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Category: Repression

Chidambaram: ‘Process is the Punishment’ / A former SC judge on the decay in the criminal justice system

Chidambaram: ‘Process is the Punishment’ / A former SC judge on the decay in the criminal justice system

P Chidambaram writes: ‘Process is the Punishment’

24/07/2022

The Indian Express / by P Chidambaram

P Chidambaram writes: Why are the accused denied bail? Pre-charge evidence, framing of charges, trial and arguments will — not may, it is will — take many years. Should the accused be in jail until the trial is over? Is pre-trial incarceration a substitute for trial, proof, conviction and punishment?
… In current times, there is no story more shocking than the story of the 16 accused in what is known as the Bhima Koregaon case.
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Liberty is too precious to be lost: A former SC judge on the decay in the criminal justice system

22/07/2022

Scroll.in / by Madan B Lokur

A starting point can be making some trial judges realise that they need to stop acting as a rubber stamp of the police in matters of arrest.
“What’s going on?” a young lady asks quizzically in a television advertisement. The same question must be asked of criminal justice and India’s prisons.
Bail, not jail has been reduced to a mere slogan to be whispered once in a while. The reality is jail, not bail. Another reality is that innocent until proven guilty has been transformed to guilty until proven innocent.
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Will Murmu Remain Help Unseen Adivasis Be Seen at Last? / Defending India’s Human Rights Defenders

Will Murmu Remain Help Unseen Adivasis Be Seen at Last? / Defending India’s Human Rights Defenders

Will Droupadi Murmu Remain a BJP Electoral Ploy or Help Unseen Adivasis Be Seen at Last?

21/07/2022

The Wire / by Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta

BJP is sure to celebrate its own decision to get an Adivasi President elected more than Murmu’s own achievements as a loyal political worker. It remains to be seen if they will let her have her own voice.
… Those who have been working for Adivasis’ causes point out that while BJP may congratulate itself in nominating Droupadi Murmu, their governments have mostly struck down or dismissed autonomous movements led by Adivasis. People like Father Stan Swamy (who passed away due to alleged medical negligence while in jail), Sudha Bharadwaj, or Surendra Gadling, all of whom have devoted their lives to improve the conditions of Adivasis, have been arrested under charges of terrorism in the Elgar Parishad case.
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Defending India’s Human Rights Defenders

21/07/2022

South Asian Voices / by Ria Chakrabarty

On July 5, 2021, Jesuit Priest and human rights defender Father Stan died in Indian custody at the age of 84. He was the oldest person to be arrested by the Indian government for terrorism. Father Stan’s incarceration led to a global outcry against the Indian government’s brutal treatment of Indian human rights defenders.
Father Stan is one of a mushrooming group of prisoners of conscience whom the Indian government has jailed over the past few years.
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Also read:
● ‘Religious Freedom Worsened’: US Body Names India as ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (The Wire / April 2022)
● 2022 ANNUAL REPORT (U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) / April 2022)

Jailed Or Punished, With Or Without Trial: How The State Misuses The Law Against India’s Inconvenient Citizens

Jailed Or Punished, With Or Without Trial: How The State Misuses The Law Against India’s Inconvenient Citizens

Article14 / by Mani Chander

The arrests and continued incarceration of fact-checker Mohammad Zubair, political activist Javed Mohammed and the exoneration of 121 Adivasis accused of terrorism are the latest evidence of how the State adopts extra legal methods of dealing with ‘inconvenient citizens’- including journalists, dissidents, activists or the poorest Indians – to push official narratives of conspiracy and terrorism. The common threads: manipulation or egregious misinterpretation of laws, changing accusations, unknown or untraceable complainants and the abandonment of due process by police and courts.
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And Vernon’s letters to his son

And Vernon’s letters to his son

Midday.com / by Ajaz Ashraf

Of the 27 years of his son’s life, Vernon Gonsalves has been in jail for 10. Then how did they communicate? Through letters, comic strip cut outs from newspapers, birthday cards and the occasional prison visits.
Sagar worked for six years in the NGO sector before he flew last year to London to do a Master’s at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Twenty-seven now, he is busy writing his dissertation on sedition under British colonial rule.
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Also read:
● And comrades admire Jyoti Jagtap (Midday.com / July 2022)
● And the letters of Rona Wilson (Midday.com / June 2022)
● And Allah’s call to Hany Babu (Midday.com / June 2022)
● And Ma can’t sing with Sagar (Midday.com / June 2022)
● And he waits for Shoma Sen (Midday.com / May 2022)
● And she waits for Gautam Navlakha (Midday.com / May 2022)

CPJ calls on EU to hold India to account for media clampdown

CPJ calls on EU to hold India to account for media clampdown

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) / by CPJ

The Committee to Protect Journalists on Wednesday called on the European External Action Service to hold Indian authorities accountable for widespread and severe press freedom violations when they meet for the annual India-EU Human Rights Dialogue on Friday, July 15 …
Gibson also called on the EU to press India for action on the following press freedom violations and attacks on journalists documented by CPJ:
▪ The ongoing pretrial detention of Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde, Siddique Kappan, and Manan Dar under India’s draconian anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. 
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Also read:
● For the second consecutive year, India drops on freedom score (The Hindu / March 2022)
● Freeedom in The World 2022: The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule (Freedom House / Feb 2022, booklet)

Remembering Fr. Stan Swamy’s life and death

Remembering Fr. Stan Swamy’s life and death

Bangalore, July 2022

The Leaflet / by Shrutika Pandey and Shamim Modi

The absence of legal refuge grants the State impunity and constrains effective legal argumentation, progressive judicial pronouncements, and public mobilization.
A year ago, the nation lamented the unfortunate death of Father Stan Swamy, an activist and a Catholic priest who dedicated his entire life to defending tribal rights. Fr. Stan died in custody at the age of 83 years on alleged terrorism charges in the frivolous Bhima Koregaon case, after contracting COVID-19 and exacerbating his Parkinson’s disease while lodged in Mumbai’s Taloja prison for nine months.
With an illustrious life of fighting for the oppressed, his custodial death brought attention to the targeted persecution of anyone who, through constitutional means, poses uncomfortable questions of the State’s self-serving narrative. 
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How India has become a land of conspiracies that turns warriors battling injustice into villains

How India has become a land of conspiracies that turns warriors battling injustice into villains

Scroll.in / by Apoorvanand

From Bhima Koregaon to the Delhi riots, from the cases against Teesta Setalvad and Mohammed Zubair, reality has been inverted.
Conspiracy! The sinister word has reappeared with the arrest of human rights advocate Teesta Setalvad and former police officers Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt by the Gujarat police on the weekend. The arrests were prompted by the Supreme Court, which smelt something fishy about the case in which the petitioners contended that the conspiracy behind the 2002 Gujarat violence had not been investigated thoroughly.
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Zubair, Teesta, Bhima Koregaon ‘Evidence’: Why are India’s Institutions Silent?

Zubair, Teesta, Bhima Koregaon ‘Evidence’: Why are India’s Institutions Silent?

The Quint / by Seema Chishti

How much longer before the cloud hanging over India’s democratic record today morphs into a shroud?
A big tree fell in the forest a few days ago. A news report published on 16 June in WIRED, a renowned tech magazine, highlights the controversial detention of human rights activists in the Bhima Koregaon violence case. It revealed a very disturbing chain of events. The report was about the fabrication of evidence. How that story was treated by all institutions reveals reams about the institutional collapse in India. The noise of crumbling institutions is louder than if an edifice of brick and mortar was to actually come crashing down.
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Also read:
● Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists (Wired / June 16, 2022)

The contemporary relevance of Internal Emergency 1975-77

The contemporary relevance of Internal Emergency 1975-77

The Leaflet / by Arvind Narrain

On June 25, we mark the 47th anniversary of the declaration of Emergency by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. The events of the emergency have long since faded into history, but there are uncanny resonances with the contemporary context…
The use of the UAPA and the NIA by the current regime is, in Vajpayee’s language, the ‘beginning of the police state’ and a ‘blot on democracy’. Advani’s warning of the use of MISA against the opposition finds a resonance in the use of UAPA and NIA against protestors, be it the Bhima Koregaon 16, anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protestors, Kashmiri protestors or a range of dissenters across the country. 
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And he waits for Shoma Sen

And he waits for Shoma Sen

Midday / by Ajaz Ashraf

Falling in love while trying to affect a change in the society, as their hearts beat for adivasis and dalits, the couple has now spent in jail nine out of 31 years of their life together.
I called up Tushar Kanti Bhattacharya, husband of Shoma Sen, an accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, on May 9, with a request: could he tell me their story—she languishing in jail and he alone outside? He said it was on this day in 1991 that Shoma and he were married. 
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Also read:
● And she waits for Gautam Navlakha (Midday / May 2022)