Journal staff photographer Joe Piette) Ona Move! On Saturday April 17, Mumia called his wife Wadiya and[Read More…]
(A new Medical Professionals for Mumia petition co-written by Dr. Alvarez is reprinted at the bottom of this article. Read “A Christmas Cage,” Mumia Abu-Jamal’s personal account of what happened to him on the morning of Dec. 9, 1981) As this article goes to press today, April 15th, Mumia is now scheduled for open heart surgery tomorrow. We only know that he has severe blockages[Read More…]
Written by Nizamuddin Ahmad Siddiqui & Abu Zar Ali The Supreme Court of India, by way of an order dated 8th April 2021, allowed the deportation of Rohingyas from the Indian territory. The Government of India had argued that these people were illegal migrants who had crossed the borders from the neighbouring state; and though they enjoyed the equal protection[Read More…]
(The Press release is by way of a chronicle of the NIA Witch-hunt of Rights Defenders and documents the ongoing saga of the State’s Conspiracy to Silence Dissent) In an unprecedented manner, on 31st March & 1st April, 2021, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided the homes of at least 33 human rights and civil liberties activists, members of women’s[Read More…]
Members of the Telugu Church in Vancouver came together on Tuesday, April 6, to denounce the incarceration of the disabled Indian scholar G.N. Saibaba. A former Delhi University Professor, Saibaba continues to face inhuman conditions in an Indian jail after being convicted in 2017. First arrested on trumped-up charges in 2014, for merely speaking out against the repression of religious[Read More…]
Bhubaneswar: The Ganatantrik Adhikar Suraksha Sangathan (GASS) condemns the witch-hunting of the National Investigation Authority (NIA) officials against the human and democratic rights activists from Andra Pradesh and Telangana in the name of so-called “Maoist links “. It is reported in various National dailies that the NIA officials conducted raids at 31 residential places of the human rights activist and arrested[Read More…]
KV Biju, national coordinator of the Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh, one of groups under the umbrella of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha that has been leading the farmer protests on the borders of the national capital, was among two people thrashed late night on March 30, 2021, while out pasting posters urging voters in Kerala to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party candidates[Read More…]
National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) condemns in the strongest possible terms the high-handed manner of ‘raids’ by the National Investigative Agency (NIA) at the homes of over 16 activists of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, acting on dubious FIRs registered a couple of months back. We express our solidarity with all these activists and advocates who are long standing members[Read More…]
Co-ordination of Democratic Rights Organisations (CDRO) is strongly condemning the raids of NIA(National Investigation Agency) on the houses of Rights Activists and activists belongs to various peoples organisations. NIA has raided the houses of nearly 16 Human Rights, Civil liberties, feminist activists and progressive writers in AP and Telangana. The raids began on 31st March evening and continued till the[Read More…]
The Indian Sedition Law owes its origin to The British Sedition Act of 1661, an Act of Parliament of England which was passed as an Act for safety and Preservation of His Majesties Person and Government against Treasonable and Seditious practices and attempts. However Sedition was abolished in Great Britain through the Coroners and Justice Act of 2009. The Sedition Law in India was inserted into IPC[Read More…]
A welcome move for the United Nations, Security Council and International Community to uphold accountability and rein in Sri Lanka. At the 46th Session of UNHRC, the final Resolution on Sri Lanka was passed with 22 members voting for it with 11 opposing and 14 abstentions In this article some of the Resolutions’ vital recommendations can be analyzed in the[Read More…]
Johanna Fernández, author of The Young Lords: A Radical History and a leading member of the movement to bring Mumia Abu-Jamal and other political prisoners home, reports on Mumia’s COVID-19 diagnosis. History is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that[Read More…]
On March 03, 2021, The New Indian Express carried a news headline: ‘Falsely accused of rape, UP man freed after spending 20 years in jail’ – a very good news report indeed; he is free man finally. Then on March 06, 2021, Inquest News carried the following headline: ‘Surat court acquits 122 alleged SIMI members after 19 years of arrest’[Read More…]
Sometime, just before Monday 22 March (the day the order in response to his bail application was scheduled to be pronounced), Fr. Stan Swamy sent a communication from the confines of the Taloja Prison where he has been incarcerated for near six months now. In that communication he said, “So, we await ‘the ides of March’” From the tone of[Read More…]
The United States of America is victim of its own propaganda. Since being founded, the USA has always depicted itself as a beacon of democracy and liberty, a land of opportunity and hope where a person can accomplish rags to riches through hard work and initiative. For many the American Dream is viewed as a reality and can we[Read More…]
The All India Catholic Union, founded 101 years ago, has called upon the Prime Minister and the Home minister of India to take exemplary action against the vigilante group and the police involved in the harassment of two Sacred Heart Nuns and two student Nuns in a moving train near Jhansi. In Uttar Pradesh. The police, instead of warding off[Read More…]
As his 67th birthday nears, and Pennsylvania political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal faces challenging and potentially fatal health crises, his legal case is still slowly winding its way through the arduous appellate court system. — New court filings for Abu-Jamal’s appeal, Workers World, March 22. Injustice is an industry in the United States of America, just like militarism and prisons. An[Read More…]
Over two dozen US and international civil and human rights organizations have expressed solidarity with Dr Audrey Truschke, Associate Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University against the ongoing systematic campaign of vilification against her including vile threats of extreme violence. In a remarkable build up of broad support for Dr. Truschke, the joint letter thanks Rutgers for unequivocally supporting[Read More…]
Driven out of homeland and in search of a shore to call as one’s own- the story of every refugee fits in this framework. Termed as the most persecuted people of 21st century, life of Rohingya refugees since decades has been all about striking a balance between series of uprooting and stay planted as long as they are on the[Read More…]
Besides granting bail to Octogenarian poet Varavara Rao, one of the most important judicial actions that happened recently is grant of bail to Disha Ravi, who should be remembered on International Women’s Day of 2021. Disha and Varavara Rao were incarcerated for opposing the government’s policies, without proper evidence. The serious threat to personal liberty can only be averted with[Read More…]
The Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr. GN Saibaba organised a press conference at the Press Club of India in Delhi which was addressed by writer Arundhati Roy, former Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha D Raja, General Secretary of the National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) Muralidharan, former President of DUTA Nandita Narain,[Read More…]
On this International Women’s Day let’s take a moment to remember one of JatiIndia’s victims, 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama from Manipur, India who was hauled out of her home at night, brutally tortured, raped and then shot dead by Indian paramilitary forces — the 17th Assam Rifles — on July 11, 2004. There were bullet wounds found in her vagina and[Read More…]
On the eve of International Women’s Day, South Asian activists came together to raise their voices against gendered repression in the world’s so called largest democracy. Organized by the Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) on Sunday, March 7, the rally was held outside the Indian Visa and Passport Application Center in Surrey. The demonstration was mainly focussed on the[Read More…]
In a complaint that was filed by the National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations on December 7, 2020 against the mob violence on Madvi Muka and 27 other victims in Chhattisgarh, the SHRC, Chhattisgarh has ordered the police submission of an action taken report. The case came to light when a Hindutva mob attacked the people during the prayer that[Read More…]
Sometimes a particular fight weaves together so many strands of the oppressive fabric of the USA that it is difficult to figure out what is key and where to begin. Such is the case with the fight to free Bay View Newspaper editor Malik Washington from the clutches of the private, COVID-wracked “halfway-house” prison in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Systemic[Read More…]
China has said that the door to Xinjiang “is always open” for UN High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, after she claimed Muslim Uighurs are suffering arbitrary detention and ill-treatment in the area. The statement was made on Tuesday by the Chinese delegation to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in response to comments by Bachelet claiming an independent investigation needs[Read More…]
Discussion of Islam in Western languages, and latterly much of it in the languages of the Islamic world as well, is bedeviled by polemic and reductionism. Islam itself always seems to be in the dock. One school of thought wishes to prove that Islam as such is responsible for all the abuses and cruelties to be found in the Islamic[Read More…]
PUCL is extremely pleased that the Punjab and Haryana High Court, restored the civil liberties of dalit labour activist Nodeep Kaur of Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan, by granting her bail on 26th February 2021. PUCL demands that co-activist, Shiv Kumar who is grievously injured and visually challenged also be released right away and till his release, he should be[Read More…]
The PUCL welcomes the order of the Delhi Sessions Court on 23.2.21, granting bail to Disha Ravi, a 21 year old resident of Bengaluru who was unjustly incarcerated for offences under Sections 124A, 153A and 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860. Ms. Ravi suffered a series of egregious violations including abduction by the Delhi police from her home[Read More…]
The recent arrest of a young climate activist in India for her association with a guide to passive resistance movements has once again exposed the true colours of the world’s so called largest democracy. Twenty-one-year-old Disha Ravi was arrested by Delhi Police from Bengaluru under conspiracy charges. Her only fault is her link with a toolkit built by the Canada-based[Read More…]
NAPM Stands with the Migrant Labourers of Ahmedabad Demanding Basic Living Facilities The past year has exposed the dire situation of migrant workers across India, who continue to work in precarious conditions. On 15th February, 2021, almost 1000 migrant labourers, members of the labour union Majur Adhikar Manch, gathered in Ahmedabad in front of the District Collector’s office, to submit a[Read More…]
To Secretary National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Sir, I refer to my letters dated 4-1-2021 & 16-1-2021 on violation of human rights of the detainees under the the Foreigners Act, 1946, the Foreigners (Tribunals For Assam) Order, 2006 and the other related laws in force in Assam. I have enclosed here copies of the two letters for your ready reference.[Read More…]
The 101-year-old All India Catholic Union [AICU] is deeply distressed and extremely worried at the hounding of young climate change and environment activists in the country. What makes it more critical is that this form of persecution comes from both State and non-state actors, and at a time when the nation is struggling to come out of the medical and[Read More…]
Members of Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) came together on Sunday, February 14, to raise their voices for the jailed Indian scholar who is being incarcerated despite being disabled below the waist, and having been tested positive for COVID 19. A well-known human rights defender, former Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba is currently serving a life term after having[Read More…]
News that Disha Ravi, a young woman and climate activist from Bengaluru, has been “picked up” – in what is referred to as a “closely guarded operation” of the Delhi police – is highly disturbing both for what appears to be its illegal nature and for the over-reaction of the State that it represents. Earlier today, Disha has been remanded to[Read More…]
The intruder [Gaur] was referring not to a joke Faruqui had just made, but one that he’d uploaded on YouTube in April 2020. It referenced Rama, a widely worshipped Hindu deity, and his wife Sita. “O Lord, my beloved, has come home,” Faruqui starts, dropping lyrics from an enormously popular Bollywood song in which a woman celebrates the return of[Read More…]
In a letter written by Fr. Stan Swamy SJ, from the prison, said, “Dear friends: Peace! Though I do not have many details, from what I have heard, I am grateful to all of you for expressing your solidarity support. I am in a cell approximately 13 feet x 8 feet, along with two more inmates. It has a small[Read More…]
Activist Rona Wilson’s computer was compromised for over 22 months before the Pune Police raided his home in New Delhi and arrested him as co-accused in Bhima Koregaon violence, claimed the Massachusetts-based digital forensics firm Arsenal Digital. The firm in its report said that the 10 letters used first by Pune Police and later the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as[Read More…]
With changes of presidential administrations, radical departures in policy are always exaggerated. Continuity remains, for the most part, a standard feature. It is precisely that continuity being challenged by groups fearful of the continuing prosecution of Julian Assange. The effort by the US Justice Department to extradite Assange from the UK on eighteen charges based on the Espionage Act and[Read More…]
The Kisan Andolan has brought many new faces, young and dynamic activists full of ideological commitments as well as active on the ground which is a positive sign. When the movement started, many people asked me the question about the agricultural workers, Dalit, Adivasis. I was very clear that farmers have now realised that corporate culture is anti-farmer which is[Read More…]
Recently. President Gotabaya Rajapakshe appointed a three man Commission to study and find out if any human rights violations have been revealed in the Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Commission [ LLRC] Paranagama and Udalagama Commissions by ignoring and rejecting the several Reports of the UN Special Rapporteurs including United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon’s Report which detailed comprehensive human rights[Read More…]
On February 3, 2021, Nitin Negi, who runs an electronics goods repair shop in Uttam Nagar, New Delhi, found a toddler outside his shop, no trace of his parents. The shopkeeper asked the little fellow what his name was, what his mother’s name was, and what his father was called. The toddler said he was Nana, his mother Anju and[Read More…]
Demand the immediate release of Nodeep Kaur and Shiv Kumar and cessation of targeting of workers and peasants by the Haryana Police! WSS strongly condemns the arrest and custodial sexual violence perpetrated by the Haryana Police in Kundli Industrial Area against 24-year-old dalit worker Nodeep Kaur On January 12th 2021, the Haryana Police began firing at a workers’ rally[Read More…]
Campaign Against State Repression demands the immediate release of Mandeep Punia and cessation of targeting of journalists! On January 30th, Mandeep Punia, a freelance journalist who worked for The Caravan magazine and Junputh, was dragged across the police barricades at Singhu Border and arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police. While his whereabouts were unknown for a long[Read More…]
Rosa Parks learned to stand her ground for which she was hauled off to jail. This incident wasn’t the first time, nor the last time, that an Afro-American would be incarcerated for an act of civil disobedience. Her arrest was due to this event: A bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama ordered her to give up her seat in the “colored”[Read More…]
Members of Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) came together on Saturday January 30,to mark the birth anniversary of a slain journalist, outside the Indian visa and passport center in Surrey. Gauri Lankesh was a critic of the current right wing Hindu nationalist government. Born on January 29, 1962, she was assassinated in 2017 by suspected Hindu extremists. Her murder[Read More…]
Activists, Advocates and commoners came together virtually to discuss and demand the repeal of the UAPA and underlined the legal, socio-cultural issues around it in a consultation organised by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties. ——– IN a session packed with human stories of abuse and misuse of law where activists and commoners were abused, the People’s Union for Civil[Read More…]
On January 19, a court in Gujarat issued an arrest warrant against eminent journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta in a defamation suit filed by the Adani Group. Since then several leading media organizations and commentators have voiced strong opposition of this action against a senior journalist with many-sided achievements in print journalism, TV and documentary films. Thakurta has also been working[Read More…]
National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) is deeply anguished at the continued incarceration of Akhil Gogoi, well-known peasant leader of Assam. The past two weeks have been particularly poignant, as one the one hand, it marked over 400 days of Akhil in jail, while on the other, his bail application, which came up for hearing after protracted delay was declined[Read More…]
NAPM condemns the police-state atrocities against Karbi and adivasi farmers of ‘Mikir Bamuni Grant’, protesting the ‘questionable purchase’ of their cultivable land in the name of ‘Green Energy’. Stop arrests, police persecution and intimidation, violence against women & villagers: Release all arrested farmers immediately . Govt of Assam must recognize the tenancy rights of farmers under the Assam (Temporarily Settled[Read More…]
On October 2019 Delivering a lecture on the “Indian Economy: Challenges and Prospects” at the Deepak and Neera Raj Centre on Indian Economic Policies , Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman , Finance Minister of the Modi Government , on being asked of the revocation of Article 370 and its economic impact on the state[Read More…]
Campaign Against State Repression demands the immediate release of Nodeep Kaur and strict action against the Haryana Police for targeting workers in the Kundli Industrial Area! On January 12th, the Haryana Police barged into the Majdoor Adhikar Sanghatan (MAS) tent erected in solidarity with the protesting farmers and peasants at the Singhu Border and arrested a 24-year-old dalit woman, a[Read More…]
To Secretary National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) N.Delhi Sir, Kindly refer to my attached letter dated 4-1-2021 on arbitrary detention of Mohammad Nur Hussain, 34, a rickshaw puller in Guwahati who hails from Lawdong village in Assam’s Udalguri district, his wife Sahera Begum, 26, and their two minor children (Ages 7 & 5 years). In June, 2019, on a false charge[Read More…]
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, said little in the statement from her department, which was a good thing, as it might have been dangerously useful. The finding of a UK court on whether Julian Assange would be extradited to the United States was made “on the grounds of his mental health and consequent suicide risk.” She does not care to[Read More…]
“Rescue us from the sub-jail – what you call the media ‘facilitation’ centre,” reads a sign held up by a pair of, what you, JatiIndia — my name for this country of jatis/castes — call “anti-national” hands. Who qualifies as a so-called anti-national? Anyone who resists and exposes JatiIndian supremacy within the boundaries of the country, and in occupied Kashmir.[Read More…]
There was a hope in some quarters after Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled on Monday against an application to extradite Julian Assange to the US, where he faced being locked away for the rest of his life, that she might finally be changing tack. Washington has wanted Assange permanently silenced and made an example of – by demonstrating to other journalists[Read More…]
History, while not always a telling guide, can be useful. But in moments of flushed confidence, it is not consulted and Cleo is forgotten. A crisp new dawn can negate a glance to the past. Having received the unexpected news that Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States for charges of breaching the Espionage Act of 1917 and computer intrusion[Read More…]
The barrister-brewed humour of Edward Fitzgerald QC, one of the solid and stout figures defending a certain Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at the Old Bailey in London, was understandable. Time had worn and wearied the parties, none more so than his client. Fitzgerald had asked for water, but then mused that its absence could hardly have been as bad as[Read More…]
On January 4, 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser gave a ruling wherein she blocked Julian Assange’s extradition to the US under Section 91 of UK’s Extradition Act (EA) 2003, citing health reasons. The US government has decided to appeal this decision. Section 91 of EA 2003 prohibits extradition if “the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust[Read More…]
UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association Clement Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan, and Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Mary Lawlor wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October 2020 expressing grave concern over[Read More…]
The unexpected decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny a US demand to extradite Julian Assange, foiling efforts to send him to a US super-max jail for the rest of his life, is a welcome legal victory, but one swamped by larger lessons that should disturb us deeply. Those who campaigned so vigorously to keep Assange’s case in the spotlight,[Read More…]
A British judge on Monday rejected the United States’ request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face espionage charges, saying he was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected allegations that Assange is being prosecuted for political reasons or would not receive a fair trial in the United States. But[Read More…]
To Secretary National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) N.Delhi Sir, I refer to the distressing news report (https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/assam/assam-nrc-detention-centre-7128303/) on how four members of a rickshaw puller’s family in Assam, unable to secure ready legal assistance, suffered gross violation of their basic human rights, when they were erroneously called “foreigners” in Assam under the Foreigners Tribunal Act, 1941, Foreigners Tribunal Order, 1964 and[Read More…]
The large scale destruction of lives and livelihoods in 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in India and its inept handling by the government has been accompanied by another sort of destruction, much more deliberate and calculated. It is the destruction of the democratic rights organizations (DROs) of India, as part of a vicious plan of the BJP government to[Read More…]
The odds are stacked against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher who faces the grimmest of prospects come January 4. On that day, the unsympathetic judicial head of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser will reveal her decision on the Old Bailey proceedings that took place between September and October this year. Despite Assange’s team being able to marshal an impressive, even astonishing[Read More…]
Written by Surabhi Agarwal, Sandeep Pandey and Kushagra Kumar Sudhir Dhawale, a writer, poet, artist, perennial protestor and a Dalit leader, was arrested and jailed in mid-2018. He remains in jail charged under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and assorted Indian Penal Codes accused of instigating violence at Bhima Koregaon event on 1 Jaunary, 2018. Ironically, the UAPA sections under which[Read More…]
The outrageous murder of Right to Information (RTI) activist Mr Ranjan Kumar Das signals new waves of authoritarian ruling class onslaught on democratic movements in Odisha. The state government has failed to protect the lives of RTI activists. Ranjan was murdered near his village Beruan in the Kendrapara district of Odisha on 31st January 2020. Like his friends, family, fellow[Read More…]
The UNHRC Resolutions 30/1 of 2015 and 40/1 after so much hard work, negotiations and after extension for six years have now produced zero achievement and the endless sufferings of the Tamils and Muslims continues. The Presence of Military at a ratio of one soldier to four civilians [01 : 04 [1 soldier to 4 civilians] Tamils are really under[Read More…]
The forthcoming 46th UNHRC Sessions in February/March 2021 holds the key to uphold accountability, justice and human rights in Sri Lanka while halting Sri Lanka’s history of evasions and denials of its obligations to comply with and implement the recommendations in the 30/1 of 2015 and 40/1 of 2019 Resolutions. It has so far successfully resorted to devalue and delay[Read More…]
In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor G. N. Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”[Read More…]
Children belong in schools, not workplaces. Child labor deprives them of their right to go to school and leads to intergenerational cycles of poverty. According to the 2011 national census of India, there are 10.13 million child laborers in India. Despite the gradual decline in the rates, children are still being used in severe forms of labor. The continuing persistence[Read More…]
France has been almost regularly featured in the front pages of newspapers across the world, but for reasons that is unexpected from a liberal country like itself. Under the leadership of President Emanuel Macron, France has been taking various steps in recent times undermining human rights — something which have been gradually spoiling the country’s image as the torchbearer of[Read More…]
Indian origin Srilankan Tamil community, who were repatriated and settled in a remote Katchal Island in Andaman and Nicobar, are on relay hunger strike for the past one month, demanding proper resettlement and basic livelihood facilities, which were denied to them for the past five decades. Around 5.25 Lakh Indian-origin Srilankan Tamils, who were repatriated to India based on Srimavo-Shastri[Read More…]
Manual scavenging is the age-old unfortunate practice of cleaning, carrying, and disposing human excreta from dry latrines or sewers into the disposal sites. Despite prohibitive legislations in place, a government survey from 2019, carried out across 170 districts, found that over 54000 people actively engage in the practice. In 2019 alone, 110 people died while cleaning septic tanks and sewers.[Read More…]
No person in the world would tout the practice of manual scavenging to be beneficial to society or a desirable outcome to be pursued. Many people would feel nauseated just by thinking about the activity. With an exceedingly low approval amongst the masses, one would think that manual scavenging would have been eradicated from the nation by now. The reality[Read More…]
None would ever have imagined that an octogenarian Stan Swamy would face such a harsh treatment for his committed work for the Adivasis of Jharkhand. When the governments of the world over honor activists who work in tiring circumstances and devote their time to areas far away from their places than we must realise that it is not for money[Read More…]
An Analysis of a decade of arrests, detentions, summons, interrogations and show-cause notices against journalists in India 2010-20 The year 2020 has been a bad one for journalists in India. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused illness and death, and the lockdown resulted in salary cuts and loss of livelihood due to mass retrenchments effected by media houses. The killing and[Read More…]
On December 10, we celebrated Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘Who will police the police’ is a big question for which the world could not give any answer till today. But Supreme Court on 2 December 2020 tried to find a solution to this problem in CCTV cameras, which probably can police the police. On December 10, we celebrated Universal[Read More…]
Written by Priyanka Preet, Sandeep Pandey, Kushagra Kumar Gautam Navlakha is a famed author, civil rights activists, human rights activist, journalist, an Editorial Consultant at the Economic and Political Weekly, probably the most internationally well known social sciences journal published out of India, the Convenor of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir and the Secretary[Read More…]
Written by Nilkantha Mandal, Sandeep Pandey and Kushagra Kumar All his life he fought valiantly to defend the rights of the people belonging to marginalized sections of society who were persecuted by the State or people who would stand up for their rights and consequently were targeted by the ruling elite but in the end he paid a price for[Read More…]
Dear Father Stan Swami, It would be silly for me to start by hoping you are well, for I know about the state of your ill health and the complete disregard of the prison authorities in this respect. However, I have been moved to write to you by the Xmas season that is upon us. I am saddened that due[Read More…]
Donald Trump’s Travel-ban, which was first issued in January 2017, was a blessing in disguise for many, who perhaps would have ended in similar situation to those kids on the southern border. It is written in the Atlantic (June 19, 2018) that when the children are separated from their parents, they’re sent to facilities where they are kept in chain-link[Read More…]
Sudihrbhai (name changed) is a tea vendor in Ahmedabad and since the time first curfew was imposed he has been struggling to survive. Now when the country has opened up, his earnings are no where near the pre-lockdown levels. Earlier he used to make about Rs. 500 on daily basis but now it is less than Rs. 200. People like[Read More…]
It was 9 pm when Banarasi Mushahar, 55 was sitting with family friend Rampreet Nat picked up his night meal to go to the agricultural land he was guarding for the last seven years. In the typical village terminology, it is called Seermai which means an arrangement where in lieu of your work for guarding or agricultural work, the owner[Read More…]
The number of figures extolling the merits of Britain’s Westminster system and how it supposedly embodies a glorious model of democracy are too numerous to mention. This is despite exploits by the government of Boris Johnson, marked by the appointment of unelected advisers with enviable, unaccountable powers and a record of assault on Parliament’s scrutineering functions. “As the government blunders[Read More…]
Governments that issue press releases about the abuse of human rights tend to avoid close gazes at the mirror. Doing so would be telling. In the case of Australia, its record on dealing with refugees is both abysmal and cruel. It tends to be easier to point the finger at national security laws in Hong Kong and concentration camps in[Read More…]
If you cannot modify something you have to destroy it completely and rebuild. We need to destroy the whole caste system – Mr. Bezwada Manual Scavenging: a heinous practice While scrolling through YouTube, a documentary made by Samdish Bhatia on Manual scavengers in Mumbai stunned me. Immediately, multiple questions were in front of me. What is manual scavenging & why[Read More…]
Introduction Over the past nine months, the entire news and social media has been flooded with reports of rising cases of Covid-19 and the impact it has had on India’s economy. Millions of people lost their jobs or were forced to take pay cuts. Migrants were forced to walk hundreds of kilometers back home and economic activity in rural areas[Read More…]
The jingoist nation and nationalism have got weaponized by the political class to destroy dissent and polarize people. The mass frenzy has accomplished complete derationalization and inversion of meanings where destroyers of the nation become deshbhakts (patriots) and selfless servers of people become deshdrohis (traitors). As I see my India being ruined, it is with a feeble hope that I[Read More…]
The intellectuals whose release we are demanding are those who have stood firm against the oppressive and communal attacks waged by the Modi government on Indian society. They have made huge sacrifices, and are now braving a life in prison but they have never shied away from their duty to speak truth to power and communicate this truth to the[Read More…]
A Nomad is a community member who regularly moves from one place to another without any fixed habitat. Known as the wandering community, the members of nomadic tribes were generally entertainers and transporters historically. The Denotified tribes (DNTs), a part of a wandering community, are the tribes that were originally listed under the ‘Criminal Tribes act’ of 1871. Currently, there[Read More…]
Human Rights Day is observed on December 10 every year. It is the day when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adapted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The document is made available therewith in more than 500 languages and is the most translated document in the world. ‘Recover better – stand up for human rights’ is the[Read More…]
As we celebrate the International Human Rights Day, it is worthwhile to ask if a missing soldier of the country has any of rights that we commemorate with fanfare. This might sound an insulting query in a country which swears by the breath, life, and death of its soldiers. This is rightly so, for, the soldier is the cream of[Read More…]
On the death anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar – the architect of the Indian constitution – South Asian activists came together to raise their voices against growing repression of religious minorities and political dissidents in the world’s so called largest democracy. Organized by the Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) on Sunday, December 6, the rally was called in response[Read More…]
In November, 67 Adivasi, Dalit and human rights activists were booked by the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana police under UAPA and charged with sedition for alleged “maoist links”. In late-November, police officials in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana booked 67 Adivasi, Dalit and human rights activists under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and under sedition charges for alleged “maoist[Read More…]
We, as a group working towards achieving a safer and more just society for women, are writing this open letter to you in great dismay at some recent developments in Andhra Pradesh state. As you are aware, the alleged gang-rape case of 11 adivasi women of the Kondh tribe by 13 men of AP Special Police personnel during a raid[Read More…]
More than 40 million people worldwide are victims of modern slavery, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). In addition, more than 150 million children are subject to child labor, accounting for almost one in ten children around the world. “Modern slavery is used as an umbrella term covering practices such as forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage, and human[Read More…]
Another Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed by an elaborately planned and executed ambush. The complexity of the attack and the resources required to carry it out strongly indicate a state actor. Fingers of blame quickly pointed at a likely assassin: Israel. The United States was probably in some form of collaboration since it is widely[Read More…]
Can demand of justice for rape survivors be called ‘anti-national’? Can providing food and shelter to Adivasi women who have come from remote areas to depose in a criminal trial mandated by the law be a crime? The present allegation of ‘anti-national’ against VS Krishna of HRF (AP and Telengana) and other human rights and dalit rights activist by the[Read More…]
To Hon’ble Justice (Retd.) H.L. Dattu Chairperson National Human Rights Commission of India New Delhi Email: chairnhrc@nic.in Cc Mr C. S. Mawri Assistant Registrar and Focal Point on Human Rights Defenders National Human Rights Commission of India New Delhi Email: hrd-nhrc@nic.in Re: Request to raise serious concerns over the ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders in India Dear Justice (Retd.) Dattu,[Read More…]
With 16,000 mosques damaged in recent years, the autonomous region of Xinjiang now has the lowest number of Muslim houses of worship since the 1960s Cultural Revolution (AFP) To persecute the Uyghur Muslims, the demolition of mosques across China in recent times has drawn an international outcry. It started with the detention of the Muslims in internment camps in Xinjiang[Read More…]
The jailed scholar and activist, who is being incarcerated by the world’s so called largest democracy, has been recognized as this year’s person by a Vancouver-based online magazine that covers alternative politics. Radical Desi has declared Anand Teltumbde as Person of the Year 2020 for being in the news after his arrest on trumped up charges. Teltumbde has authored many[Read More…]
Kerala on the 3rd of November has witnessed yet another instance of an alleged encounter between Maoists and the state police force. The incident occurred at the Bappanam Mala forest area that comes under the South Wayanad Forest Division, in the northern district of Wayanad. According to police, they were on regular morning patrol of the area, when the Maoists[Read More…]
Co-Written by Surabhi Agarwal & Sandeep Pandey A compassionate human being, always popular among his friends and colleagues because of his friendly nature and human sensitivity, 33-year-old Mahesh Raut, champion of the democratic rights of the marginalised Adivasi people of Gadchiroli, Maharashtra has been in prison for over 2 years now. He was arrested in connection with the violence on[Read More…]
When the state-power begins to fear the pen, tongue and lips, it resorts to undemocratic suppression of dissent National Investigation Agency (NIA) is again in the news for its actions! Like earlier times, this time also their targets have been individuals and organisations that are well-known as defenders of human rights. In the last few days, the NIA has[Read More…]
In Conversation with Michael Taylor, Director, Global Secretariat, International Land Coalition, Rome Michael Taylor is the Director of the global secretariat of the International Land Coalition (ILC). ILC is hosted by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a UN Agency in Rome, Italy. Michael is a citizen of Botswana, with a PhD in Social Anthropology. He has worked on[Read More…]
Background to Bhima Koregaon Event The 1818 Battle of Koregaon is of importance for Dalits. On 1st January, 1818, 800 troops of the British Army, with large number of Mahars, Dalit Community of Maharashtra predominant among them, defeated a numerically superior force of the Peshwa Baji Rao II. A victory pillar (Vijay Sthamb) was erected in Koregaon by the British, commemorating[Read More…]
A webinar was organised with major initiative of Indian Christians for Democracy on 25th October, Sunday, 2020 from 11.00 to 1.00 pm. Dr. Fr. Prakash Louis the founder of the Indian Christians for Democracy forum initiated, planned and executed this webinar. Roselle Solomon and Ranjan Solomon hosted the webinar. Dr. John Dayal moderated the webinar. The objectives of the webinar[Read More…]
It is good to see Jharkhand chief Minister Hemant Soren speaking so powerfully against the arrest of Father Stan Swamy. Many other voices are speaking against his arrest. The 81 year old Stan has been working in Jharkhand for years and has Center at Bagaicha has been a place for the Adivasis particularly those who have been victim of the[Read More…]
Introduction PUCL organised a virtual Press Conference on 21st October, 2020 to condemn the illegal arrest of Fr. Stan Swamy of Jharkhand and 15 other activists in the Bhima Koregaon case. The Press Conference was to create a platform for different civil society groups and political parties to jointly condemn the brazen abuse of UAPA by the Central Government[Read More…]
NEW DELHI, October 20: UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has appealed to the Government of India to safeguard the rights of human rights defenders and NGOs, and their ability to carry out their crucial work on behalf of the many groups they represent.In a statement issued in Geneva on Tuesday, Bachelet expressed regret at the tightening of[Read More…]
Standing for justice is bad news for the powers that be. That is why the arrest of the 83-year old Jesuit Stan Swamy had to come sometime because he has fought for justice all his life. But when it really came it shocked those who know him. It had to come because shooting the messenger of justice is basic to[Read More…]
Dr. G. N. Saibaba, a professor in Delhi University, is incarcerated under the draconian UAPA since 2014 and is in Nagpur Jail. He has 90% disability and this prolonged suffering in jail, under an abysmal condition with inadequate medical treatment, has produced grave physical ailments including gradual paralysis of his arms due to neglect. Repeated denial of parole or[Read More…]
Dear Rachael Maskell MP, I am William Nicholas Gomes; I am your constituent and a human rights activist and freelance journalist. I am writing about the Indian Jesuit priest and human rights defender, Fr Stan Swamy SJ, who has been taken into custody by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India for alleged Maoist links. Fr Stan is 83 years old[Read More…]
Abstract Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948 is a basic and most significant document. It is not only about indivisible, inalienable, basic human rights. Several people in South Asia discredit human rights as the foreign, Eurocentric, or Western and the male concept, however, in contradiction, this piece argues that firstly, the human rights as proclaimed in the UDHR is[Read More…]
CDRO is shocked to hear the news of the arrest of Father Stan Swamy in connection with the infamous Bhima-Koregaon (BK) case. We note with disgust that Father Stan Swamy is the latest victim of the witch hunt operation carried out by the BJP-government in the name of BK case. It is a well-known fact today that the NIA,[Read More…]
On October 8th, a day before the deadline for filing the charge-sheet in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgaar Parishad case elapsed, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested the 83-year-old Jesuit priest and veteran tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy. He was forcibly taken from Ranchi to Mumbai and produced before the Sessions Court on October 9th. Alongside this, the NIA presented a[Read More…]
We are going through one of the most dismal times in the history of post-independence India. Anyone who resists, anyone who speaks for the greater common good, for truth and justice, is getting hounded. Hate campaigns are unleashed against them or they are implicated under fabricated charges and thrown into prison. At present, it is extremely unfortunate that many academics,[Read More…]
The Universal Declaration for Human Rights [UDHR] was adopted on 10th December 1948 by the United Nations at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. The UDHR contains thirty Articles. Articles 1 and 2 outline the philosophical claim of the UDHR and emphasise that human beings are born free in equal dignity and are entitled to all rights and freedoms without[Read More…]
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL INDIA HALTS ITS WORK ON UPHOLDING HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDIA DUE TO REPRISAL FROM GOVERNMENT OF INDIA The complete freezing of Amnesty International India’s bank accounts by the Government of India which it came to know on 10 September 2020, brings all the work being done by the organization to a grinding halt. The organisation has been compelled[Read More…]
On 18 August 2020, Bahujan journalist Prashant Kanojia was arrested by Uttar Pradesh police. He is being held in custody over a tweet he had forwarded, which he had immediately deleted upon learning that it contained fake news. This is a routine social media behaviour that one observes on the platform almost every day. However, this was used as a[Read More…]
Hany Babu was my M.Phil supervisor from 2017-19 in the Department of English at Delhi University. I was working on conceptions of citizenship, broadly speaking. Whenever my analysis veered off into being too abstract or ahistorical, he invariably reminded me of the concreteness of the term and it’s efficacy. Yes, its efficacy; for him it was always a concept that[Read More…]
By Atul and Sandeep Pandey Arun Ferreira is a civil rights activist and human rights lawyer. He has been behind bars since June 6, 2018, when he was arrested in connection to the Bhima Koregaon event held earlier that year. Like many other activists, he was slapped with Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, sedition and other anti-terror related offenses allegedly for[Read More…]
MAHILA KISAN ADHIKAAR MANCH (MAKAAM) or Forum for Women Farmers’ Rights condemns and expresses deep concern over the increasing incidence of violence, harassment and atrocities against adivasi and other traditional forest dwellers especially women forest dwellers in Uttarakhand. The Forest Rights Act 2006 proclaims the responsibility of the state to defend and uphold the rights of Adivasis and Other Traditional[Read More…]
Allahabad High Court pointed out how the detention of Dr Kafeel Khan was bad, not based on material, without reading the complete text of speech against CAA, and ordered his release. The Supreme Court requested the Allahabad High Court on August 11, to decide the question of release of Kafeel Khan, as early as possible. A campaign to release[Read More…]
Paramilitary groups continued to pose by far the biggest threat to Colombia’s community leaders and human rights defenders last year, says a newly released report. In its annual report, Somos Defensores (SD), a human rights organization, registered a drop in assassinations of social leaders from 155 in 2018 to 124 in 2019, but an increase in death threats that went[Read More…]
September 15. Central Criminal Court, London. Today, witnesses appearing in the extradition trial of Julian Assange fleshed out some points touched upon the previous day: the fate awaiting the WikiLeaks publisher in the US prison system, and the political nature of process. Before commencing, Judge Vanessa Baraitser was a touch peeved. She noted that one defence witness who took the[Read More…]
The first of PUCL Maharashtra’s series of discussions on the impact of the lockdown on civil liberties, examined the rights of prisoners and the responsibility of the State to ensure the safety of all its citizens. The speakers for the session were Maja Daruwalla, Board Member and Senior Advisor, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Mihir Desai, Senior Counsel and Convenor,[Read More…]
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, he knew he had done nothing wrong but one morning, he was arrested. These opening lines of Franz Kafka’s classic novel, The Trial, published just over a century ago, in 1925, still ring true. Joseph K, the novel’s protagonist, is cashier at a bank. On his 30th birthday, two unidentified agents arrest[Read More…]
The recent order by the Supreme Court 3-judge bench that threatens the homes and livelihoods of an estimated 48,000 families living along 70 km of railway tracks because they were “encroachments which are there in the safety zones,” has understandably raised many concerns. To place this order in context it is necessary to understand the trajectory of the courts and[Read More…]
The fine circus that is British justice resumed at London’s Central Criminal Court on September 7, with the continued extradition proceedings against Julian Assange. Judge Vanessa Baraitser was concerned that approximately 40 individuals had received remote video access they apparently should not have. “In error, the court sent out orders to others who had sought access. I remain concerned about[Read More…]
To The Honorable Chairperson National Commission for Scheduled Tribes New Delhi Dear Sir Sub: Online harassment and caste violence against Dr. Murmu Dr. Maroona Murmu is an Associate Professor of the Department of History, Jadavpur University. In the Brahmanical landscape of academia in West Bengal, she is one of the few Adivasi women to have catapulted into success and prominence.[Read More…]
We have come to know that our dear friend and comrade Dr Partho Sarothi Ray, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), has been summoned by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case. He has been asked to present himself before the investigators in Mumbai on 10 September at 11am. Partho[Read More…]
On this coming Father’s Day I want to salute three fathers whose sons, who have not broken Australian law, were and are betrayed by the Australian government: Terry Hicks the father of David Hicks incarcerated in a cage in Camp X-ray Guantanamo Bay for 5 years; John Shipton the father of Julian Assange who is presently incarcerated by the British[Read More…]
Co-Written by Atul and Sandeep Pandey Rona Wilson is a prison rights activist who has been in jail since April 2018 and denied bail several times. The Pune Police raided his home in Delhi on April 17, 2018, and arrested him subsequently for his alleged role in the Bhima Koregaon violence in January that year. A few months later, the[Read More…]
In India’s dark history of human rights violations, 28th August 2018 has become a very important day. On this day, Sudha Bharadwaj was arrested by Pune police from her home in Faridabad. On the same day, Gautam Navlakha from Delhi, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves from Mumbai and Varavara Rao from Hyderabad were also arrested. Although Gautam Navlakha was granted[Read More…]
On September 7, Julian Assange will be facing another round of gruelling extradition proceedings, in the Old Bailey, part of a process that has become a form of gradual state-sanctioned torture. The US Department of Justice hungers for their man. The UK prison authorities are doing little to protect his health. The end result, should it result in his death,[Read More…]
Over 70 organizations and several individuals from around the country endorsed the call initiated by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties to conduct protest actions from August 28 to September 5, considering the deterioration in Civil Liberties in the recent past. This call was given marking August 28 as the day when two years ago, 5 human rights activists –[Read More…]
Shoma Sen was arrested on June 6, 2018, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for charges which include inciting violence, being involved in raising funds for the banned CPI (Maoist) party and harbouring its fugitive members. Prof Sen is a highly vocal and committed women’s rights activist who has been involved with a wide range of social and political causes.[Read More…]
Sanjeet and Siddharth of PEACE 1 Zone were brutally beaten by Bajrang Dal members near Chatra, when they were invited by a believer to pray for his unwell relative. Mr. Lakhan is a believer of GEMS Church at Garhwa and he took Bro. Sanjeet and Bro. Siddharth on 22nd August 2020, to a village Kharik (which is 7 kms away[Read More…]
Keeping under trials in prison for two years deliberately stalling bail opportunities, with no effort for beginning the trial instead exposing them to serious health condition is a gross violation of rights of prisoners. This is further heightened in times of a global pandemic given the crowded situation in prisons. Sudha Bharadwaj has been incarcerated along with eleven others falsely[Read More…]
It has been more than one month since Sharjeel Usmani, National secretary of Fraternity Movement and Anti-CAA Activist imprisoned in Aligarh Jail. He was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police from his house in Azamgarh on 8th July 2020. On that day, 5 people claimed to be from the Crime Branch detained him without an arrest warrant or memo and[Read More…]
The debate about the prison system is nothing new. There are thousands of articles, studies and papers related to this particular subject. The central aim of this article is to continue the discussion on the questions like social basis of crime, failure of current system in place to deal with crime, and the long standing demand of a reformative prison[Read More…]
It is high time and urgent need for the United Nations, UNHRC, ICC and the International Community to find remedial justice to the oppressed Tamils in Sri Lanka. The following facts prove beyond doubt that there was an institutionalized and systematic genocide of Tamils from independence in 1948. Disfranchisement of plantation workers of Indian origin .Within a year of independence, in[Read More…]
An unwarranted attack on a 72-year-old Christian man influenced by a hate speech made on Facebook was reported to Persecution Relief by a source who wishes to stay anonymous. The following is the information we received. *Anand is a faithful leader at our church and conducts weekly cell group meetings at different homes. He is 72 years old and also[Read More…]
On the ten year anniversary of the United Nations historic vote to recognize water as a basic human right, Barlow reflects on where we go from here. A demonstrator holds a sign during a Detroit water shutoffs rally in 2014. (Photo: uusc4all/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Ten years ago today, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution affirming that water and sanitation[Read More…]
A “state”, according to Max Weber, is “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (WEBER, M.: “Politics as a Vocation” in GERTH, H.H.; WRIGHT, Mills, C. (eds.): From Marx Weber: essays in sociology, London, Routledge, 1991 [1948], p. 78). A “nation”, on the other hand, according to Montserrat[Read More…]
Stop the witch-hunt of academics and activists in the name of Bhima Koregaon! Immediately release all political prisoners! The Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) condemns the summons by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to Dr. PK Vijayan and Rakesh Ranjan, faculty members in Delhi University, in connection with the Bhima Koregaon-Elgaar Parishad case yesterday. Following the recent arrest of Delhi[Read More…]
The Punjabi Press Club of British Columbia (PPCBC) has come out with a strong statement against assaults on three reporters by the supporters of ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in India. The August 11 incident happened in New Delhi, the national capital of the world’s so-called largest democracy. Three journalists, including one Sikh, one Muslim and an unidentified[Read More…]
Four Christian women including a minor girl were dragged out on the street and mercilessly beaten up by religious fanatics in the Indian state of Haryana. The severity of the attack was such that it left one woman with a broken leg, one with stitches to her forehead and two others unconscious with severe head and body injuries. “I was[Read More…]
Undoubtedly, sports and physical activities are essential for our mental and physical wellbeing. But how can a sport help in addressing sexual and reproductive health issues of the youth, and social ills like sexual and other forms of gender-based violence? It looks somewhat incredible. Well Grassroot Soccer, an adolescent health organization, seems to be doing exactly that. It has leveraged[Read More…]
National Campaign to Educate the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs! Post them the Preamble to the Indian Constitution! Campaign Starts on 15th August 2020! For the last two months the national capital New Delhi has witnessed a very curious phenomenon. Of a steady stream of professors, students, filmmakers, feminists, Gandhians and human rights activists called by the Delhi Police’s Special[Read More…]
To the world India is known as the largest democracy in the world. If you considered holding elections at regular interval as the only criteria of being a democracy you can give this tag. But, the dismal condition of freedom of speech and the right to dissent in the country is a real cause of concern for the activists and[Read More…]
The nationwide uprising against police brutality has completely changed the conversation around policing and safety. The demand to defund police which would have been deemed unthinkable in the mainstream not long ago, but are now being taken up as official policy in towns and cities across the country. At this moment, it is crucial to expand the conversation to include[Read More…]
Fidelity could not just be about sex. I picture to myself as an activist young woman, bright, ambitious. Because, your womb has taken a precious stead in the universe. Sometimes, I think not to come out from this place. But, your love doesn’t let me stay inside your womb. Because, you want to show something that you have already been[Read More…]
(1) “Members of the police shall exercise their functions, powers and duties as impartial servants of the general public and the Government of the day. … No member of the police may be ordered or forced to exercise his other functions or powers or deploy police resources to promote or undermine any political party or interest group, or any member[Read More…]
PUCL Welcomes the NHRC directions to the Chhattisgarh Government, Ordering one lakh rupees compensation to those wrongly booked and illegally arrested. The PUCL welcomes the decision of the NHRC against the State of Chhattisgarh on its complaint number 667/33/20/2016 filed in 2016, which directs the Government of Chhattisgarh to pay compensation of Rs. one lakh each, to 13 members of[Read More…]
After Prof. G. N. Saibaba’s arrest a 17-person Committee for the Defence and Release of Saibaba was constituted to expedite his bail and also that all his legal and constitutional rights stay protected. With the arrest of Prof. Hany Babu, member of this Committee on 28 July, 2020 and the subsequent raid on 2 August, 2020 at his house by[Read More…]
Religious Radicals prevented a bereaved Christian family from burying their dead at a village in Jharkhand. They told the family that they could perform the last rites of 52-year-old *Vilas Singh, if it was done recognizing the religious beliefs of the village. Persecution Relief spoke to the nephew of the deceased, *Ramu Singh. He explained that his late uncle was[Read More…]
If the insensitivity being shown by the Indian state towards a physically challenged former Delhi University Professor is any indication, the government of the world’s so called largest democracy lacks compassion. Wheelchair bound G.N. Saibaba, who is ninety percent disabled below the waist, is incarcerated after being convicted for life after being branded as Maoist sympathizer. He is among several[Read More…]
In yet another horrific case of Christian persecution, a Christian family was mercilessly beaten up by a mob of raging religious fanatics in the Indian state of Jharkhand. The mob of over 40 fanatics led by the village headman not only assaulted the family but savagely vandalized their home and belongings, falsely accusing the family of converting villagers to Christianity.[Read More…]
Delhi University professor Apoorvanand was questioned on Monday by Delhi police in connection with Delhi riots. Apoorvanand said his phone was seized for investigation and he spent five hours with the police. Apoorvanand, who teaches Hindi at Delhi University, urged the police to conduct a thorough, just and fair investigation into the violence. This is the full text of Apoorvanand’s[Read More…]
Press Statement by Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr G N Saibaba The Committee for the Defence and Release of G N Saibaba strongly condemns the unwarranted raid on 2nd August 2020 by officers of the National Intelligence Agency, on the house of Dr Hany Babu, a member of the Committee. Dr Babu was arrested on the 28th[Read More…]
Co-Written by Dr Karen Gabriel and P K Vijayan Gokarakonda Suryavathi died of grief on the afternoon of 01 August 2020, at 1.40 pm. Of course the medical cause of her death – high-grade Non-Hodgkinson’s Lymphoma – will be cited incontrovertibly in all official documents. But those of us who have known the tale from the teller, and from those[Read More…]
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) expresses its outrage and condemnation at the recent arrest of renowned linguist, Dr Hany Babu M. T., faculty member in Delhi University, by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). It shows once again the Indian State’s desperate and diabolic endevour to continuously silence intellectuals and criminalise those questioning its actions and holding different views,[Read More…]
Janhastakshep takes the serious note of, opposes and condemns the arbitrary and vindictive act of the government of India of arresting Prof. Hany Babu a popular teacher of Delhi University, latest in the process of arresting the academicians, litterateurs and intellectuals to stifle the voices of dissent and create an atmosphere of terror in the country. Hany Babu has been[Read More…]
We, the undersigned former and current students of Prof Hany Babu M.T., condemn his arrest by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday and stand in firm solidarity with him. Prof. Babu is a noted academic, a well known anti-caste activist, and a member of the committee formed for the defence of G.N. Saibaba, a former Delhi University professor who[Read More…]
In a shocking series of unfortunate events, yet another Pastor was found dead in the Zira Tehsil of Ferozepur, a district that is situated in the Indian state of Punjab. The body of Balwinder Bagicha Bhatti was discovered by a few people by the roadside on the 27th of July 2020. Joseph and Alisha, both Persecution Relief Coordinators of Punjab,[Read More…]
Co-Ordination of Democratic rights Organisations (CDRO) condemns the arrest of Delhi University Prof. HanyBabuand demands his immediate release after dropping the false charges levied against him. His arrest is part of the Modi’s Government attempt in silencing the dissent. Prof. HanyBabuis arrested by NIA on 28thJuly2020 on the allegation that he was propagating Naxal activities and Maoist ideology and was[Read More…]
The Ganatantrik Adhikar Surakhya Sangatan (GASS, Odisha) and Human Rights Forum (HRF, AP&Telangana) strongly deplore the arrest in Mumbai of Prof Hany Babu Musaliyarveettil Tharayil by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Prof Babu, who teaches at the Department of English, Delhi University was recently summoned to Mumbai by the NIA for questioning in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar[Read More…]
The book of hours on Julian Assange is now being written. But the scribes are far from original. Repeated rituals of administrative hearings that have no common purpose other than to string things out before the axe are being enacted. Of late, the man most commonly associated with WikiLeaks’ publication project cannot participate in any meaningful way, largely because of[Read More…]
Hate Crimes against Christians in India have risen by an alarming 40.87%, in Spite of the Nation-Wide Lockdown, announces Persecution Relief in its Half Yearly Report of 2020 which was released today. The Report records 293 cases of hate crimes against Christians including 5 rapes and 6 murders. Persecution Relief aims to sound an alarm about the intensifying hostility against[Read More…]
Stop the witch-hunt of human rights defenders by the NIA! Immediately release all political prisoners! The Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) condemns the arrest of Professor Hany Babu MT at Mumbai by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the Bhima Koregaon-Elgaar Parishad case. Despite the surging cases of COVID-19 in both Delhi and Mumbai, Prof. Babu of the[Read More…]
Covid-19 presents a new muddle and risks for sex workers, pandemic of poverty has affected the lives of sex workers; Desperation has kicked in for vulnerable, undocumented workers unable to access help, it has left them with distress, uncertainty, with social distancing rules getting more stringent there is a fear of losing livelihood, health issues troubling, as sex work is[Read More…]
It has been almost 19 years since the USA, joined by its western allies (esp. the UK, Canada and Australia), launched the so-called global war on terror (GWOT) invading first Afghanistan, soon after 9/11 for Taliban government’s sheltering of Al-Qa’ida and its leader OBL, and then Iraq (in 2003) under the false pretext of destroying the weapons of mass destruction,[Read More…]
A group of Christians were brutally attacked by a gang of raging religious goons at midnight on the 21st of July 2020. This attack took place in the Indian state of Odisha in a village named Badaguda which features in the district of Koraput. Speaking to Persecution Relief, Pr. Ayuba Khora, the local Pastor said, “The goons broke into the[Read More…]
July 28 marks 50 years of the extra-judicial killing of an 82-year-old former Indian freedom fighter by none other than the police force of his own nation. Bujha Singh, who deserved state honours for participating in the struggle to rid India of the British occupation, was instead murdered by the police for his association with revolutionary communist movement sparked by[Read More…]
The agony of the Pet dog of Jayaraj and Bennix the two who were done to death in Police Custody , is seeking the spine of Justice. The unbearable tragedy has rendered Tomy, the pet dog reared affectionately by Bennix and Jayaraj. totally drained and exhausted. Jayaraj and Bennix were brutally tortured and killed in Police Custody by the[Read More…]
The PIL Watch Group views with serious concern the reporting in the print edition of Hindustan Times (HT) dated 25 July, 2020 (later uploaded on its website) regarding Gautam Navlakha’s interrogation by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) about Bhima Koregaon case. Questions arise: Was it a planted story in the HT as no other newspaper or news agency carried[Read More…]
Co-Written by Atul and Sandeep Pandey Professor Sudha Bharadwaj has been in jail since August 2018. She was taken into police custody on 26 August 2018 on suspicion of being involved in Maoist terror activities after Republic TV claimed that she had allegedly written a letter to Maoists and was conspiring to create public disorder and unrest in India. The[Read More…]
If the insensitivity being shown towards a senior revolutionary poet by the Indian state is any indication, the government of the world’s so-called largest democracy lacks compassion. 81-year-old Varavara Rao, a well-respected political activist and poet, has been recently tested positive for COVID 19, leaving his family and admirers deeply worried. In spite of old age and poor health, he[Read More…]
Political Resolution Proposed by the Democratic Alliance for the Immediate Attention of the Public and the Government against the Atrocities against Rehna Fathima. We, who work in artistic, cultural and socio-political arenas strongly protest against the atrocities perpetrated by the patriarchal values of society and the government against Rehna Fathima who has been working for the democratic rights, gender equality[Read More…]
To, Honourable Justice H L Dattu Chairman National Human Rights Commission New Delhi Subject: Plea for your Intervention for Shifting Dr. G N Saibaba to a Medical Facility for Treatment Respected Justice Dattu, The National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) is a cross disability rights organisation with state level affiliates working in various states in the country.[Read More…]
Context “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of “justice” but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom[Read More…]
19 July 2020 marked 100 days of the wrongful incarceration of Gulfisha Fatima, a young student and community educator from Seelampur, in North-East Delhi who has been falsely charged under the draconian UAPA law for defending constitutional values and peacefully resisting the anti-people CAA-NRC-NPR project. Thousands took to Twitter to condemn #100DaysofInjustice and demand #FreeGulfisha – sharing pictures, posters, solidarity messages and memories of the exuberant Gulfisha,[Read More…]
The horrific incident of brutalities unleashed by the Madhya Pradesh police on a Dalit farmer’s family in Guna yesterday did not catch the attention of India’s mainstream media initially and got noticed only when a campaign on twitter started trending seeking chief minister Shiv Raj Singh Chauhan’s resignation. Today, the ‘national’ media too reported the story and as per latest[Read More…]
Indians Abroad for Pluralist India honoured New Westminster City Councillor Chuck Puchmayr with a medal of courage on Sunday, July 19, for bringing a motion against India’s highly discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The medal was presented to Puchmayr by the IAPI President Parshottam Dosanjh and another member of the group, and prominent poet Amrit Diwana, at an event held[Read More…]
The movement to release political prisoners is gaining steam nationwide. There are 75-76 political prisoners in the various districts of West Bengal. Most of them were associated with the historic mass movements of Nandigram and Lalgarh. There are also some Maoist activists who were directly associated with the party who were caught when they entered the state. All of them[Read More…]
We have watched with growing horror the treatment meted out to the 81 years old Revolutionary Poet, Varavara Rao by the Indian state. Varavara Rao has been incarcerated in Taloja jail in Mumbai for almost two years. According to the latest media reports and press conferences held by his family, Varavara Rao was exhibiting signs of serious illness, with the[Read More…]
If you know Dr. Kafeel Khan then chances are, you have read the letter that he allegedly wrote to his family from Mathura district jail where he is currently locked up. He was slapped with the National Security Act after reportedly making an inciting speech during anti-CAA protests at the Aligarh Muslim University. Further, a case was registered against him[Read More…]
We, the Women Poets of Kerala condemn the unconstitutional custody of the people’s poet, Varavara Rao which has led to the situation of the poet becoming covid positive. We believe the case of his arrest to be groundless and against the norms of the constitution. Citizen groups and Human Rights activists of national and international repute has repeatedly reminded the[Read More…]
A grim scenario is unfolding itself in India over the last 6 years and 2 months. Social activists are being arrested on fabricated charges under Draconian laws – where in bail is denied – and incarcerated with no end in sight to their trial. The period of imprisonment itself becomes a long punishment. Many of the detenue are from the[Read More…]
On May 31st 2020, Zohra Shah, an eight-year old domestic worker in Pakistan was beaten to death by her employers. Each year over one billion children across the world experience physical or sexual abuse. Dear Zohra, I am sorry you are not Black. I am sorry the police have not released the video of how your employers, Hassan Siddique and his[Read More…]
Release Varavara Rao immediately! Condemn the State’s blatant and callous disregard for the health of the 80-year-old revolutionary poet! Demand the release of all political prisoners! The Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) demands the immediate release of the revolutionary poet Varavara Rao who has tested positive for COVID-19. As per information received by family members, Varavara Rao’s health has[Read More…]
The Valley We live in is the only place in the world where there are Enormous Civilians who suddenly got disappeared from their homes and never Returned.. Thousands of Families in the valley are still longing for their loved ones but Only God Knows where they are, Are they alive or they have Sunk beneath the soil… A Valley where[Read More…]
People’s Poet Varavara Rao has been shifted to the Saint George Hospital today after he tested positive for Coronavirus. The 80 year old poet has been jailed along with 10 others activists in a false case post the attacks at Bhima Koregaon in 2018. Varavara was taken from Taloja jail to Mumbai’s JJ Hospital on 13th July 2020 after he[Read More…]
Letter from Lawyers to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of Patna High Court and other Hon’ble Judges To Hon’ble the Chief Justice of Patna High Court and other Hon’ble Judges: Subject: Need for urgent and systemic changes in the treatment of survivors of violent sexual crimes in the Araria District Court. Lordships: We, the undersigned are lawyers practicing in different places[Read More…]
The prison authorities gave special permission to Prof Saibaba to explain his condition to lawyer and family. Dr. G.N. Saibaba in his most recent call to his family and advocate informed that there has been an uncontrolled outbreak of COVID-19 in Nagpur Central Prison. Despite the preventive measures taken by the jail administration in an active way, COVID-19 has infected[Read More…]
In the midst of sever Covid-19 pandemic the world is witnessing human right violation exhibited by the police force whose primary duty is to enforce law and order. In US George Floyed was arrested by police outside a shop, hand cuffed and a white police officer knelt on his neck resulting in his death. It demonstrates infringement of due process[Read More…]
The Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown does not appear to have brought much relief to Indian citizens following the Christian faith. The first half of this year has so far witnessed 121 incidents of violence against Christians in 15 states of India as per the recorded data of New Delhi based United Christian Forum (UCF). The 121 incidents of[Read More…]
Co-Written by Saumya and Harsh Kumar Peasant leader and RTI Activist Akhil Gogoi from Assam booked under the amended UAPA act 2019 tested positive for COVID-19 in jail. He has been allegedly booked for his role in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act last year under the sections 120B(punishment of criminal conspiracy), 153A(unlawful association) and 153B(imputations, assertion prejudicial to national-integration),[Read More…]
Ever since the Bollywood star tested positive for COVID 19, the social media is flooded with messages for his speedy recovery. Amitabh Bachchan and three generations of his family, including son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai, and their eight-year-old daughter, were tested positive. This has obviously alarmed their fan following, as husband and wife too, like the family patriarch, have[Read More…]
Human right activist Sharjeel Usmani was picked by Uttar Pradesh police from his Azamgarh home on Wednesday evening. His brother says that around 5 p.m, five unknown people dressed in plain clothes came to their house and claimed to be from the Crime Branch. When they were asked who they are! “you don’t need to know why we are here,[Read More…]
Vara Vara Rao is a nationally renowned Telugu poet and intellectual who has been incarcerated since August, 2018 in the Bhima Koregaon case. He is considered one of the best critics in Telugu literature and has taught Telugu literature to undergraduate and graduate students for about 40 years. He founded Srujana (creation), a forum for modern literature in Telugu in[Read More…]
According to press reports and the statement of his family, the renowned Telugu poet and writer, P. Varavara Rao is extremely ill in Taloja jail. He is suffering from low levels of sodium and potassium as diagnosed by the JJ Hospital, Mumbai, where his treatment was abruptly terminated and he was taken back to Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai. This[Read More…]
We, the family members of Varavara Rao, world-renowned Telugu revolutionary poet and public intellectual, who is incarcerated in Navi Mumbai’s Taloja Jail, are very much worried about his deteriorating health. His health condition has been scary for over six weeks now, ever since he was shifted in an unconscious state to JJ Hospital from Taloja Jail on May 28, 2020.[Read More…]
Pastor Munsi Deo Tando was abducted and murdered in cold blood near his village named Bhatpar, situated in the Bhamaragad Taluka of the Gadchiroli District in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The Pastor was conducting a prayer and fasting meeting on Friday, the 10th of July 2020 at 4 pm. He concluded the meeting at around 5:30 pm. “After the[Read More…]
A mob of over 100 religious fanatics attacked a Church at 3pm on the 4th of July 2020 in a village at Dasmada in Azamgarh, a district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The mob broke into the house that belongs to Senior Pastor Sunita Mourya and beat up the church members that were present there, vandalizing the entire[Read More…]
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) student leader Sharjeel Usmani has been victimized because of his Muslim identity. A bright youth leader, emerging scholar, and asset of the country as well as the community has been picked up from his house in Azamgarh by the U.P. Police and sent to judicial custody. The media reports suggest that he has been accused[Read More…]
Co-Written by Atul and Sandeep Pandey Akhil Gogoi-a peasant leader and Right to Information activist from Assam has been in jail since December 2019. His crime is that he exercised his fundamental right of speech and expression by protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The police took him in custody on December 12, 2019, and since then he has been[Read More…]
The Corona Pandemic and subsequent lockdown in Philippines has been used by the President Duterte to push for passage of Anti Terrorism Bill, an amendment to the Human Security Act 2007. The Bill, approved by the Senate on February 26 and by the House of Representative on June 3, is now waiting for approval from the President. The Bill has[Read More…]
Chennai: The Madras High Court judges, Justices PN Prakash and B Pugalendhi, hearing the custodial deaths of Jayaraj and his son Bennix on June 22-23 has observed that prima facie, it appears that there are sufficient material to make out a case for murder against the police officers stated to have been involved in these custodial killings. Jayaraj and his[Read More…]
By the way, the Indian police, created by the British and operating under the Police Act of the same time, remains in the news and discussion everyday for its brutality, autocracy and anti-law activities. But recently it came up in the context of the police brutal murder of George Floyd in the US and in India in the context of[Read More…]
The Kafkaesque Imperium has taken yet another absurd step towards mean absurdity with another superseding indictment against Julian Assange. This move by the US Department of Justice seems to have surprised those involved in his extradition proceedings. Mark Summers QC, one of the members of the Assange legal team, did not conceal his astonishment at the call over hearing at[Read More…]
As we mark 200 days of the absolutely unjust arrest of the mass leader of KMSS-Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, Akhil Gogoi on draconian charges, National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) demands his immediate release and withdrawal of all ill-conceived charges foisted against him. We also demand the release of young leaders Bittu Sonowal, Dhaijya Konwar and Manas Konwar associated with[Read More…]
NAPM Strongly Condemns the Custodial Torture, Sexual Violence and Subsequent Death of Jayaraj and Bennicks at the Hands of the Thoothukudi Police 29th June: National Alliance for People’s Movements (NAPM) is shell-shocked at the incomprehensible physical, mental and sexual violence inflicted by the Santhankulam police on two Thoothukudi residents, Jayaraj and Bennicks, that led to their painful death in custody.[Read More…]
Why impose punishment before the facts have been fully assembled? Why have the chief and the mayor created a termination document amped up with hyperbole? Unfortunately, the answer is that this termination is a cowardly political act. — Attorney of former Louisville Metro Police Detective Brett Hankison, WDRB, June 25. A cowardly political act has been done indeed. Not toward[Read More…]
The All India Catholic Union has demanded a judicial enquiry by a High Court Judge into the brutal custodial torture of a father and son of the Nadar Christian community in Sathankulam town near Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu. The town police have been complicit in other custodial deaths in recent months, apart from fomenting a caste clashes. The enquiry must[Read More…]
The father-son duo arrested and then murdered in the judicial police custody in Tuticorin is a horrific reminder of unaccountability and brutality of the policing system in India. So far the some of them have been suspended and one officer is transferred but that will never resolve the crisis as police in India has been used and misused by the[Read More…]
GENEVA (26 June 2020) – UN experts* today called on India to immediately release human rights defenders who have been arrested for protesting against changes to the nation’s citizenship laws. “These defenders, many of them students, appear to have been arrested simply because they exercised their right to denounce and protest against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), and their arrest[Read More…]
Two young Christian missionaries were abused and assaulted by a mob and taken to the police station in a village named Belgarisin Dhanbad, a district in the Indian state of Jharkhand. The attack which took place on the 22nd of June happened at the new coal mine colony in Baliapur CD Block. Speaking to Persecution Relief, Br. Arul Jothi- Founder[Read More…]
While the Covid 19 situation in India continues to get grim with each passing day, the country is also witnessing the rise of unchecked executive power of the Center that has resulted in the incarceration of a student activist named Safoora Zargar who is five weeks pregnant. The memories of the Delhi riots that took place in the last week[Read More…]
`Under UAPA, the process itself is the punishment !’ Gautam Navlakha had stated these words before his arrest. Gautam Navlakha knew very well what his arrest under the draconian law UAPA meant for him. The process can go on without any trial. Human rights defenders like him have actively campaigned in India for the repeal of this draconian law. But[Read More…]
“Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends[Read More…]
Christian women and children were dragged through a village by a raging mob of over 40 religious fanatics on the 19th of June 2020. This act of religious racism took place in Charabari, a village in the district of North 24 Paraganas in West Bengal, India. Pr.T. A.Paul, the President of Berachah Faith Mission told Persecution Relief that the mob[Read More…]
The house of a Christian family was found ransacked in Hadgadwa, a village in the district of Latehar, which features in the Indian state of Jharkhand. Chhatru Munda and ChintamaniDevi returned home to their village, only to find the asbestos sheets which served as a roof, taken off their house and used by a family that lived nearby. With the[Read More…]
Co-Written by Gary Frase and Sandeep Pandey In United States and India today dark, demonic spirits seem to be gaining power. The murder of George Floyd by a policeman on 25 May, 2020, in Minneapolis has ignited an explosion of pent up anger over wide-spread racism and hatred that has for too long led to lynching of black people with[Read More…]
It has long been said that countries in Southeast Asia take a dim view of the fourth estate. Various legal measures have been deployed against those irritable scribblers over the years: old, colonial-era security legislation; defamation suits; traditional forms of lengthy detention without charge. Such states have mastered the supreme sensibility of their colonial forebears: Maintain the appearance of propriety;[Read More…]
A Church building was set ablaze by unknown miscreants in the dead of the night on the 13th of June 2020 in Chengalpattu,district in Tamil Nadu. Pastor Ramesh Jebrajwho who is blind from birth leads the ‘Church of True Peace’ in Chengalpattu said that the Church was burnt to such an extent that the acoustic drum kit, 40 new mats[Read More…]
In America, there were huge protests over the murder of black man, George Floyd, by a white police personnel of Minneapolis Police Department which made a discomfiting observation because its root cause lies in two nefarious practices: racism and police brutality. The combination which killed George Floyd. Racism refers to superiority of one race over another while police brutality is[Read More…]
Co-Written by Punsara Amarasinghe & Nalaka Jayasena While writing an article to the famous Foreign Affairs, American polymath Joseph Nye jubilantly remarked that the COVID 19 will not make any power shift in the world order and his position connotes that the US hegemony which has been fortified as the sole power since the collapse of the USSR is likely[Read More…]
Conduct Impartial Inquiry into Questionable Obstruction of Public Pathways by Provincial Armed Constabulary National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) expresses solidarity with the ongoing people’s struggle against alleged arbitrary obstruction of public pathway by the Provincial Armed Force (PAC) of Uttar Pradesh Govt. in Sitapur District. We also express outrage at the fact that instead of taking action against the[Read More…]
“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” (Oscar Wilde) The above quoted line by a famous poet and author Oscar Wilde is very true, as children are the future of the world. However, in present world there is growing concern about the children, who instead of being in schools or at play[Read More…]
‘Sense of Belongingness “ to the society he or she is living in is one key ingredient in a life of a civilian. This often tweaked with extreme dimensions. The perversion of “ sense of belongingness “ by ruling class leads to consider no sharing of collective interests but impose an intense and selfish interest on entire society. This causes[Read More…]
Though I personally never had a chance to meet Safoora Zargar, Devangana Kalita or Natasha Narwal, I feel this thought might have come across their minds, even in the feeblest possible way. Jamia student, Safoora, who is 21 weeks pregnant, has been denied bail and shifted to Tihar jail. A would-be mother has been sentenced to share a crowded jail[Read More…]
Nazareth: In the near-two decades since the International Criminal Court was set up to try the worst violations of international human rights law, it has faced harsh criticism for its highly selective approach to the question of who should be put on trial. Created in 2002, the court, it was imagined, would act as a deterrent against the erosion of[Read More…]
In recent times, a surge in a wave of protest shook the United States of America against the killing of George-Floyd, an African-American citizen, by the US police. The democrats from all over the world have sympathised with this protest. At about the same time Phanidhar Borah died in Jajori in Nagaon district of Assam as a result of[Read More…]
United Nations defines child labour as work, which deprives children of their childhood, their dignity, and potential, and that is harmful to their physical and mental health. It refers to the work that interferes with the schooling of the children and becomes a drag on their overall development. Child labour started with the onset of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the[Read More…]
On May 30th, Saturday, People from the United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan and India made a video statement to demand the immediate release of Dr. Anand Teltumbde and 10 other human rights activists who have been arrested in fabricated cases by the RSS/BJP. It attracted a good number of people within 2 days of the announcement. Mrs[Read More…]
To, Mr. Naveen Patnaik Chief Minister of Odisha, Bhubaneswar Sub: Regarding compensation and criminal action for death of two girls in Tamilnadu brick industry Honourable sir; Here, we are bringing before you a shocking incident that two girls of Manjher panchayat of Golamunda block of Kalahandi district named 1) Jayamani Chandi D/o Sajan Chandi age 22 and 2) Madanabati Chandi[Read More…]
A 14-year-old Christian boy ,Samaru Madkami, was murdered in cold blood by a group of religious fanatics in the east-Indian state of Odisha. On the night of 4th June, 2020, a few villagers ganged up with a handful of religious fanatics who are not a part of their village and attempted to kidnap 3 Christians explained Pastor Bijay, who serves[Read More…]
The world leaders are joining hands and have spoken against racism in any form and any country. Most of them have supported people’s right to protest and concerned raised by the African American in the United States and other countries. Today, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participated in an anti racist rally in his country, stood with the protesters, listened[Read More…]
At a time when another large democracy of the world, the United States of America, is in the throes of a crisis, it is relevant to recall, for all protesters and resisters struggling for their rights, what Martin Luther King (Jr.) had said: “The non-violent resister is not physically aggressive towards the opponent. But his mind and emotions are always[Read More…]
He smiles, he laughs through the prison bars to shake me up from my early morning dreams , his morning greeting is clanking a huge bunch of keys into the cage of my life sentence. (From ‘Ode to a Prison Guard…. By Prof. G. N. Saibaba written on 1 May 2017 ‘A World of Silence is Blown into Smithereens’ ,[Read More…]
There is no denying of the fact that Tamils in Sri Lanka have been at the receiving end since 1948, when power was transferred to the majority Sinhala Government. Successive Sinhala Governments continued and still continue the marginalisation of minorities to achieve their goal of a SINHALA-BUDDHIST STATE. A majoritarian mindset that is comfortable with demonising minority communities – or[Read More…]
`Do you have a beard? Do you have knowledge about the Constitutional Rights and the guts to stand up for those rights? Congrats, officially, now you an anti-national and be ready to be beaten up’ `Sorry I thought you are a Muslim’ Currently, India is achieving greater hights by attacking Muslims. Recently, the Madhya Pradesh police also joined the anti-Muslim[Read More…]
To mark the martyrdom day of the fifth master of the Sikhs, Guru Arjan Dev ji, South Asian community activists came together on Sunday, May 31, to raise voices for political prisoners being incarcerated in the Indian jails. Organized by Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI), the rally against state violence was held at the Surrey-Delta Guru Nanak Sikh temple.[Read More…]
I remember on MA tv news watching a white man getting arrested in my state by police for verbally harassing a black couple on a motorcycle in his neighborhood. It was considered a hate crime. I recall my black friend leading a peaceful protest outside of an MA library against NH white supremacists together in a meeting there. Library administration[Read More…]
A brutal attack by unidentified religious fanatics on May 27, in Mau district in the state of Uttar Pradesh in the Madhuban police station area has confined Pastor Dinesh to the ICU with severe injuries, including 16 stitches on his head and 7 stitches on his arm. After praying at a church member’s home, it had only been a few[Read More…]
It is deeply disturbing that 81 years old poet Varavara Rao did not get bail and now admitted to a hospital in Mumbai. Reports suggest that the said prison in Taloja, Navi Mumbai have several Covid patients. The family and friends of Varvara Rao protested in Hyderabad as they were not even allowed to visit him. Sudha Bharadwaj dedicated her[Read More…]
Mr Amit Shah Union Home Minister of India Ministry of Home Affairs Government of India Dear Home Minister, I am William Nicholas Gomes, a British Human rights activist and freelance journalist. I am writing to share my great concern regarding the situation of student activists Safoora Zargar, who is four months pregnant, Meeran Haider, Shifa-Ur-Rehman and Sharjeel Imam, all[Read More…]
On the evening of 23rd May 2020, the Delhi Police arrested Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, activists of Pinjra Tod and students of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Charged under FIR 48/2020, both were initially interrogated by the police at their home. They were then taken into police custody and presented the next day before Duty Magistrate in Mandoli Jail who ordered[Read More…]
On the 5th of May, a group of Christians namely *Ramu, *Manu and 7 others, including women, were mercilessly beaten up by a group of religious fanatics at a village in the Bastar District of the Indian State of Chhattisgarh. Why? Because they refused to forsake Christianity. Narrating this incident to Persecution Relief, *Ramu said that for a while now,[Read More…]
We have been in a state of lockdown for two months. It has been a very harsh time for lakhs of our citizens, who have lost work, possessions, and been left hungry and homeless. Dalits, adivasis and the working Bahujan poor are the worst affected, with women amongst all communities having to bear the brunt of hunger, unemployment, illness,[Read More…]
A Joint Statement by the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances, Asian Human Rights Commission, International Federation for Human Rights and Odhikar on the occasion of International Week of the Disappeared 2020 Dhaka/Manila/Hong Kong/Paris, 25 May 2020: To commemorate International Week of the Disappeared (the last week of May), the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), the Asian Human Rights Commission[Read More…]
On the night of the 20th of May 2020, a group of religious fanatics broke into the homes of 2 Christian families who live in Kokkar Pal Panchayat in Sukma District, Chhattisgarh. The group wielded lathis (wooden clubs) and bows and arrows. At roughly 9pm, the families woke up to a nightmare. A total of 10 people including 5 children[Read More…]
Even as the world, including the Nagas, continue to frantically battle with the Corona Virus Pandemic, along with the world, side by side, the Government of India, continues to militarily wage war on innocent Naga civilians on one pretext or the other. While on the one hand, the Indian army in recent times have been aggressively intruding into Naga areas[Read More…]
An Interview with Shibu Thomas, Founder, Persecution Relief by K.P Sasi In December 2019, the UK-US based monitoring group Open Doors that publishes an annual World Watch List of 50 countries, ranked India 10th in the world where it is most dangerous to live as a Christian. The report states that political rhetoric and ambiguous interpretations of the[Read More…]
The home of a Christian was mysteriously set on fire, endangering the lives of the entire family. On the fateful night of the 15th of May, *Nandu and his family woke up to the smoke and loud screams of “fire”! They had only fallen off to sleep a couple of hours ago not expecting to wake up to a nightmare.[Read More…]
Co-Written by Surabhi Agarwal, Sandeep Pandey and Shreekumar At a time when there can be no mass mobilisations or street protests, and when so many people are distressed, anxious and distracted by the unprecedented challenges our country is facing due to the COVID-19 crisis, the government’s actions against activists, journalists, intellectuals and Muslims appear to be calculated and insidious. Needlessly[Read More…]
Marking 11 years since the Sri Lankan military onslaught that massacred tens of thousands of Tamils, we revisit the final days leading up to the 18th of May 2009 – a date remembered around the world as ‘Tamil Genocide Day’. The total number of Tamil civilians killed during the final months is widely contested. After providing an initial death toll of 40,000, the UN[Read More…]
The members of Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) held a Mother’s Day car rally for Safoora Zargar in Surrey on the afternoon of Sunday, May 10. The student activist who is an expectant mother is being held under draconian laws for opposing the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed by the right wing Hindu nationalist government in India. Zargar[Read More…]
In the shadow of Covid- 19 locked down, there has been a spate of arrests being made in Delhi, mostly against the peaceful anti-CAA protesters and also against alleged instigators of communal riots in North-East Delhi. This is an alarming development happening in the national capital that too under the watchful eyes of the Home Minister and the National Security[Read More…]
Hope we remember this brutal agenda of Hindutva that united the secularists and commoners of our country together. We were all a part of it fighting for the rights of ‘us’ the common people, who loved the concept of India… We fought together for the future of our country with tiranga in one hand and the Constitution in the other.[Read More…]
Rarely, it would so happen that an experience is both liberating and occupational, simultaneously. The digital media gave a “personal” space to people. With increased trolling, abuses and rape threats, social media platforms are now more poisonous than being fruitful. Earlier, decent debates would take place on wide range of topics including philosophy, business, politics, art, culture, sex and[Read More…]
“When we think of the repression of journalists, we automatically evoke foreign lands. We rarely, however, evoke or remember our own dissidents.” Peter Oborne, Middle East Eye, May 5, 2020 It all spoke well of British justice, which meant poorly. As one correspondent from the Australian Associated Press put it in describing the latest case hearing for Julian Assange, “There[Read More…]
Bangladesh’s main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Ilias Ali is still going missing. Many others also followed the same fate. The ghost or ghosts, who made them victims of enforced disappearance, are not kind. But thanks to the ghost who kidnapped Shafiqul Islam Kajol and returned him back. Kajol, editor of Dainik Pokkhokal, was last seen in front of[Read More…]
On the World Press Freedom Day, India has slipped on the global press freedom index. Reporters Without Borders has ranked it at 142 out of 180 countries, in light of recent attacks on journalists and scholars under a right wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Narendra Modi. What could be more shameful for a country that[Read More…]
Rounding up undocumented workers, migrant and refugees is part of a brutal order of things in Malaysia. When matters economic are going well, authorities turn the blindest of eyes. The money pours in; development goals are being met. During times of crisis, the eye sharpens in the search for scapegoats. With the enervating effects of the COVID-19 response, the vulnerable[Read More…]
3rd May, 2020: 1100 feminists from all over India – organisations and individuals across religion, class, caste, ethnicity, ability, sexuality and genders – issued a solidarity statement today, condemning the targeted crackdown on muslims and women activists in Delhi, who were at the forefront of the peaceful protests against the unconstitutional CAA-NRC-NPR. The signatories noted that the Delhi Police, at[Read More…]
Rt. Hon. Boris Johnson Prime Minister 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA Dear Prime Minister, I hope that your recovery continues apace and that you will soon be back to full health. I write to you in supporting refugees, asylum seekers and migrants to ask you to grant a period of leave to remain, with recourse to public funds and[Read More…]
We, the undersigned express our solidarity with Dr Zafarul Islam Khan, renowned scholar, journalist and presently Chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission. We strongly condemn the continued media trial and targeting of Dr Zafarul Islam Khan for his Facebook post thanking Kuwait for expressing solidarity with Indian Muslims. In his Facebook post, he mentioned the appalling deterioration of human rights[Read More…]
A virtual protest was organized on Monday, April 27 to raise voices for journalists being harassed in India-occupied Kashmir. Attended by South Asian journalists and community activists from various parts of the globe, the rally was remotely held in North Delta in the light of the public health emergency because of COVID 19. The speakers unanimously condemned the slapping of[Read More…]
Memorandum to the Chief Minister of Odisha on Sagada Forest Evictions in Kalahandi To Navin Patnaik Chief Minister of Odisha, Bhubaneswar Honourable Sir, We would like to bring to your notice, the illegal and forced eviction of 32 Adivasi families of Nehela village under Jugsaipatna Panchayat in Kalahandi district by officials of Odisha’s Forest department. On 24th April 2020, at[Read More…]
“Mr Assange will be facing a David and Goliath battle with his hands tied behind his back.” Edward Fitzgerald QC, lawyer for Julian Assange, April 27, 2020 Julian Assange must have had time amidst cramped and hostile surrounds, paper work, pleas and applications, to ponder what circle of Dante’s Hell he finds himself in. Ailing but still battling, the WikiLeaks[Read More…]
We’re losing our freedom of speech. We are losing freedom of religion. We are losing freedom of the press. Roger Ailes Objective and unbiased journalism should be encouraged but in Kashmir it is considered as a crime. A true and professional journalist is said to be the mouthpiece of people. But the irony of the fact is that this mouthpiece[Read More…]
It has become almost common that activists, dissenters, journalists, etc are being severely assaulted or imprisoned and detained for months without trial. But even children are not being spared by authoritarian regimes. They are being targeted by missiles or war weapons in many countries. Global study A report was published by The United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of[Read More…]
Annie Ohana, a well-known award winning social justice educator, has sent a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister urging him to stand up for an Indian scholar who is being incarcerated under inhuman conditions. Wheelchair-bound GN Saibaba used to teach at Delhi University before being convicted in 2017 after being branded as a Maoist sympathizer. Suffering with 19 ailments, his[Read More…]
On April 24th, Comrade Mahesh, a student activist in Uttarakhand and secretary of the Lalkuan Unit of Parivartankami Chatra Sangathan (PACHHAS), had been charged by the Uttarakhand Police for participating in a day-long hunger strike. Mahesh had peacefully observed the strike from inside his home demanding provisions for workers, students and other people bereft of food and supplies due to[Read More…]
The relationships between political parties and people are going through a turbulent transformation during this historical period in India. To what extend have the political parties strived to be the true representations of people of this country is a question which needs some clarification. We have elected members of parliament, but whether they are in a position to play the[Read More…]
Over the last two weeks, across New Delhi, numerous activists and students have been targeted and harassed by the Delhi Police. Operating under an open-ended FIR, the police are attempting to accuse these persons, many of whom are engaged in providing indispensable relief work to workers and people bereft of food and other supplies due to the ill-planned COVID-19 induced[Read More…]
Hearing about the trend of recruiting child soldiers for war, in and around us, is not unusual. Scholars such as Vera Achvarina and Simon Reich ascertain that since 1975, Africa has had largest concentration of conflicts and child soldiers. Mark Drumbl further states that about forty percent of child soldiers in the world are present in Africa. Child soldiers mostly[Read More…]
COVID-19 outbreak was declared as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in January 2020. Since then WHO has declared it as a pandemic affecting more than 115 countries around the globe. India has seen its first COVID-19 case in Kerala on 30th January 2020. However, until the 13th march Ministry of Health didn’t consider it as a Public Health Emergency for the country. But, soon cases were[Read More…]
The Canada-based Punjabi media fraternity has strongly condemned the recent arrests of towering Indian scholars and the criminal case filed against a female photojournalist in the disputed territory of Kashmir. On April 14, well known Indian authors and activists Anand Teltumbde and Gauram Navlakha were forced to surrender under motivated charges filed against them to suppress the voices of dissent.[Read More…]
A medical emergency is no pretext to impose a political emergency. How many policemen in civil clothes are required to deliver a mere summons to an editor of a web journal 700-k away in an age of email and WhatsApp? The recent action of the Uttar Pradesh police, where it sent a posse of 7-8 policemen, in civil clothes, in[Read More…]
A joint Statement by the Nepalese intellectuals, writers and journalists, demanding immediate release of Varvara Rao, Prof. Saibaba, cultural activist Maila Lama and other social activists and political prisoners. Along with the Corona terror, we are facing state terror imposed by the fascist regimes. Nepalese revolutionary cultural- activist Maila Lama is kept in jail along with other political prisoners[Read More…]
Campaign Against State Repression demands the immediate release of Yogesh Swamy and all such activists being targeted and detained by the Delhi Police during the COVID-19 lockdown! Today, in the most brazen manner, the Delhi Police’s Special Cell has picked up Comrade Yogesh Swamy. A national vice president of Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS) and member of Bigul Mazdoor Dasta, Yogesh[Read More…]
Democracy is established on the foundation of questions, and when there remains a scissor to cut off the questions that the administration feels to be against them, then it does not remain a practical and real democracy. Rather, it becomes either an authoritarian nation, or democracy becomes just a word on a page that can be erased whenever felt as[Read More…]
Eminent poets from all parts of the country including Gulzar have sought the immediate release of Varavara Rao, imprisoned in Maharashtra as an accused in the Bhima Koregaon case. In a representation submitted to Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi, the poets sought the release of the 80-year old Rao in view of the health emergency in the country on account[Read More…]
On the birth anniversary of a towering social justice activist and an architect of the Indian constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, members and supporters of Indians Abroad (IAPI) for Pluralist India took out a car rally outside the Indian consulate in Vancouver on Tuesday, April 14. Ambedkar was born in a so called untouchable family, and faced caste-based discrimination in the[Read More…]
Yashveer Goyal has established himself as a role model for the Indian youth in sports and Information Technology, in spite of being born with a hearing disability. Now, he has come to the support of jailed Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Twenty-year-old Goyal of Bathinda, Punjab was born in 1999 into a modest family, to a journalist father, Chander Parkash.[Read More…]
Protest against the fascist onslaught on democratic rights activists and curbing of democracy On 14th April,2020, Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha surrendered and were arrested by the NIA, pursuant to order of the Supreme Court rejecting interim protection. This order paved the way for the arrest of two more scholars under the draconian laws for their exercise of the right[Read More…]
PUCL strongly deprecates and deplores the rejection by the Supreme Court on 07th April, 2020, of the Petition filed by Gautam Navalakha and Prof. Anand Teltumbde seeking additional time to surrender before the trial court in the Bhīma Koregaon, case in view of both of them being over 65 years old and being in the `high risk category’ as[Read More…]
As I prepare to Ieave to surrender before the NIA headquarters in Delhi I am glad that Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Indira Banerjee gave me another week of freedom when they passed the order on April 8, 2020. A week of freedom means a lot in my condition, even in the age of lockdown. Their order resolved the predicament[Read More…]
Open letter to the People of India I am aware this may be completely drowned in the motivated cacophony of the BJP-RSS combine and the subservient media but I still think it may be worth talking to you as I do not know whether I would get another opportunity. Since August 2018, when the police raided my house in faculty[Read More…]
Jai Bhim! Coinciding with the upcoming Ambedkar Jayanti, Dr. Anand Teltumbde, one of India’s foremost public intellectuals and the strongest legatee of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s tradition of struggling for a truly democratic India, will be complying with the Supreme Court’s order to surrender to the jail authorities. He will be surrendering on the 14th April 2020, between 12 noon – 2[Read More…]
Social justice activists came together on Saturday, April 11 to raise their voices for a physically challenged Delhi University Professor incarcerated in an Indian jail. Wheelchair-bound G.N. Saibaba, who is ninety percent disabled below the waist, is serving a life sentence under inhuman conditions. His health continues to deteriorate because of 19 ailments and he remains vulnerable following the worldwide[Read More…]
It should not be a matter of distinction, but Julian Assange is a figure who is becoming the apotheosis of political imprisonment. This seems laughable to those convinced he is an agent without scruple, a compromiser of the Fourth Estate, a figure best packed off to a prison system that will, in all assuredness, kill him. That’s if he even[Read More…]
Release Dr. G. N. Saibaba from Nagpur Central Jail in the face of an imminent threat to his life exacerbated by the COVID-19. Release all the incarcerated voices of democracy and uphold their right to life Over the last six years, the health of Dr. G. N. Saibaba, incarcerated in Nagpur Central Jail, has deteriorated alarmingly. Prof. Saibaba is a[Read More…]
Stand in solidarity with all voices for peoples’ rights and democracy! Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) demands the immediate release of all political prisoners! On March 16th 2020, the Supreme Court of India rejected the anticipatory bail plea of civil rights activists, Prof. Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha, asking them to surrender by April 6th 2020. The review petition heard[Read More…]
Demand prompt release of all political and democratic rights activists in Indian jail The police in the State of Maharashtra, India, acting at the behest of the central BJP Hindutva government, is forcing the arrest of Professor Dr Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha under August 2018 fabricated charges, accusing them of involvement in violence that occurred at Bhima Koregaon on[Read More…]
All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE) organised a virtual press conference on 6th April 2020 to register its strongest condemnation of the impending arrest of Prof. Anand Teltumbde, Member Presidium of AIFRTE and Senior Professor and Chair Big Data Analysis, Goa Institute of Management, on April 6, 2020. The Supreme Court had denied him anticipatory bail on the[Read More…]
In response to the coronavirus crisis, the British Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has announced plans for the early release of up to 4,000 prisoners in England and Wales—just under 5 percent of the prison population. The selected “low-risk” prisoners in the last two months of their sentences will be electronically tagged and allowed back into the population to ease overcrowding.[Read More…]
At the time of writing this article, more than 670 students, researchers, faculty and alumni of the prestigious IIM Ahmedabad and IITs pan-India, in their individual capacities, have expressed their solidarity with Dr. Anand Teltumbde. They have requested the President to intervene for dropping all charges against Dr. Teltumbde, who has been asked to surrender by 6th April, 2020. This[Read More…]
We the members of Babasaheb Ambedkar National Association of Engineers express our deepest shock and anguish over the rejection of the anticipatory bail application of one of the founders and ex-president of our Association, Dr Anand Teltumbde. We were shocked right from the day his name was linked by the Police in what by now clearly appears as the concocted[Read More…]
Over 280 students, faculties and alumni of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) have signed statements in solidarity with their illustrious alumnus, Anand Teltumbde who apart from being corporate leader and teacher has done so much to the society. Teltumbde is expected to surrender himself by April 6 in accordance with the Supreme Court verdict. We, as part of the[Read More…]
The BJP led Central Government on March 17 filed a 129-page preliminary counter affidavit in response to a batch of petitions filed in the Supreme Court (SC) challenging the constitutional validity of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019. The CAA fast-tracks Indian citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Parsi, and Jain “illegal migrants” from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who came to India before December 31, 2014[Read More…]
Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) welcomes the directions passed by the Supreme Court of India on 23.03.2020 in Suo Moto Writ Petition (C) 1/2020 titled In Re: Contagian of Covid 19 Virus in Prisons. Through the said order, all States and Union territories have been directed to constitute a High Powered Committee for the release of prisoners in the[Read More…]
India’s Prime Minister, who is known for his oratory skills, recently urged the people of his country to fight Corona with Karuna (Compassion). In a highly emotional speech, he asked the citizens to provide poor and stray animals with meals in these difficult times. The crisis of COVID 19 has created a lot of uncertainty for the most vulnerable, because[Read More…]
Co-Written by Anirban Goswami & Anupam Bannerjee The first IIM Ahmedabad Alumnus, the first IIT, Professor, the first Corporate CEO to be arrested for Political Crime Professor Anand Teltumbde, when he surrenders on 6 April 2020 as per the Supreme Court directions, will be the first alumnus of the hallowed IIM, Ahmedabad, the first IIT, Professor; and the first CEO[Read More…]
“To expose another human being to serious illness, and to the threat of losing their life, is grotesque and quite unnecessary. This is not justice, it is a barbaric decision.” Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, March 26, 2020 Social distancing is not a word that seems to have reached certain parts of the British legal system. Granted, it is an[Read More…]
When I read the news that the four men who were found guilty of the horrific rape crime in Delhi in 2012 were hanged to death in a Delhi prison, I wondered whether these legal killings make any sense when human being are being killed in thousands all over the world by the Corona virus. Shortly after these hangings, came[Read More…]
We are a group of retired civil servants belonging to the All-India and Central Services from all over India. As a group, we do not subscribe to any particular political ideology but rather, focus upon issues that have a bearing upon the Indian Constitution. We have been holding Conclaves and writing Open Letters on matters of concern since we came[Read More…]
In August 2018, the Pune Police implicated Prof. Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha with other human right activists and lawyers in the now-infamous fabricated Elgar Parishad case. The police presented concocted theories since day one and these theories have not an iota of truth in them. Although the judiciary granted interim protection to Prof. Anand and Gautam, the supreme court[Read More…]
AIFRTE Statement on Supreme Court’s rejection of anticipatory bail to Prof. Anand Teltumbde AIFRTE is shocked, outraged and deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s rejection of anticipatory bail to its Presidium member Prof. Anand Teltumbde, an IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus, IIT Professor, and currently Senior Professor and Chair, Big Data Analytics at Goa Institute of Management (GIM). Prof Teltumbde is also a[Read More…]
Statement by MRSD on Supreme Court’s rejection of pre-arrest bail plea of Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha in the Bhima Koregaon violence case Mumbai Rises to Save Democracy (MRSD) is deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s rejection of the plea by Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha seeking anticipatory bail in the cases registered against them in relation to the violence[Read More…]
As the Supreme Court allows the government to incarcerate and silence two more voices Gautam Nawlakha and Anand Teltumbde that dared to speak out against its excesses Gautam Nawlakha one of the alleged “urban naxals” sends out a message…….. I thank Justices Arun Mishra and MR Shah of the Supreme Court for giving me three weeks to surrender before the[Read More…]
Chelsea Manning’s release last Thursday by order of Virginia District Court judge Anthony Trenga had an air of oddness to it. “The court finds Ms. Manning’s appearance before the Grand Jury is no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose.” Her detention had never served any coercive purpose as such – she remained[Read More…]
Grade 10 and 12 students at L.A. Matheson School in Surrey joined the campaign for the release of Delhi University Professor G.N. Saibaba on Thursday, March 12. Wheelchair-bound Saibaba, who is ninety percent disabled below the waist, is being incarcerated under inhumane conditions in India. This is despite the continued deterioration of his health because of 19 ailments. March 7[Read More…]
Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers Alexandria – Today, March 12, prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia ended the grand jury of Julian Assange and Wikileaks in which Chelsea Manning refused to testify. As a result, US District Court Judge Anthony Trenga ordered the immediate release of Chelsea Manning. HUGE NEWS: Chelsea Manning @xychelsea has been ordered FREE after a[Read More…]
Lawyers for the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning have confirmed that the 32-year-old was rushed to a hospital on Wednesday after an attempted suicide while incarcerated in a federal detention center in Alexandria, Virginia. Manning has been subjected to solitary confinement and punitive daily fines for one year as of today, for refusing a subpoena to testify in a secret grand[Read More…]
The Prime Minister had declared from the Ram Lila ground before the Delhi elections that there are no detention centres in the country in the context of nation wide anti-Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens protests. But there were media reports of temporary detention centres being run in various jails of Assam and a permanent one being constructed[Read More…]
Aaj Woh Kashmir Hai Mehkoom-O-Faqeer Kal Jise Ahl-E-Nazar Kehte Thay Iran-E-Sagheer (Today that land of Kashmir, under the heels of the enemy, has become weak, helpless and poor Once known among the wise as Little Iran) — Allama Muhammad Iqbal, poet and philosopher of Kashmiri origin, “The Poet who Introduced Language of Resistance in Kashmir,” New Frame, July 11, 2019[Read More…]
Thursday, February 27, Woolwich Crown Court. The first round of extradition hearings regarding Julian Assange’s case concluded a day early, to recommence on May 18th. It ended on an insensible note very much in keeping with the woolly-headed reasoning of Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is of the view that a WikiLeaks publisher in a cage does not put all heaven[Read More…]
For Sri Lanka, after the fallout from the April bombings bred communal violence, endangered minorities and put freedoms in peril. Justice and reparations for the 30 year conflict seem to be increasingly out of reach for the victims, as even the limited but key gains of recent years appeared at risk of rollback given statements by the new government. “For[Read More…]
The second half of 2019 (July – December) was both a very trying but sobering experience for me. Jharkhand police was after me and I was after the police ! The difference was the police acted illegally and I acted legally. Issue of ‘arrest warrant’ (June), declaration of me an ‘absconder’ (August), raid of my workplace cum residence and confiscation[Read More…]
” If filling my pen with the tears of Telangana people is treason, then I am prepared for such treason.” – Dr. C Kaseem Crackdown on intellectuals and rights activists, fake encounters by the police are very usual in the state of Telangana. The current anti-people Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) led government is following the age old textbook rules of[Read More…]
“I think that now it is time that the government I am a part of needs to be standing up and saying to both the UK and the US: ‘enough is enough, leave our bloke alone and let him come home.’” George Christensen, Australian conservative MP, Sydney Morning Herald, Feb 19, 2020 An odd crew and perhaps the sort Julian[Read More…]
There is a difference between a victim and a martyr. My effort in this piece is to relocate the victim in contemporary Assam and critique the amnesia built around the victim. What is a victim? A victim is someone who is allows us to identify the experiences of evil. Evil, writes historian Wendy Doniger, is not what we do. In[Read More…]
Sweeping new regulations restricting social media in Pakistan put freedom of expression and the media at the heart of the struggle to counter both civilizationalist and authoritarian aspects of an emerging new world order. The regulations, adopted without public debate, position US social media companies like Facebook and Twitter at the forefront of the struggle and raise the spectre of[Read More…]
The Ambedkar-King Study Circle of the United States of America by asking me to give a keynote on the occasion of its Annual Conference 2019, gave me a great opportunity to compare the life and work of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. This gives me an opportunity, particularly, to examine their role in expanding the spiritual democratic[Read More…]
When it comes to accurate and responsible publication of vast numbers of secret or suppressed or censored documents, included those revealing state crimes, Julian Assange and Wikileaks have been preeminent since 2006. Not surprisingly, their vital and courageous work, on behalf of truth and transparency in the public interest, earned Julian Assange, and Wikileaks, powerful and dangerous enemies. The focused[Read More…]
Sri Lanka is fast moving towards a military state and is now promoting alleged war criminals to top posts in Military and Government Departments. The appointment of Lt. General Shavendra Silva. Lt Gen Shavendra Silva’s name was mentioned in the resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2013, alleging rights abuses by the Sri Lankan Army. Defence[Read More…]
For past few days, since the Supreme Court has awarded death penalty to four convicts, the media headlines are screaming for the blood of rapists who brutally gang-raped Nirbhaya or Jyoti Singh on 16th December 2012. Heated discussions are going on regarding the execution of convicts where several experts and activists argue against death penalty, while there are those who[Read More…]
There is always a debate on whether capital punishment, to be specific death penalty, should be abolished or retained for ordinary crimes. In my opinion, it should be abolished. In this view of mine, I don’t stand alone. As of 2018, 142 countries have abolished death penalty either in law or practice. Whereas, 56 have retained the power, in which[Read More…]
The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) Order to the Government of the Republic of Myanmar to adopt various provisional measures to protect the Rohingya community from “physical destruction” and to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article 11 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide including killing members of the group and imposing[Read More…]
Co-Written by John Graversgaard and Liz Fekete The previous centre-right government led by the Venstre party (Liberals) was replaced in June 2019 by a centre-left minority government, led by the Social Democratic Party. But has a new government adopted a different approach to immigration, integration and the ‘ghetto package’? Sadly, the answer is a very definite no. But perhaps this[Read More…]
Sri Lanka has been in the limelight of UN and International Community for the last thirty years and more intensively during and after the genocidal war launched against the Tamil civilians and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from 2006 to 2009. After closing their eyes and ears during the war which witnessed torture, rapes, disappearances and killings of thousands of[Read More…]
On Christmas Eve, WikiLeaks founder and prize-winning journalist Julian Assange phoned a friend to alert the world that his life is in danger inside London’s notorious maximum-security Belmarsh prison. Vaughan Smith, a freelance video news journalist who gave refuge to Assange in 2010 when he was legally fighting against attempts to extradite him to Sweden, tweeted that Assange called his[Read More…]
GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER is a study on the killings of and attacks on journalists in India, 2014–2019, and justice delivery in these cases. Since 2014, there have been more than 200 serious attacks on journalists in India. There has not been a single conviction in attacks on journalists in India, targeted for their investigative work. In the latest spate[Read More…]
As Australian activist John Pilger recounts his visit to the world’s most abused US/UK political prisoner Julian Assange, he gives us the brutal details of how the friends and families of political prisoners also face punishment, gauntlets, humiliation. And he tells of the terrible conditions and terrible treatment meted out to Assange, and the weakened, vulnerable state in which[Read More…]
Her name means beautiful, and she is despite her tragic life. Hasina recalls the day when the Myanmar army set fire to her village and killed the inhabitants, including 10 members of her family, as she watched. She is appearing as a witness at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the tranquil capital of the Netherlands. The Hague[Read More…]
It is ironical that we have been observing December 10 as the World Human Rights day following two most egregious incidents of violation of human rights in India – one by a gang of rapists and the other by the state police, each occurring within a couple of days. In Unnao in Uttar Pradesh, a survivor of gang rape was [Read More…]
A new law in India which expedites citizenship for certain religious minorities has been criticized by the UN human rights office for being “fundamentally discriminatory in nature.” The amendment to the Citizenship Act gives priority to Hindus, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians resident in India before 2014, but excludes Muslims, including minority sects. “Although India’s broader naturalization laws[Read More…]
To, The Chief Minister, Odisha Bhubaneswar Sub: Regarding unconstitutional statement by Minister of Law of your Cabinet on the infamous Hyderabad ‘encounter’ killings Sir, As you know the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken,suomotu, cognizance of the infamous Hyderabad ‘encounter’, suspecting the version of the police.The High Court of Telengana has also intervened in the same matter in response[Read More…]
Hundreds of journalists and media workers from every corner of the globe have put their name to an impassioned open letter demanding the unconditional freedom of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and an immediate “end to the legal campaign being waged against him for the crime of revealing war crimes.” The 422 signatories to date include WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, world-renowned investigative journalist[Read More…]
We have, in India, several collective ego issues when something questions the majoritarianist hegemony. We have this problem when Article 370 was abrogated which is done mainly on account of the fact that majoritarianist mindset do not accept muslim dominated Kashmir should have some special privileges, even, at least, on paper. Typically, Nirbhaya case is one such movement with larger[Read More…]
I have no doubt in my mind that this is not even a stage managed encounter of the four youth who are said to have been involved in the rape and murder of veterinary doctor in the suburban areas of Hyderabad. It is a pure custodial murder. The people’s anger gave strength to the Telangana police who are already blood[Read More…]
Braving cold weather and rain on a weekday afternoon, social justice activists came together on Tuesday, December 3, to raise their voices for a physically challenged Delhi University Professor incarcerated in an Indian jail. Wheelchair-bound G.N. Saibaba, who is ninety percent disabled below the waist, is serving a life sentence under inhuman conditions. His health continues to deteriorate because of[Read More…]
It is predicted by many that the societies with greater differentiation and specialization are less prone to executions. Contrary to this assumption, it has been shown that societies with greater social differentiation and structural hierarchy are more likely to embrace death penalty. Social systems with more hierarchical order would have greater brutal punitive culture and repressive legal mechanism. The celebrated[Read More…]
The Rohingya refugees have, for decades now, been fleeing their homeland, the Rakhine province in Myanmar. Mostly through Yangon’s inaction, elements of the military and members of the majority Buddhist population were left to run rampage amongst this helpless Muslim minority. Made stateless by Yangon in 1982, left totally vulnerable to the frightful violence of rape, mass killings — some[Read More…]
Judge José de la Mata of Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, had been facing a good deal of stonewalling on the part of his British colleagues. He is overseeing an investigation into the surveillance activities of a Spanish security firm aimed at WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, during his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. De la Mata had[Read More…]
Between the 5th and 10th of November 2019, a nine person team comprising of members of Women against Sexual Violence and State repression (WSS) visited the state of Assam in order to understand the implications of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC), particularly for the most marginalised people of Assam. The team travelled to the Barak Valley region,[Read More…]
If Julian Assange were to succumb to the cruelties heaped upon him, week after week, month after month, year upon year, as doctors warn, newspapers like The Guardian will share the responsibility, writes John Pilger. Newspapers and other media in the United States and Britain have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially their right to publish freely. They are worried by the “Assange[Read More…]
“Australia is a glaring absence in this case. They’re just not around, as if Assange was not an Australian citizen”, UN Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Nils Melzer. The Australian political and media establishments attitudes toward Julian Assange is summed up by no other than one of Australia’s most despicable corporate journalists. In early May 2019, The Melbourne Age newspaper published[Read More…]
We, the undersigned, have all received messages from WhatsApp Inc. over the last fortnight, informing us that our mobile devices were the target by a highly sophisticated cyberattack. According to this message, an attempt was made to send spyware to our electronic devices through the WhatsApp video calling service, highly compromising our digital security. WhatsApp attributes this attack to a[Read More…]
Why did I testify at the Massachusetts State House on Oct. 7 against legislation that would require public schools to teach the Jewish Holocaust, Armenian and Greek Genocides, and other genocides and “atrocities”? Good question, especially as I’m an Armenian American journalist and activist. My Christian grandparents landed on these shores over 120 years ago. My answers: A brazenly[Read More…]
On October 21st , 2019, Harsha a student in Amrita School of Engineering in Bangalore, committed suicide within the college premise, by jumping off the main college building. Ever since then the students have been protesting in the college demanding justice for Harsha who was pushed to take this step by the college administration. This write up is by alumni[Read More…]
While prisons in the country in general lack basic amenities and prisoners are made to live in sub-human conditions, women in jails suffer more than their male counterparts in most states. In its own report, NCRB has acknowledged that overcrowding is one of the major problem affecting inmates which results in lack of hygiene, lack of sleep, etc and this[Read More…]
On 21 October, a team of Khunti police attached the belongings of 83-year old Stan Swamy, a well-known activist of Jharkhand, from his residence at the Bagaicha campus in Namkum, near Ranchi. The police took away two tables, three chairs, one almirah and one mattress from his room. Stan was not present during this procedure. The attachment was in connection[Read More…]
The Great Barrier Reef Wars 
Cartoon by K.P. Sasi 
From wall magazines to micro-classrooms, Covid spurs innovative schooling 
Burgeoning plastic footprint: Who is responsible? 
Hum Do – Humare ?? 
IT Rules 2021: UN Rapporteurs see chilling effect on freedom of expression 
Voting for Restoration of Democracy: Electoral Choices 
The second wave of Covid-19 in India- Have we Learnt the lessons useful for living with the third wave? 
Brazilian Court Clears ex-President Lula of Corruption Charges in another Legal Win 
Covid-19: It’s time to look at school dropouts 
Mussoorie Bypass Tunnel is Expensive, but Its Ecological Costs Will Be Even Higher 
The UAPA Noose 
School Children, Fracking Fumes, Immigrant Parent’s Daughter, Climate Crisis and Billions of Dollar 
Together A Cry For Justice 
Vaccine Equity and G7 Summit: Solidarity Not Charity, Justice Not Denial of Human Rights 
The Larger Issues Underlying the Claim of Cairn Energy on Air India 
Biden has a worthy interlocutor in Raisi 
Compensation for Covid victims- The government ought to revisit its plea before the apex court 
Vaccine Failings: The European Commission and AstraZeneca 
The 47th G 7 Meeting and reflections: the dirt is on the face and not on the mirror 
Vaccine Nationalism 
Tragedy Queen: Meena Kumari 
Student Movement in Pakistan 
Migrant women labourers hit by ban on sand mining 
Nutrition Labelling System : Visualised or Written? 
In the Passing Away of Ramesh Upadhyaya Hindi Literature Has Lost A Gem 
Obituary: Com. PS Hochimin 
‘Epic Failure of Humanity’: Global Displaced Population Hits All-Time High 
Geneva Summit: Leading from the front while dealing with media 
Why the Approval of That Alzheimer’s Drug Is So Disturbing 
Modest results of the meeting in Geneva 
Takeaways from Biden-Putin summit 
Vaccine Woes Worry India 
In Pandemic Times No One Should Be Made Homeless 
Supreme Court verdict turns to be the downfall of Khori 
IIT Gandhinagar: Crushing of Dissent by Hobby Group ‘Awaam’ 
Leader close to Indian consulate convicted for sex assault 
Threatening Writers In Gujarat 
Protests in Punjab on arrests of intellectuals and social activists 
Nizhal: In the Shadow of the Surreal 
“Cow dung, cow urine didn’t work. Groundless argument. Tomorrow I will eat fish”. In mid-May this year, this simple Facebook post about the futility of bovine waste as a cure for Covid-19, was enough to get Kishorechandra Wangkhem, a journalist from Imphal, Manipur arrested for ‘sedition’ . The post upset members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as it came[Read More…]
