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…]
It was a very spirited anti-Fascist protest meeting on “Where is Najeeb?” at Jantar Mantar yesterday afternoon, organised by the peaceful resistance movement of United against Hate. The main speakers slated for the meeting were the brave, inspiratonal victims of hate : Najib’s mother, Nafisa-ji, and Tabrez Ansari’s wife, Gauri Lankesh’s sister and Subodh Singh’s wife. Besides, those who spoke[Read More…]
The controversial issue of custodial death is not a recent phenomenon and it is not limited to any particular country. In India for that matter in the north eastern state of Manipur, many people including innocent ones have lost their lives due to custodial atrocities like rampant use of third degree torture methods by police during interrogation as a[Read More…]
Tamils in Sri Lanka have undergone grave injustice, Pogroms, Torture, War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Forced Disappearances and Genocide. Tamil mothers in Sri Lanka fight daily to learn what happened to their missing loved ones, even a decade after the conflict and at the risk of rape, Tamil students, journalists and activists continue to speak truth to power despite the[Read More…]
The pigeon flapped in desperation, moving across Melbourne’s lavish Capitol Theatre in fits and starts. It was more alarmed than anything else at the address being given by former Australian football (soccer to some) player Craig Foster. Foster has been beating the drum on one particular message for some time now: that sports can change the dimension of human rights,[Read More…]
PUCL strongly condemns the actions of the Jharkhand police in dropping murder charges u/s 302 IPC from the charge sheet of the case related to the brutal lynching murder of Tabrez Ansari and replacing it with a much more diluted charge u/s 304 IPC, (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). PUCL also strongly deprecates the justification offered by the SP[Read More…]
For a decade,NazaninZaghari-Ratcliffe, a 41-year- old British-Iranian woman had a normal life in north London. She had a home, a job, husband and a beautiful daughter named Gabriella. A 2016 visit to Iran changed all that. Nazanin was arrested and taken away at a Tehran airport by the members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, an elite faction of the government. She[Read More…]
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) condemns the raid on DU professor, Dr Hany Babu’s residence in Noida, Delhi, by the Pune police earlier today (10 September 2019). The unending trial of democracy and unremitting assault on the Constitution and rule of law, in the name of Bhima-Koregaon, and the McCarthy-style With-hunt and victimisation of constitutionally minded academics and[Read More…]
Many in Asia look at the Middle East with a mixture of expectation of stable energy supplies, hope for economic opportunity and concern about a potential fallout of the region’s multiple violent conflicts that are often cloaked in ethnic, religious and sectarian terms. Yet, a host of Asian nations led by men and women, who redefine identity as concepts of[Read More…]
It is high time for the United Nations to initiate investigation regarding the usage of banned cluster bombs and weapons of mass destruction [WMD]. Even after emerging of substantial evidences, United Nations is delaying the investigations. United Nations gravely failed to protect the civilians during the war and knowingly ignored to take any action that caused more than the lives[Read More…]
The final list of updated National Register of Citizen (NRC) that has been published on August 31 which has excluded nearly 19 lakh people in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam of their citizenship. In the final draft of NRC, out of 3.30 crore applicants, 31.11 crore names have been found to be eligible for inclusion in updated NRC and[Read More…]
Over 1.9 million people have been left out of the final National Register of Citizens or NRC – a list intended to identify legal residents and weed out illegal immigrants from Assam. Those left out of the NRC can appeal to the Foreigners Tribunal within 120 days. After that those left out will be sent to Detention Centers! Are we[Read More…]
On 6-7 August 2019, a fact-finding team comprising activists, academics, researchers and lawyers visited a few Pathalgadi villages in Khunti district (Ghaghara, Bhandra and Habuidih in Khunti block and Kochang and Birbanki in Arki block) to understand the Adivasis’ motivation for doing Pathalgadi and the response of the administration. The team met several residents of these and neighbouring villages and[Read More…]
CDRO severely condemns the death of Patnaik Harijan – a 45-year-old undertrial in Kalahandi district of Odisha on August 23, 2019. The deceased, a daily wage labourer from Rengapalli village of Lanjigarh block, was declared dead at VIMSAR, Burla where he was admitted by the Bhawanipatna jail authorities in critical condition. He had been in prison since four months. He[Read More…]
We, concerned citizens and organizations in Odisha, are shocked and outraged at the death of Pattnaik Harijan, a resident of Rengapalli village, Lanjigarh block, Kalahandi district at the Burla Medical College Hospital while in the custody of Kalahandi jail authorities and administration. He died yesterday, Friday, August 23 when he was brought from Bhawanipatna Jail with high fever. We are[Read More…]
It’s hard to believe that more than four years have passed since the police shot Amílcar Pérez-López a few blocks from my house in San Francisco’s Mission District. He was an immigrant, 20 years old, and his remittances were the sole support for his mother and siblings in Guatemala. On February 26, 2015, two undercover police officers shot him six times[Read More…]
Ablikim Yusuf, a 53-year old Uyghur Muslim seeking a safe haven from potential Chinese persecution, landed this week in the United States, his new home. But Mr. Yusuf’s perilous search that took him from Pakistan to Qatar to Bosnia Herzegovina where was refused entry and back to Qatar highlighted China’s inability to enforce its depiction of the brutal clampdown on[Read More…]
Recently, I was browsing through a bunch of articles when one headline in the New York Times caught my attention. It read “How to disclose a disability to your employer (and whether you should?)”. My first response was to ignore it on the grounds of being ignorant and inconsiderate. A closer introspection, though, led me to the conclusion that the report[Read More…]
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” -Nelson Mandela On 12th June 2019, ILO celebrated 100 years of promoting help and social justice to labor and their family. On this day, ILO defined one of their sustainable development goals as global commitment to eradicate child labor aligning with[Read More…]
Co-Written by Dr. P. S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal Courtesy https://www.greengazette.in The above Gazette Notification No. 2387 issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on 22 July, 2019 states: “Whereas, in exercise of the powers conferred by sub-sections (1) and (3) of section 3 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (37 of 1967), the Central Government[Read More…]
Migrant detention centers in the U.S. are turning out to be an issue of debate. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence toured two detention facilities on the Texas border Friday, July 12, including a Border Patrol station where hundreds of men were crowded in sweltering cages without cots. “Look, this is tough stuff,” Pence acknowledged at a later news conference. “I knew[Read More…]
‘Tu zinda hai tu zindagi ki jeet par yakeen kar…’ ◆◆◆◆ Whatever the Prosecutor State thinks, or, the ambivalent Judiciary rules, or, the compromised media makes out of your “crimes”, Gautam. For many of us, you will always remain one, along with countless others, who made us dreamers over the years: dreamers of freedom, of equality, of justice. We salute your convictions in[Read More…]
Sunaina Devi, an illiterate, has knocked all the available doors after her husband disappeared eight years ago but her struggle is yet to end. “My hopes diminished with his disappearance,” says Sunaina Devi, 62, of her husband who went missing on April 28, 2011. “His paltry income was the light in our darkness, what else is there for the poor[Read More…]
The Human Rights Forum (HRF) is deeply disappointed and concerned with the July 18, 2019 order by a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in the ‘encounters’ case. This is not an order that upholds the landmark judgment by a 5-judge bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on February 6, 2009. It does not state, as the AP HC[Read More…]
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Grimms’ fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. Terrified by cruel conditions at home, the brother and sister flee, winding their way, hungry and scared, through unknown woods. There, they encounter an old woman who lures them in with promises of safety. Instead, she locks one of them in a cage and turns the other[Read More…]
South Asian activists came together to raise their voices for a senior Indian police officer who is being persecuted for standing up against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Sunday, July 21 at Holland Park in Surrey. Bhatt was recently given a life sentence for the custodial death of a man arrested in connection with sectarian violence in 1989. Members of[Read More…]
In a country with poor human rights record and rampant violations of fundamental right to life of citizens, the Supreme Court ruling is a positive step towards accountability. The Supreme Court made it clear that policemen, who are part of encounters that result in deaths of individuals , have to necessarily face FIRs, trial, etc. A three judge bench of[Read More…]
Citizenship in Assam is a long contested issue shaped by forces of migration, partition and movements based on communalism, xenophobia and hatred for the “other”. This conflict will not end with the NRC but will take different forms as long as the hysteria and paranoia against the Muslims persist. Different instruments will be reinvented to dehumanise and decitizenise the Muslims[Read More…]
It could be called a gulag mentality, though it finds form in different ways. In the defunct Soviet Union, it was definitive of life: millions incarcerated, garrisons of forced labour, instruments of the proletarian paradise fouled. Gulag literature suggested another society, estranged and removed from civilian life, channelled into an absent universe. Titles suggested as much: Gustaw Herling’s work was[Read More…]
The Janhastakshep takes note of and condemns in unequivocal terms the vindictive CBI raids on her and her husband Anand Gover’s house and the office of the NGO, Lawers’ Collective with the sense of vengeance for raising voices against the ill deeds of the government. The action is the latest sequence of attacks continuing for the last five years, agaimst[Read More…]
Mugilan, a TamilNadu based environmental and civil rights activist disappeared on Feburary 15, 2019, after releasing explosive video evidence that implicated the Vedanta’s Sterlite Corporation in the killing of 13 people including a minor girl,Snowlin. That night, when he was supposed to board a train from Chennai Egmore railway station to Madurai, he went missing. A case was filed in[Read More…]
Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers Public awareness of the brutal repression against immigrants seeking entry to the United States, the reasons for their migration, and terrorism against immigrants living in the US are reaching levels that make them hard to ignore. The current immigration crisis is self-created and bi-partisan. Although the Trump administration’s rhetoric is extreme, it reflects[Read More…]
Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) expresses shock and concern at the arrest warrant issued against Stan Swamy, Aloka Kujur, Rakesh Roshan, Vinod Kumar and Babita Kashyap on 17 June 2019, one year after the FIR was filed against 20 writers, intellectuals and activists in Jharkhand on 26 July 2018 based on Facebook posts. All five are vulnerable[Read More…]
PUDR condemns the arrest warrant issued against Stan Swamy, Aloka Kujur, Vinod Kumar, Rakesh Roshan Kiro and Babita Kashyap on 19 June 2019, in relation to FIR filed on 26 July 2018 for waging war against the state, sedition, conspiracy, and Sections 66 and 66A IT Act based simply on their Facebook posts. The Jharkhand government had filed this FIR[Read More…]
On June 19th, Statistica headlined “Number of forcibly displaced people reaches new high”, and when one looks at the data, one finds an even bigger story which stands behind those numbers: This new report from the United Nations documents Statistica’s headline, and it proves that America’s regime-change operations have actually created around half of the world’s refugees. It proves that[Read More…]
The campaign for recognition of the 1984 Sikh massacre as Genocide in the Canadian parliament has been launched in Surrey on Saturday, June 29. Thousands of Sikhs were murdered all across India in the first week of November 1984 following the assassination of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The activists of the slain leader’s ruling Congress party[Read More…]
Praise from US President Donald Trump has a tendency of tarnishing gold and ungilding matters, and there was something of the muck in his tweet praising Australia for its sadistic approach to refugee arrivals. Operation Sovereign Borders, which commenced in 2013, was the high water mark in an experiment of glacial cruelty: to treat refugee arrivals – those specifically taking[Read More…]
In December 2018, the National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) across the globe pledge to bolster their support for human rights defenders amidst a growing climate of threats and reprisals. While adopting the Marrakech Declaration and reaffirming the principles of Paris Declaration, NHRIs recognized that “Human rights defenders have a positive, important and legitimate role in contributing to the realisation of[Read More…]
” People have always been the foolish victims of deception and self deception in politics , and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interest of some class or other behind all moral, religious,political and social phrases , declarations and promises . V. I. Lenin – ‘The Three Sources and Three Components Parts of Marxism’[Read More…]
New Delhi: The “Campaign Against Torture in India” while releasing “India: Annual Report on Torture 2018” on the United Nations Day Against Torture stated that during 2018, a total of 1,966 custodial deaths were reported to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) including 147 deaths in police custody and 1,819 deaths in judicial custody. These figures do not reflect the extent and actual[Read More…]
On June 16 China announced that it had reached a “broad consensus” about counter-terror work with United Nations, after UN’s chief for Counter-terrorism, Russian diplomat Vladimir Voronkov made a visit to Xinjiang from June 13-15. China’s handling of so called terror threat posed by Uighur extremists has been much talked about by western media and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres[Read More…]
PUDR expresses shock and concern at the manner in which the Office of the Superintendent of Police, Kalahandi in Odisha is issuing threats and intimidation of encounter deaths to public spirited individuals and professionals in the Niyamgiri region in the course of their regular discharge of duty. A forty-year old journalist, Padmanabha Choudhury has been threatened to be killed in[Read More…]
Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri, who was burnt alive in Ahmedabad during post-Godhra riots by a mob has written an open letter , to Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt. the wife of the IPS officer, sentenced to life imprisonment last week in a 30-year old case of alleged custodial death. In the letter Nishrin says she should not expect[Read More…]
“It’s all about the Benjamins [$100 bills], baby,” Tweeted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in February. She was accusing super-wealthy AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) of bribing Congress into supporting Israel. AIPAC, ADL (Anti-Defamation League), AJC (American Jewish Committee), B’nai B’rith, and Congress condemned Omar as anti-Jewish. 2,153 persons at JewsWithIlhan.org, though, defended her. AIPAC can’t legally donate to politicians.[Read More…]
Surveillance is merely a variant of violent voyeurism, the human behind the camera or visual apparatus observing behaviour in a setting, often private. Its premise is privacy’s violation; its working assumption is privacy’s irrelevance; officially tolerated such a concept is unofficially repudiated. Studies on surveillance do as much to reveal its problems as accommodate them: the great, all seeing commissar[Read More…]
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you…if they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you…But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him Who sent me.” (The Bible: John: 15: 18-21) My Profile and implications of “Terrorism” – Criminal Charges As a[Read More…]
“Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him information or a confession, punishing him for an act he has committed or is suspected of having committed,“ (https://www.apt.ch/en/what-is-torture/) Couple of years ago, India’s Attorney General had said at the UN that “Ours (India) is[Read More…]
Dozens of political activists came together to raise their voices for jailed Delhi University Professor G.N. Saibaba at a rally held in Surrey on Sunday, June 16. Organized by Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI), the rally was aimed at drawing international attention to the deteriorating health of physically challenged Prof. Saibaba who is being incarcerated under inhuman conditions by[Read More…]
Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha condemns repeated raids on Stan Swamy and arrests of other human rights activists Today, at around 7:15 am, an eight-member team of the Maharashtra police once again raided the Bagaicha campus in Namkum near Ranchi, the residence of 83-year old Stan Swamy, a well-known activist of Jharkhand. The police searched Stan Swamy’s belongings for about 3.5 hours.[Read More…]
A child is a miniature of an adult. A child has an individual existence like any adult in a country. Now, we , in India, successfully marked our unique toned voice for the treatment of rights of children at least above animal rights. Kashmiri 8- year old Asifa was sedated for days together, then raped by a group of “Adults[Read More…]
In war the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces[Read More…]
“We received information that 100 to 150 Naxals had gathered deep in the forest and constituted a search party of 100 and went in search of them. When we found the armed and uniformed Naxals in equal or more numbers than us, we shouted for them to drop their weapons and surrender. But not heeding our appeals they fired, intending[Read More…]
The completion of a year since the arrest of academics, activists, artists and lawyers; Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen, Sudhir Dhawale and Surendra Gadling, framed for violence caused by right wing elements at Bhima Koregoan on 1 January 2018 was successfully marked by a Jan Sabha and Cultural Programme held in Jantar Mantar, New Delhi at 11 am on[Read More…]
Julian Assange is being slowly murdered by “Her Majesty’s Prison Service” at Belmarsh prison in the south-east of London. The prison is notorious for holding people who have never been charged with a crime indefinitely. It is also called the British version of Guantanamo, and, typically used to detain so-called terrorists, thus called by the British police and secret[Read More…]
The British and Australian governments have blithely dismissed a May 31 report by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, which established that WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has been the victim of a protracted campaign of “psychological torture.” The brazen responses demonstrate the criminality of the US-led vendetta against Assange, which is proceeding in violation of due[Read More…]
Co-Written by Dr. Kiran Modi, LaxmiMadhwan & Leena Prasad Decades of research has clearly proved the harms of ‘institutionalised’ care onOHC (Out of Home) children. There are several studies that have showed the systemic inadequacies observed across institutions the world over, thus sparking a global call for care reformation; one towards family strengthening, deinstitutionalisation and finding alternative family and community-based[Read More…]
Another crude and sad chapter, yet more evidence of a system’s vengeance against its challengers. Julian Assange, like they dying Roman emperor Vespasian, may be transforming into a god of sorts, but the suffering of his mortal physical is finding its mark. While some in the cynical, narcissistic press corps still find little to commend his case, the movement to[Read More…]
Marius Reikerås is an internationally acclaimed Norwegian lawyer and human rights activist. He was awarded the NCHR/NKMR honorary diploma 2018 for outstanding bravery, compassion and humanitarian engagement. As a lawyer, Marius Reikerås has always battled against the Norwegian court system, to protect his Human rights. For many years, Marius Reikerås has been at the forefront of the protests and demonstrations[Read More…]
A vicious wave of extreme anti-abortion legislation is being hammered into law across the country. Alabama’s new law bans all abortions—even in cases of rape and incest. Doctors who provide abortions could be sent to prison for life. Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas, and Utah have also passed bans—many at stages in pregnancy before most women even know they[Read More…]
Co-Written By Suraj Gogoi, Gorky Chakraborty and Parag Jyoti Saikia In response to Professor SanjibBaruah‘s article ‘Stateless in Assam‘ which discussed a new focus on detention camps for ‘stateless citizens’, SurajGogoi, Gorky Chakraborty and Parag JyotiSaikia reflect on the implications of reducing people to ‘bare life’. The Concentration camps that came to the fore during the Holocaust, left a deep impact on human history. It showed[Read More…]
Lecture delivered by Adv S Balan, Special public prosecutor for Gauri Lankesh murder case, at IIT Madras organized by Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle on April 13th 2019. In the year 2013, Dabholkar was killed. In 2015, Pansare was killed. Again in 2015, Kalburgi was killed. In 2017, Gauri was killed. The modus operandi in these murders is the same. A[Read More…]
On 8 May 2019, Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, after a 3-day mission to the Cameroon, welcomed the Cameroon government’s willingness to cooperate over finding workable solutions to what she called “major human rights and humanitarian crises” caused by months of serious unrest and violence across the southwest and north of the country. She said[Read More…]
To the authorities, it is an offense whenever anyone raises voice against repression and torture on the poor, indigenous, fallen, mostly identified as Dalit, people and nationalities smaller in number. To the authorities, it is considered an offense whenever someone stands by these people. Social and human rights activists raising voices of protest against repression on these people are being[Read More…]
Prison walls or iron bars cannot hide Truth. Torture or harassment cannot detain anyone for too long. That was proved on April 3, 2019 when a brave woman Nirmalakka travelled from Sukma to Kunta for two hours with around twenty journalists after her release from jail in Chhattisgarh. After 12 years in jail, she was finally acquitted from all cases.[Read More…]
BAKSA,Assam, May 3: The Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD) in lower Assam which had witnessed carnage over the years ,the memories of which are still afresh and vivid in the minds of the people and not to say of those who lost their kins for whom justice still remains to be delivered.The 2008 ethnic and communal clashes in Darrang-Udalguri districts[Read More…]
A 16-member fact-finding team of All India Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisation (CDRO) and GanatantrikAdhikar Suraksha Sangathan, Odisha (GASS) had been to Niyamgiri area and Vedanta Plant site, Lanjigada and spent three days from 26th to 28th April, 2019 there. All members got divided into two teams. One team visited various villages of Niyamgiri like Lakpadar, Belang Mandal and Dangamati[Read More…]
Exactly one hundred and four years ago world witnessed the first systematic genocide when the international law had adopted no specific legal remedies to prevent such atrocities or decades before Raphael Lemkin coined the term “Genocide” in 1944. The calamity that befell Armenian people lived in Ottoman Empire have been widely discussed as one of the macabre events recorded in[Read More…]
On Tuesday, 23 April 2019, the United Nations Security Council voted resolution N° 2467 concerning the use of rape as a weapon in times of armed conflict. This resolution builds on an earlier resolution of 24 June 2013 which called for the complete and immediate cessation of all acts of sexual violation by all parties in armed conflicts. The new[Read More…]
Throughout history, dark and reactionary forces have always attempted to control the world; by violence, by deceit, by kidnapping and perverting the mainstream narrative,or by spreading fear among the masses. Consistently, brave and honest individuals have been standing up, exposing lies, confronting the brutality and depravity.Some have fought against insane and corrupt rulers by using swords or guns; others have[Read More…]
On 11 April 2019, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by UK police and arrested for breaching a bail condition. See‘Arrest update – SW1’. Upon arrival at a London police station, Julian was ‘further arrested’ on behalf of the United States governmentto satisfy an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the UK Extradition Act.[Read More…]
Indignation has no limits! Arresting Julian Assange is murdering the truth, murdering Human Rights – and eliminating freedom of speech, let alone freedom of the media. The latter has been a farce since a while, but what happened on 11 April and in preparation of 11 April – the storming by UK police of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London –[Read More…]
Reading about immigration policy, religious and racial bigotry, and terrorism fears in America in 1919 offers an eerie sense of decades melting away and past and present blurring together. The blend isn’t exact. Bigotry was expressed much more explicitly a century ago, not in code as it usually is now. Jim Crow laws in the South and other forms of[Read More…]
The modern UN Refugee Convention is now so flea-bitten it’s been put out to the garbage tip of history. At least the enthusiastic fleas think so, given their conduct as political representatives across a range of parliaments keen on barbed wired borders and impenetrable defences. Across Europe, the issue of refugees arriving by sea – in this case, the Mediterranean[Read More…]
Who can we believe? Political parties and partisan organizations now present not only their own opinions but, as the old joke goes, their own facts as well. Are the Palestinians being shot at the Gaza fence trying to invade Israel, as the Israeli Army shooting them claims, or are they trying to protest their confinement in the open-air prison in[Read More…]
Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers The arrest of Julian Assange not only puts the free press in the United States at risk, it puts any reporters who expose US crimes anywhere in the world at risk. As Pepe Escobar wrote “Let’s cut to the chase. Julian Assange is not a US citizen, he’s an Australian. WikiLeaks is not a US-based[Read More…]
Assange and Lula the same case to silence their voices, says Chomsky If Assange is criminalized & incarcerated, you’ll never be free again, says George Galloway Assange must face Swedish justice first: 70 UK MPs and peers The US case against Assange could change the future of journalism Journalists in the U.S. are concerned ‘Surreally idiotic’: CAT FOR SPYING Noam[Read More…]
Mairead Maguire has requested UK Home Office for permission to visit her friend Julian Assange whom this year she has nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. “I want to visit Julian to see he is receiving medical care and to let him know that there are many people around the world who admire him and are grateful for his courage[Read More…]
Historically, the masculine ideological world view – professed by politicians of both gender’s, their counterparts in the corporate and military world’s and all those citizenry who support them – have dominated the evolution of human civilization in both war and peacetime; life on Earth an endless ruthless, violent, aggressive Game of Thrones. Because of this raw, unaddressed male violence and[Read More…]
The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years. That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of[Read More…]
Prof Haragopal, Venugopal, Prof Katyayani and many others were arrested in Hyderabad today while holding an indoor meeting. Meeting demanding the release of Varavararao and other intellectuals to be held by democratic teachers federation today at 10am is obstructed by telangana police. Telangana NGO bhavan is locked and hundreds of teachers attending the meeting along with the speakers are arrested.[Read More…]
Stamping Free Thought and Destruction of Professional Lives Rona Wilson It is ironic that a man who is a leading member of the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP – based in India) is himself behind bars. Rona Wilson is charged under one of the most draconian of laws in India – Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Wilsonis a[Read More…]
For seven years, from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations. For seven years, we have had[Read More…]
Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois pre-recorded this interview for the tenth Unity4J Vigil which took place on 30 December 2018. Boyle spearheaded the campaign to defeat the U.S./U.K. Supplementary Extradition Treaty of 1986 by Maggie Thatcher which succeeded in ‘castrating’ the treaty, according to Boyle. After 9/11 2001 the British Government re-tendered the original[Read More…]
The jaws of power “The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.” John Adams, (1735-1826) According to the Nuremberg Principles, the citizens of a country have a responsibility for the crimes that their governments commit. But to prevent these crimes, the[Read More…]
The Malaysian government last year expressed a surprise change of heart on a policy long held dear; it would reconsider the death penalty. The case of Muhammad Lukman, sentenced to death in August for the purchase and sharing of medicinal marijuana, did much to stimulate outrage. On October 10th, law minister Liew Vui Keong announced that it would be abolished. [Read More…]
Teachers and students came together at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver on Wednesday, April 3 to raise their voices for the jailed Delhi University Professor G.N. Saibaba. A well-known human rights defender, Saibaba is being incarcerated under inhuman conditions, despite being ninety percent disabled below the waist. Saibaba was convicted for life after being accused of being[Read More…]
Political asylum is an accepted if often ignored right. It is also at the mercy of those interests that grant it. Ecuador’s repeated insistence on conditioning Julian Assange’s stay in its London abode is tantamount to corroding the idea of asylum to vacuity. You are granted asylum as a political dissident, but political dissident you shall not be, especially when[Read More…]
Iranian regime forces reportedly killed one Ahwazi farmer and injured 11 other people, including elderly people and women, in retaliation for the victims’ refusal to abandon their homes and lands when the IRGC told them that the regime would be diverting the floodwaters from the current massive flooding afflicting the region in southwestern Iran onto their farmlands in order to[Read More…]
Fact Finding visit on the social and human development situation of people in Lanjigarh and Niyamgiri, Kalahandi &Rayagada Districts, Odisha – Interim Observations (23-27 March, 2019) Context A fact finding was conducted by 6 members of Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS), a nationwide network of like-minded people from diverse political and social movements comprising of women’s organizations,[Read More…]
Tamils demand the Right to Self-Determination as Tamils in Sri Lanka qualify as a People and Nation When the United Nations was created after World War II, one of the main purposes of the United Nations was spelt out in Article 1 [2] of the Charter, which states ‘To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principles[Read More…]
A huge congregation was held at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey this past Sunday, March 24 to show solidarity with three Sikh men who were recently convicted in the world’s so called largest democracy for merely keeping literature perceived as “seditious” by the Indian state. Arwinder Singh, Surjit Singh and Ranjit Singh were criminally charged in 2016 under[Read More…]
UPHOLD THE RIGHT TO DISSENT OF THE STRUGGLING PEOPLE OF NIYAMGIRI!! BhubaneswarMarch 19, 2019: We the undersigned, with deep anger and profound sorrow, condemn the killing of the dalit activist Dani Batra at the gate of the Vedanta Alumina refinery plant at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district yesterday morning. Sujit Kumar Minj of the OISF has also been killed. Over 50[Read More…]
PUDR draws attention to the illegality behind the decision of the Central Government-ruled Jammu and Kashmir to ban Jamaat-e-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir on February 28, 2019. While attention has been focussed on the escalation and de-escalation of tension between India-Pakistan, the Central Government has intensified repression in the[Read More…]
Few days ago Bhima-Koregaon witnessed the progressive manifestation of the resistance against dominant Hindutva brahmanical cultural coercion on the vast mases of people in the country. The celebration at BhimaKoregaon brings into ashes the Hindutva political conspiracy of unifying India on the basis of brahmanical theological practices. BhimaKoregaon is a spatial manifestation of the resistance which the oppressed has presented[Read More…]
On March 5, I went to the Bekal police station in Kerala’s Kasaragod district to stand guarantor for one of my students. Avala Ramu from Andhra Pradesh is in the final semester of his MA in International Relations and Politics at the Central University of Kerala. He was charge-sheeted under IPC 124A, the Sedition clause. I had to pitch in[Read More…]
Declaration from the Third National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress, the Indigenous Governing Council, and the EZLN To the peoples of the world: To those organizations and collectives acting in resistance and rebellion: To the national and international Sixth: To the media: As Ayuuk, Binizza, Chinanteco, Chol, Chontal, Guarijío, Maya, Mayo, Mazahua, Mazateco, Mixteco, Nahua, Nayeri, Otomí, Popoluca, Purépecha,[Read More…]
His visit struck a sour note. The Australian prime minister Scott Morrison was making an effort to show he cared: about those intangible things called borders, secure firm and shut to the unwanted human matter coming by sea. The distant Australian territory of Christmas Island was selected to assist in coping with arrivals from Manus and Nauru Island needing medical[Read More…]
To The Commissioner of Police Mumbai We the undersigned strongly condemn the way in which attempts were recently made to intimidate Prof Ram Puniyani by people supposedly belonging to CID. We fear that it is to silence his voice which has always remained critical of communal forces and has fought for peace and harmony. We are told that on 9[Read More…]
“I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.” So explained Chelsea Manning in justifying her refusal to answer questions and comply with a grand jury subpoena compelling her to testify on her knowledge of WikiLeaks. “Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly stated ethical obligations to the[Read More…]
A police raid on a Kazakh group documenting the plight of Kazakhs and Uyghurs caught in a brutal crackdown in China’s north-western province of Xinjiang is about more than a government seeking to please Beijing in the hope that it improves the lot of its ethnic kin while preserving diplomatic and economic relations. Amid suspicions that the raid on the[Read More…]
The members of Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) held a demonstration in Surrey on Sunday, March 10 against the recent sentencing of three Sikh activists in Punjab, for merely keeping literature that was perceived as “anti-national” by the state police.Arwinder Singh, Surjit Singh and Ranjit Singh were criminally charged in 2016 under draconian laws. Last month, a Nawanshehar court[Read More…]
A federal judge ordered Chelsea Manning to prison Friday morning for an indefinite period of time, after the former Army private, jailed for seven years for providing information to WikiLeaks exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, refused on principle to answer any questions before a secret grand jury investigating the media organization and its founder Julian Assange. “The[Read More…]
The Chairperson National Human Rights Commission Manav Adhikar Bhawan Block-C, GPO Complex, INA New Delhi- 110023 Dear Chairperson, I am William Gomes, Human rights defender and Freelance journalist. According to the information received from Front Line Defenders, as of 4 March 2019, human rights defender Shanmugam Thangasamy, better known as RS Mugilan, remains missing. On 15 February 2019, RS Mugilan[Read More…]
PUDR protests the illegal arrest of Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti member Lingaraj Azad, who has been at the forefront of the peoples struggle against bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri hills, and the continuing repression against the people through routine detention of NSS leaders, security camps, patrolling and raids on villages. Lingaraj Azad was detained and arrested on 6 March in Lanjigarh[Read More…]
Delhi, March 6: NAPM (National Alliance of Peoples’s Movements) condemns the illegal and deceitful arrest of Lingraj Azad today by Odisha police. He is the leader of Niyamgiri Suraksha Parishad, who successfully fought the valiant struggle against Vedanta corporation along with Dongria Kondh. Initially it was reported that he has been arrested in an old case but just now we[Read More…]
Assassinating Berta Cáceres, a Maya-Lenka Women from Honduras in 2016, shows in a brutal way, that the recognition of indigenous religions in AbiaYala-Latin America is not only an interreligious, but also an economic and political challenge. Where do we go after death, Dady? We come from the earth. We return to the earth. That is all. Valentin Quispe[2] In[Read More…]
Think charity, think vulnerability and its endless well of opportunistic exploitation. Over the years, international charity organisations have been found with employees keen to take advantage of their station. That advantage has been sexual, financial and, in the case of allegations being made about the World Wild Life Fund for Nature, in the nature of inflicting torture on those accused[Read More…]
UDALGURI,Assam,Mar 5: The updating of the National Register of Citizenship for Assam has ostensibly triggered a rash of suicides, suggesting that it has become a source of tremendous stress and anxiety for segments of the state’s population. These emotions do not necessarily arise from paranoia — after all, exclusion from the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) implies revocation or denial[Read More…]
We are shocked and appalled by the Supreme Court order dated 20/2/2019 for eviction of Adivasis and other Traditional Forest dwellers from their Traditional habitats, thus depriving them their right to life and livelihood guaranteed by Article 21 enshrined in Indian constitution. We unequivocally appeal to the Supreme Court to reevaluate this retrograde anti people order which will throw Millions[Read More…]
Mugilan Swamithayal is a well-known environmental activist who has been on the forefront of various struggles against nuclear power, industrial pollution, and sand mining for more than a decade. He always stood for environmental and nationality rights of the people without any compromise. As a rude shock to many of us, he went missing since February 15, 2019. It was[Read More…]
Peace in India and SOAS India Society appeal to students, researchers, academics, workers, activists and members of the Indian diaspora in the UK. We live in times when we are constantly questioning ideas of freedom, democracy, citizenship and nationhood. In India under Narendra Modi’s fundamentalist regime we have seen alarming suppression of dissent along with sustained efforts to reinforce Hindutva[Read More…]
The rise of authoritarian regimes can now be seen as a global phenomenon under neoliberal democracy; from Bolsonaro taking oath in Brazil this year, to Trump shutting down the US government over a border wall, to the cracks in the European Union as Orban challenges its progressive image to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s targeting of activists under the Urban Naxal[Read More…]
Two students from Malappuram district in Kerala were arrested on sedition charges for allegedly sticking posters on the Kashmir issue inside their college campus. The students have been booked under section 124(A) or sedition. The arrested students, Rinshad Reera and Faris (20), belong to the B Com department of the Government College Malappuram. Both of them are part of the[Read More…]
Caught in the backwater of the world’s existence, Australia struggles for relevance in various ways. It might show itself a leader in creating a sovereign fund (too late for that now); it might demonstrate, in various ways, a singular approach to solar energy (impossible, we are told, on that score). Lacking a decent number of terrorist attacks, it feels left[Read More…]
The federal New Democratic Party of Canada has expressed “serious concern” over the human rights situation in the world’s so called largest democracy. In a statement issued in response to growing repression under the right wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party government, Cheryl Hardcastle, the NDP Human Rights Critic, has also urged the Canadian government to break its “deafening silence”[Read More…]
The passage of amendments to the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) by the Australian House of Representatives and the Senate this week was less a case of celebration than necessitous deliverance. The mental wellbeing of asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru, or lack thereof, has been documented extensively from Australian legal representatives to members of Médecins Sans Frontières. The Medevac Bill[Read More…]
In Patanagada block of Balangir district in Odisha, nearly 30 self declared Gorakhakas (cow protectors) had attacked 4 Scheduled Caste people at Balipata village on 5th February while returning from a cow market. Such heinous incident was not in news till 12th February. When many Scheduled Caste people came in a rally to Sub-Collectoriate office at Patanagarh on 12th February[Read More…]
Bhubaneswar: On 28 January, 2019, Shatrughan Biswal and Prashant Parida along with Manjulata Muduli were remanded to Alipingal Jail in Jagatsinghpur district after being denied bail by the Sessions Court. They have been charged under sedition and sections 10 and 13 of the UAPA. Manjulata Muduli has already spent more than 10 years as an under trial implicated in the[Read More…]
Ganatantrik Adhikar Suraksha Sanghatana, Odisha condemns the arrest of Shri Pravash Pruseth of Burla in the district of Sambalpur under Sec. 504 & 506 of IPC for his mere Facebook posting. GASS will definitely bring this undemocratic and unconstitutional act of Police Administration to the notice of the National Human Rights Commission. The Facebook posting of Shri Pruseth has simply[Read More…]
“Al-Araibi’s case has become a crucial test of world football’s commitment to human rights.” So observed the director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights at Monash University, Sarah Joseph, in a piece last month. “Is this commitment real, or is it a public relations statement tossed aside when the going gets tough?” Joseph was inadvertently noting the institutional response[Read More…]
In perhaps the most significant condemnation to date of China’s brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in its north-western province of Xinjiang. Turkey’s foreign ministry demanded this weekend that Chinese authorities respect human rights of the Uighurs and close what it termed “concentration camps” in which up to one million people are believed to be imprisoned. Calling the crackdown an “embarrassment[Read More…]
My JNU friend Atif Rabbani has been beaten up in Muzaffarpur town, Bihar. As the information has reached us so far, the attack on him took place on Saturday. He has sustained injuries. But he is said to be safe. Saturday’s attack is seen as a fallout of an earlier incident of misbehavior and intimidation. Last week, some persons, collecting[Read More…]
We the undersigned strongly condemn the invitation to Mahinda Rajapaksa, war criminal and former President of Sri Lanka, to deliver the inaugural address at the “The Huddle”, an annual conclave organized by The Hindu, News Paper, in Bangalore. The conclave, according to The Hindu, is a “thoughts and ideas conclave, a platform that attempts to bring under a single roof[Read More…]
9th of February 2013 was unlike any other day, not because on this day Dr. Muhammad Afzal Guroo was hanged which no doubt was the major reason but many things were unveiled before the people. They perceived many unusual things and happenings around, which gave them an insight about who’s what. They found themselves in a strict curfew when they[Read More…]
Teltumbde is a popular Dalit scholar and activist and his writings expressing deep disagreements with Maoists are very much in the public sphere. How did the state miss seeing them? On February 2, Dalit scholar and intellectual Anand Teltumbde was arrested from Mumbai domestic airport by the Pune police around 3:30am — very promptly after his anticipatory bail petition was[Read More…]
Writer and activist Anand Teltumbde was released by a Pune court after he was produced before it on Saturday afternoon. The court termed his arrest by the Pune police in the early hours of Saturday in Mumbai “illegal” and observed that the protection granted to him was for four weeks, and that either the Bombay High Court or the Supreme[Read More…]
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” – Desmond Tutu The quote applies appropriately to Canada, which claims to be a human rights leader in the world, considering its indifference toward some recent ugly events that unfolded in India. Widely known as the world’s largest democracy, India is going through an[Read More…]
While the general condition of prisons and the prisoners is pathetic, those suffering disability is horrific to say the least. The basic right to life ( Article 21 of the constitution) is mostly violated in dealing with prisoners who are handicapped. Treatment The Veena Sethi case in the early 1980s brought to light the treatment of persons with mental illnesses[Read More…]
Writer and activist Anand Teltumbde was arrested at 3.30 am from Mumbai domestic airport when he was returning to Mumbai from Kochi. Adv Pradeep Mandhyan spoke to Inspector Indulkar from Pune who was at airport to take him into custody. Indulkar claimed Teltumbde was being arrested since his bail had been rejected by the Pune trial court! This action blatantly[Read More…]
“We came to work. I know I’m not getting asylum because they don’t give you asylum for hunger,” a young migrant from Honduras told a reporter. “But us on the caravan would rather die fighting than sitting in Honduras waiting to starve or be killed.” These stark words show the desperation of thousands of people, half of them women and[Read More…]
The police in the State of Maharashtra, India, acting at the behest of the BJP Hindutva government at the centre and the State, has named Professor Dr Anand Teltumbde in a totally fabricated FIR (First Information Report) accusing him of involvement with the violence at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, 2018. We demand the immediate withdrawal of the trumped up[Read More…]
Members of Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) held a demonstration on Sunday, January 27 at Holland Park in Surrey to show solidarity with Anand Teltumbde, who is facing arrest by the Indian police. Teltumbde is a published author and columnist who has been advocating for the rights of poor and marginalized people. He is known for being a vocal[Read More…]
We, the undersigned students and faculty of the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, condemn the recent attempts by the Pune Police to arrest the teacher, activist and public intellectual. Dr Anand Teltumbde. Dr. Teltumbde has taught at various universities in the country and has published his academic work widely, including in the Economic and Political Weekly. He is also the[Read More…]
To: Sri Ram Nath Kovind President of India presidentofindia@rb.nic.in Sri Narendra Modi Prime Minister of India Via: High Commission of India, Ottawa dhc.ottawa@mea.gov.in Re: Appeal to Drop All Charges against Dr. Anand Teltumbde Sir: Dr Anand Teltumbde, an alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, Executive Director of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd., Ex-MD & CEO of Petronet India, former[Read More…]
We are shocked and dismayed by the recent appointment of SRP Kalluri to two positions of responsibility — as Inspector General, Anti Corruption Bureau and Economic Offences Wing – of Chhattisgarh state government. SRP Kalluri, in his service tenure, has a track record of engaging in human rights violations accompanied with a brazen impunity that has exemplified him as an[Read More…]
[Foreword: India has vowed to be a socialist, secular, democratic republic. Sadly, all these values are steadily being eroded in the present political developments. About 20 intellectuals, professionals, activists who are working for the fundamental rights of the poor and marginalized and upholding the above mentioned constitutional values are being labeled ‘urban naxals’ and are being harassed no end either[Read More…]
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in December 1948. Seventy years later the Delhi High Court for the first time unhesitatingly recognised the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom as Genocide. Thirty four years after the massacre a bench of justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel finally last month held former[Read More…]
Lawyers for Julian Assange have filed an urgent application to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), based in Washington D.C., to direct the Trump Administration to unseal the charges it has secretly filed against Mr. Assange. Assange’s lawyers are also asking the Commission to compel Ecuador to cease its espionage activities against Mr. Assange, to stop the isolation imposed[Read More…]
It is rather difficult to begin when you know that within a few days or weeks, one of your close friends could be behind bars under one of the most draconian laws crafted by this Republic. The world knows him as Anand Teltumbde, but for me he has always been Anand. Merely four months ago, we were together in a[Read More…]
Sunday, January 27, 2 pm – Holland Park, Surrey Indians Abroad for Pluralist India calls upon all progressive and democratic forces to join us to protest against growing repression in the world’s so called largest democracy. Ever since the right wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in India in 2014, attacks on religious minorities and political[Read More…]
Halfway through 2018, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski hurled a mother-to-mother dagger at Ivanka Trump. How, during the very weeks when the headlines were filled with grim news of child separations and suffering at the U.S.-Mexico border, she asked, could the first daughter and presidential adviser be so tone-deaf as to show herself hugging her two-year-old son? Similarly, six months earlier, she had been[Read More…]
Revolution Club, Chicago: January 18—Last October, a jury found Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke guilty of second degree murder of Laquan McDonald and 16 counts of aggravated battery. Today, a judge handed down a sentence for Van Dyke that is a sickening, brutal beat-down of Black people and an outrage against humanity. For the racist murder of Laquan McDonald, the[Read More…]
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (Martin Luther King). Aasifa, 8 years old girl belonging to Gujjar community of Rassana village of Hiranagar Kathua was brutally raped, murdered and was decomposed nearby forests in the month of January 2018. After five days, her body was found in soaked blood and mud, which led to the suspicious that the[Read More…]
On June 29, 2015 the United States Supreme Court argued in Glossip v. Grossthat executions may continue with the use of lethal drug cocktails including the use of midazolam, an extremely painful drug, which in effect, burns to death the condemned by scorching internal organs. The use of midazolam, according to the Court, does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under[Read More…]
I, an IIM-A alumnus, IIT Professor, Executive Director of BPCL, Ex-MD &CEO of Petronet India, Senior Professor and Chair, Big Data Analytics in GIM, author of 26 books, columnist in EPW, writer of innumerable articles, a noted scholar of caste-class and public policy issues, Leading Public Intellectual and Democratic and Educational Rights Activist face imminent threat of arrest as an[Read More…]
New Socialist Initiative (NSI) stands in solidarity with the people of Assam, Tripura and the other North Eastern states in their heroic struggle against the communally motivated Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB). It was only because of the resistance of the people that the government couldn’t table the Bill for voting in the Rajya Sabha after surreptitiously passing it in the[Read More…]
Compromise is the essence of democracy for a good reason; it is the glue holding it together. It is how a country can unite after an election; it is when the 51 percent give a little, so the remainder can still feel part of governing; it is when the winning candidate promises to represent all constituents not just those voting[Read More…]
A number of corporate media outlets have begun the year by publishing scurrilous and derisive attacks against WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. The coverage has the character of a coordinated political campaign, with the most sinister motives. Its aim is to legitimise the stepped-up persecution of Assange by the US and British governments, which are pursuing the journalist and[Read More…]
… And my life’s cold winter that knew no spring; Of my mind so weary and sick and wild, Of my heart too sad to sing. — Paul Laurence Dunbar The world now has more refugees than at any time since after WW2, more than the population of Britain. They are often[Read More…]
The 2020 youth uprising in Thailand 
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Limits of Puritanism 
15 Artsakh War Myths Perpetuated By Mainstream Media 
Film & Family–Woman As Provider, Men As Parasites 
Why does Indian Nationalism Undermine South Asian Solidarity? 
Domestic workers in Maharashtra in the High Court 
WHO warns, World at critical juncture as Covid pandemic resurges in Europe 
Coronavirus Pandemic: With new wave of infections, U.S. cases reach record high 
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” The Same Hypocrisy” 
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The Rescue of the Spirit and of Nature 
A presidential election debate in the US – point- counter-point 
Redemption Song 
Sending Trump to Hell 
Trusted Demonologies: US Electoral Interference, the Proud Boys and Iran 
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Slower than the snail: Health care policy process and reforms in India 
National Education Policy 2020: A Fall into the Abyss of Neo-colonization 
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Re-Organisation Of International Communist Movement 
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European Hypocrisy: Empty Words for Palestine, Deadly Weapons for Israel 
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Pandemic and the Plight of the Indian Poor 
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This article is based on the 25th Chandrashekar Memorial Lecture delivered on 20 September 2020. The original lecture was delivered in Hindi and the event was organized by Punashcha, the Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA) and Koshish. Friends, comrades gathered here; I am very honoured to be invited to deliver the Chandrashekhar Memorial Lecture this year but I cannot say[Read More…]
