Convention Against the Politics of Repression of People’s Movements 31st October 2018 / Raipur, Chattisgarh
Call by Organizing Comittee
… The Bhima Koregaon case marks a turning point in the use of state repression. An event to celebrate the valour of Dalits and OBCs is sought to be delegitimized by casting overtones of extraneous Maoist activity. Ten prominent human rights defenders, lawyers, professors, cultural, social and political activists, while homes of ten others have been raided. These arrests represent something more sinister – that the legal work of human rights defenders (trade union activists, anti-displacement activists, lawyers, poets and writers etc.) can be criminalized and deemed as terrorist activities that require the slapping of the draconian UAPA; and that all space for democratic dissent can be usurped by the State in the name of ‘Public and National Security’.