Context – free them all

AI Report: India’s exploitation of terrorism financing assessments to target the civil society

26/09/2023 Asha

Amnesty.org / by Amnesty International

The Indian government has exploited the 2010 and 2013 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) assessment reports to supplement its arsenal of counterterrorism and money laundering laws, many of which are routinely used to target civil society organizations and human rights defenders. The briefing paper analyses the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Prevention of Money Laundering Act and highlights the emblematic cases of the crackdown suffered by journalists, academics, human rights activists, and students under these laws since 2010.
…

IMPACT OF UAPA ON INDIA’S NPO SECTOR
(Page 25) … Sections 17 and 40 of UAPA that relate to terrorist funding have also been arbitrarily invoked against 16 human rights activists (BK16) since 2018, nine of whom continue to be detained without trial in the Bhima Koregaon case…
India’s targeting of activists through the misuse of UAPA’s financial powers demonstrates the broader context of the crackdown on dissent in India. For example, in June 2020, after thorough and detailed research, Amnesty International and Citizen Lab uncovered that at least nine other activists who had been calling for the release of the BK16 activists were targeted through a coordinated spyware campaign. Three of them were also targeted with the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, a commercial product only sold to government entities.
Read full report

● Campaign by Amnesty International: Act now to demand the release of the BK16! (Dec 2022)

Also read:

● Report: UAPA – CRIMINALISING DISSENT AND STATE TERROR (PUCL / Sep 2022)
Download report

Submission to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom

20/09/2023 Asha

Hrw.org / by Human Rights Watch

“Religious Freedom in India” Submission by Sarah Yager, Washington director, Human Rights Watch
The commission’s focus on religious freedom in India is welcome and timely.
Over the last decade there has been an undeniable increase in the number and frequency of attacks against religious minorities in India, especially Muslims and Christians.
… We have also repeatedly flagged human rights consequences of the government’s 2019 revocation of the constitutional autonomy of India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir. Today, four years later, authorities there are still restricting free expression, peaceful assembly, and other basic rights, and regularly shut down the internet. Several journalists and human rights defenders have been arrested on spurious terrorism charges and authorities regularly harass critics, including through use of counterterrorism raids.
Read full submission

Indian Democracy Is Facing an Existential Crisis: Progressive Writers’ Association / Repackaged Laws

10/09/2023 Asha

‘Indian Democracy Is Facing an Existential Crisis’: Progressive Writers’ Association

09/09/2023

The Wire / by The Wire Staff | Progressive Writers’ Association

“It is the duty of literature to stand for the downtrodden, the oppressed, the underprivileged, whether an individual or a group.”
Between August 20 and 22, the Progressive Writers’ Association held its 18th annual conference in Jabalpur. At the end of the conference, the PWA adopted a declaration in which it discussed the threats to democracy, equality and secularism in India – ideals with the Association see themselves as guardians of.
„… Increasing discrimination and atrocities on women, tribals and Dalits is the natural consequence of the proud superiority of the Manuwadi ideology of majoritarianism. This text can be read from Una and Hathras to Bhima Koregaon…“
Read the full declaration

Repackaged Laws for Decolonization Game

10/09/2023

News Click / by Suhit K Sen

Official anti-colonial rhetoric lacks substance and creates the basis for a more authoritarian order.
On the eve of the 77th Independence Day this year, Union Home Minister Amit Shah tabled in the Lok Sabha Bills to amend three colonial-era codes on which the criminal justice system rests, spinning this as a belated blow in favour of decolonisation.
… Though the presumption of innocence remains at the heart of the criminal justice system, its perversions remain—not created by the current regime but relentlessly misused by it.
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The many ideas behind the birth of poetry that floats like a butterfly; and stings like a bee

07/09/2023

Hindustan Times / by Ramu Ramanathan

The turning point of Telugu literary history is 3 and 4 July of 1970. Poets who were invited to speak at the seminar/ poets who were not invited to the seminar/ poets who were going to be felicitated/ poets who were expelled/ poets who were going to boycott/ poets who were to be a member of the executive committee/ poets of all ideologies and -isms
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What is Section 207 CrPC, an essential piece of the Bhima Koregaon case puzzle?

31/08/2023 Asha

The Leaflet / by Sarah Thanawala

What is the law embedded in Section 207 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and why does it keep getting invoked in the Elgar Parishad–Bhima Koregaon case?
Sevaral accused in the Elgar Parishad–Bhima Koregaon case have claimed that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has inordinately delayed giving them access to copies of important evidence in the case.
The evidence exists in the form of cloned copies of electronic material purportedly recovered from the accused.
Read more

Also Read:
● NIA gets more time to reply to plea for furnishing copies of evidence to the accused (The Leaflet / July 2023)
● Why Courts Are Ignoring Concerns Of Planted Evidence In The Bhima-Koregaon Prosecution (article14 / Jan 2023)
● Incriminating evidence planted in computers: The Trojan solved the Bhima Koregaon case! (Anchored Narratives / Jan 2023)
● Prison-rights activist Rona Wilson’s hard disk contained malware that allowed remote access (The Caravan / March 2020)

The remedy of bail: From securing liberty to ‘digital jail’

21/08/2023 Asha

The Leaflet / by Ibad Mushtaq and Akansksha Bishtibad

In the pursuit of justice, the delicate balance between individual rights and societal interests often comes under scrutiny. In the case of Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, their bail conditions, including the demanding round-the-clock location monitoring, have ignited a crucial debate that such stringent surveillance not only infringes upon their fundamental rights to life, liberty and dignity, but also undermines the essence of bail itself— to restore freedom.
Read more

Also read:
● NIA in a quandary as bail condition for mobile phone tethering turns out to be a tug (The Leaflet / Aug 2023)
● PUDR welcomes the release on bail of Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira today, but protests onerous bail conditions (PUDR / Aug 5, 2023)

Can Fr Stan Swamy’s PIL be the blueprint for justice to thousands of undertrials lodged under UAPA?

18/08/2023 Asha

The Leaflet / by Sarah Thanawala

Can the judgment which granted bail to Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira form the basis for implementation of the same principles for granting bail to other accused in the Bhima Koregaon–Elgar Parishad case as well as to the other 500 detenues in Jharkhand who are still at the pre- or post-trial stage?
… A public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the late Father Stan Swamy in 2017 in the Jharkhand High Court may serve as a path in the direction of ending incarceration of the disturbingly large number of those held in custody without a trial.
Read more

Also watch/read:
● Video: Vernon v. State of Maharashtra: A Breakthrough in Bail Jurisprudence under the UAPA? (PUCL India / Aug 2023)
● Even after Stan Swamy’s death, the fight to get justice for Jharkhand undertrials is still alive (Scroll.in / Dec 2021)
● In Jharkhand, Scheduled Tribes Still Battle Flimsy Criminal Cases Filed With Little Evidence (IndiaSpend / Oct 2021)
● Public interest litigation filed by Stan Swamy and Xavier Soreng in 2017 (CJP / 2017)
● A study of Undertrials in Jharkhand (Sanhati / by Bagaicha Research Team / Feb 2016)

Rona Wilson writes about Five Years of Incarceration – and the Audacity of Hope

05/07/2023 Asha

The Wire / by Rona Wilson

Father Stan Swamy died on this day two years ago, while incarcerated in the Elgar Parishad case. His co-accused Rona Wilson writes about continuing oppression in the country – and where he finds hope.
To have spent more than five years in prison, for alleged offences under the most draconian acts of the Indian Penal Code, fully aware that the only ‘crime’ of you and your co-defendants is speaking truth to power, is an experience that is surreal. To live such a quotidian life in prison is a dystopia that stares at you. Yet you have little choice in prison but to engage with this audacity. It is through words that you confront this dystopia, name it.
Through words we name the world we confront/inhabit, and make sense of our existence.
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Karnataka High Court advocate says ‘legal system is under attack from fascism’

26/06/2023 Asha

The Hindu / by Nellore Sravani

The legal system is under attack from fascism, and there is a need to recognise the pattern in which this is being done and fight it, says Clifton D’Rozario, an advocate from the Karnataka High Court.
Speaking at a seminar on ‘Protection of Constitutional Values – Role of State Lawyers’, organised by the All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice (AILAJ) in Vijayawada on June 25 (Sunday), Mr. Rozario, who is the general secretary of AILAJ, said the Babri Masjid case, the Justice Loya case, the Bhima Koregaon case point out to this pattern, where the judiciary seemed hesitant to go against the government.
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US government report flags ‘significant human rights issues’ in India

21/03/2023 Asha

US government report flags ‘significant human rights issues’ in India

22/03/2023

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

The report was released nearly a year after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concern about the ‘rise in human rights abuses’ in India.
An annual report released by the United States government on Monday flagged “significant human rights issues” in India, including extra-judicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests.
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Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2022

20/03/2023

By United States Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

…
Arbitrary Arrest: The law prohibits arbitrary arrest or detention, however, police reportedly continued to arrest persons arbitrarily. There were reports of police detaining individuals for custodial interrogation without identifying themselves or providing arrest warrants…
Multiple courts denied bail to the majority of the 16 activists incarcerated on conspiracy charges related to the Elgaar Parishad Bhima Koregaon protests that Page 10 resulted in several deaths. The accused claimed the charges were politically motivated. In 2021, human rights activist and Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy, age 84, died in a private hospital after contracting COVID-19 in prison and after being denied bail on medical grounds by an NIA special court. On August 10, the Supreme Court granted bail on medical grounds to Varvara Rao, age 82, a poet and human rights activist, and directed that he should not leave Mumbai without the court’s permission. On November 26, the Supreme Court affirmed the Bombay High Court’s order to release Anand Teltumbde, age 73, on bail on the condition that he remain within the Mumbai jurisdiction until the trial concludes. Additionally, activist Sudha Bharadwaj was released on bail in December 2021.
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Has India Ever Been a Democracy? – Book review by Anand Teltumbde

14/03/2023 Asha

The Wire / by Anand Teltumbde

Debashish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane’s ‘To Kill a Democracy’ deals with the question how democracies get killed and dismisses the commonplace perspective of the “breakdowns”.

“Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic…”
∼ B.R. Ambedkar

The title of Debashish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane’s book, To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism, implies that India was a democracy which has been killed and transformed into despotism under Narendra Modi. Not quite; it rather argues that the current state of degeneration, though representing a kink in the slow-paced rhetorical liberalism of plutarchy, is not entirely brought about by the Hindutva dispensation.
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