(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…]

“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…]

‘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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

  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…]

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…]

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…]

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 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…]

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…]

  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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

“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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

  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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

 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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

“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…]

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…]

People’s Union for Civil Liberties – Chhattisgarh Unit has expressed its displeasure at the appointment of tainted police officials, such as Mr. SPR Kalluri, in key positions by the State Government despite full knowledge of their poor and controversial record at the human rights front. PUCL CG strongly believes that the last fifteen years of BJP rule in the state[Read More…]

A Report by the FreeSpeechCollective Date of Release: 31 December 2018 Author: Geeta Seshu Editor: Laxmi Murthy Contributors: Ashlin Mathew, Geeta Seshu, Malini Subramaniam, Laxmi Murthy, Shone Satheesh Cover Image: Journalists in the thick of reporting army operations in Srinagar on 8 December 2018, during which a 14-year old militant was killed . Credit: Kamran Yousuf Note: The incidents in[Read More…]

The title of this essay is a slightly modified version of the title Let Truth be the Prejudice, the book that W. Eugene Smith intended to publish as his way of making the world face up to the reality of “the greed, the stupidity, and the intolerances” that he witnessed and documented in his photographs.  As the New Year approaches, each of us,[Read More…]

  The NYT wrote yesterday, Christmas Day, that an 8-year old Guatemalan boy died in US Border Control custody. The circumstances are not clear, or are simply not reported. A month earlier, a 7-year old girl, also from Guatemala, died also in US Border Control custody. Here too, the circumstances are not revealed. How many more children, not mentioned by[Read More…]

December 25, 1968, termed as ‘Black Thursday’, saw the first mass crime against Dalits in independent India, who were fighting for respectable wages under the leadership of the Communist Party. P Srinivasan, a veteran village functionary who cremates the dead had, in an interview done few years ago, described the darkening early morning on December 26, 1968, when the bodies began[Read More…]

The Trump administration announced a new policy that effectively guts the right of asylum for refugees from Central America. From now on, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will begin expelling non-Mexican refugees as soon as they have made application for asylum after crossing the US-Mexico border. They will be immediately deported to Mexico instead of being allowed to stay[Read More…]

A report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) says, “Dalits and Adivasis – two of the most vulnerable sections of Indian society – make up a considerable number of India’s prison population.” Adivasi is the collective term for the indigenous peoples of mainland South Asia. Adivasi make up 8.2% of India’s population, or 104 million people, according to the[Read More…]

The international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders detailed an “unprecedented” level of violence and hostility toward journalists around the world in 2018, with the number of reporters killed and detained while working—or in retaliation for their work—shooting up from the previous year. Eighty journalists around the world were killed due to their reporting work from January to November 2018,[Read More…]

Seven-year-old Jackeline Caal died in the custody of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) last week, the agency admitted Thursday. The child’s death was a direct consequence of the savage repression of immigrants by the Trump administration, which has intensified to the point where such deaths cannot be considered accidents. They are the inevitable and deliberate result of policies[Read More…]