Repression – Page 44 – free them all

The widening fissure in India’s rule of law

17/12/2019 Maya

The Hindu / by Gautam Bhatia

Last month, the news website Scroll revealed that more than 10,000 people in the Khunti district of Jharkhand had been chargesheeted by the police for sedition. These people are overwhelmingly Adivasis. Then, in early December, a judicial probe completed a seven-year long investigation, finding that a so-called encounter of “Maoists” in Chhattisgarh by security forces, in 2012, had been a “fake encounter” all along. The people killed had not been Maoists, but innocent villagers.
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Bhima Koregaon accused write to human rights panel

11/12/2019 Maya

The Hindu / by Sonam Saigal

Letter condemns ‘environment of fear promoted by State’
On International Human Rights Day on Tuesday, all nine accused in the Bhima Koregaon violence wrote to the chairperson of the State Human Rights Commission, “condemning the environment of fear and criminalisation promoted by the State wherein the human rights of Indian citizens and especially those of human rights defenders who are critical of State policies are under threat.”
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Demolishing Human Rights in India

09/12/2019 Maya

Sabrang India / by Fr Cedric Prakash

This past year from December 2018, had two significant 70th anniversaries: first, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948) and then, of the promulgation of the Constitution of India (November 26, 2019). It is quite certain that the makers of the Indian Constitution took inspiration from the UDHR. Strangely enough, as if on cue, everything possible is done by the powers that control the destiny of the nation, to demolish human rights and the values enshrined in the Constitution!
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Chhattisgarh: Story of another ‘encounter’

08/12/2019 Maya

The Indian Express / by Dipankar Ghose

On June 28, 2012, 17 people were killed in Chhattisgarh in what was then called “the biggest Maoist encounter”. With a judicial commission now punching holes in the official version of the incident, The Indian Express travels to Sarkeguda and finds that while much has changed in these years, some things haven’t — the memories of that night, and the wounds that refuse to heal.
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Not Just WhatsApp, Snooping Attack on Indian Activists Was Through Email Too

05/12/2019 Maya

Photo: EFF

The Wire / by Sukanya Shantha

Mumbai: It was not just Israeli spyware Pegasus that was used to digitally spy on human rights defenders and journalists in India.
A clear pattern of another well-coordinated and effectively designed digital attack has now emerged – this time through emails. These emails, all tailor-made to suit the interests of the individual receiver, were sent out between September and October 2019.
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Bastar Fake Encounter Inquiry Report Vindicates Villagers

02/12/2019 Maya

Pic: virasam.org

The Wire / by Mahtab Alam

The inquiry report has found that there is no proof that any of the villagers killed or injured were Maoists. However, it has not recommended any compensation for the 17 villagers killed and 10 injured …

Sudha Bhardwaj had played a pivotal role in campaigning for this inquiry to reach a logical conclusion. Bhardwaj, who was subsequently arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case and is now lodged in Pune jail on charges of being a Maoist sympathiser, was instrumental in submitting the villagers’ affidavits to the commission.
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Security forces indicted for killing 17 villagers, including seven minors, in Chhattisgarh in 2012

01/12/2019 Maya

Pic: virasam.org

Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff

A judicial commission has indicted security forces for killing 17 civilians, including seven minors, in Sarkeguda village in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district in June 2012 …
The villagers were represented by a team of lawyers, including Yug Chaudhry, Shalini Gera and Sudha Bharadwaj, who was arrested last year in the Bhima Koregaon case and is currently in jail.
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If you are in a university and oppose state policy, you can be targeted: Hany Babu, DU professor

30/11/2019 Maya

The Caravan / by Shaheen Ahmed & Maya Palit

In the early hours of 10 September 2019, a team of police officials, including personnel from the Pune Police, turned up at the doorstep of Hany Babu MT, an associate professor in the University of Delhi’s English department. … The police informed Babu that the search was conducted in connection with the Elgar Parishad and Bhima Koregaon case. …
Shaheen Ahmed and Maya Palit, the multimedia and books editors at The Caravan, respectively, spoke to Babu about the raid at his house and its aftermath.
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‘Government-backed attacks’: Google warned 500 Indians against hacking

28/11/2019 Maya

Sabrangindia / by Sabrangindia

The search giant issued over 12,000 warnings to users across the country against hacking state-sponsored attackers from July – Sept 2019.
The statement by Google read, “We’ve had a long-standing policy to send users warnings if we detect that they are the subject of state-sponsored phishing attempts, and have posted periodically about these before.”
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WhatsApp Row: Banal reply to a vital question on snooping

22/11/2019 Maya

Photo: EFF

Free Press Journal / by Olav Albuquerque

The Central government’s refusal to give a direct reply to former telecom minister and DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran whether the Central government had used the Israeli spy software Pegasus to tap WhatsApp calls and messages leads to the inference that it is not above suspicion. RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya had sought perjury proceedings against WhatsApp for allegedly misleading the Supreme Court that users’ data was fully encrypted and nobody including WhatsApp had the key.
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