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Category: Solidarity

BK16 Solidarity in Zurich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cambridge, Dundee and Online (pics)

BK16 Solidarity in Zurich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cambridge, Dundee and Online (pics)

#FreeBK16 #FreeThemAll @ June 12

Zurich, Switzerland: Solifonds in collaboration with the Frauenrechts Gruppe of Amnesty Zurich Chapter, held a demonstration to protest for the release of the 16 human rights activists in India. They also wrote a solidarity message for the prisoners signed by the people who participated at the activities.


Berlin and Frankfurt, Germany: IndienKoGruppe: Solidarity from Berlin and Frankfurt. Defending the Defenders of Indian Constitutional Values and Human Rights.
Freedom shall prevail, defend the defenders!


Cambridge, UK

Dundee, Scotland: Amnesty Dundee – The BK 16 are a group of human rights defenders who have been imprisoned indefinitely by the Indian Government for standing up for human rights.

Amnesty Kenya: #BK16 solidarity from Nairobi, Kenya. Our members, staff and Board stand with the 16 Human Rights Defenders incarcerated in India #FreeBK16 #FreeThemAll unconditionally now

Amnesty International UK South Asia Action, Minehead group: Today, 12 June 2021, is an Action Day across Europe to raise awareness of the BK16 Below are the AI Minehead group asking you to #FreeBK16 and #FreeThemAll

Families of Bhima Koregaon accused demand their release, say jail conditions poor

Families of Bhima Koregaon accused demand their release, say jail conditions poor

The Print / by Sravasti Dasgupta

The families and friends of Bhima Koregaon prisoners organised a webinar Friday to highlight the deteriorating health of the prisoners and unhygienic conditions in jails.
The family members of activists arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon case demanded their immediate release, in view of the raging Covid-19 pandemic.
To mark three years since the first arrests in the case, the families and friends of the accused Friday organised a webinar — “Three Years Too Many…” — to highlight the deteriorating health of the prisoners, with many of them testing positive for Covid, and unhygienic conditions in jails.
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Watch video: THE BHIMA KOREGAON CONSPIRACY CASE – THREE YEARS TOO MANY … (June11)
Also read (Hindi): SALAAKHON MEIN QAID AVAAZEIN (IMPRISONED VOICES).

Video: The Bhima Koregaon Conspiracy Case – Three Years Too Many …

Video: The Bhima Koregaon Conspiracy Case – Three Years Too Many …

By Family and Friends of BK16

Three years ago, on 6 June 2018, the first arrests of human rights activists in the Bhima Koregaon Conspiracy Case occurred. Today, 16 of the finest citizens of India face trumped up charges in this fabricated case.

Please join the Family Members and friends of BK16 on a webinar and Book Release.
Book Release by Bhanwar Meghvanshi, leading writer and Dalit Intellectual


hindi + en | 4h 30min | 2021
Watch video at PUCL fb

Read the book (Hindi): SALAAKHON MEIN QAID AVAAZEIN (IMPRISONED VOICES).

Book Release: Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein (Imprisoned Voices)

Book Release: Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein (Imprisoned Voices)

By Family Members and friends of BK16

“Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein”
Edition: June 2021
Language: Hindi
Paperback: 69 pages

Access a PDF copy of the book here (15MB)
(Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein is free to download, but contributions are welcome!
Write to us at booksbywss(at)gmail.com if you would like to contribute.)

“Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein” is a book on the Bhima Koregaon Conspiracy case. It is a tribute to those individuals who, while fighting for truth and justice, have themselves become victims of a grave and flagrant injustice.
Sixteen sterling citizens of this country, all of them well-known dissidents and renowned human rights activists, have been arrested in this fictitious case, so far. They have been accused of conspiring with the banned Maoist party to cause violence in Bhima Koregaon on 1st January, 2018, by inciting the oppressed Dalit and Bahujan people against the government. Among the accused (known as BK-16) are professors, writers, lawyers, cultural activists, trade unionists, poets, etc.
The book, while providing a background of this fabricated case, gives a profile of each of the BK-16 and also carries original pieces of writing by them.

“सलाखों में कैद आवाज़ें” एक कोशिश है, भीमा कोरेगांव के षड़यंत्र को सामने लाने की। ये किताब एक कोशिश है उन्हें याद करने की जो न्याय और मानवता के लिए लड़ने के बावजूद आज खुद ‘न्याय के षड़यंत्र’ का शिकार बने हुए हैं।
पिछले तीन साल से इस देश के 16 ‘सच्चे नागरिक’ (जिन्हें बीके-16 भी कहा जाता है) सलाखों में कैद हैं, जिनमें जाने-माने मानवाधिकार व सांस्कृतिक कार्यकर्ता, प्रोफेसर, लेखक, कवि, वकील व ट्रेड यूनियन कार्यकर्ता शामिल हैं। उन पर आरोप है कि उन्होंने प्रतिबंधित माओवादी पार्टी के साथ मिलकर 2018 में भीमा कोरेगांव में हिंसा भड़काने और दलितों व बहुजनों को शासन के खिलाफ उकसाने की साजिश रची।
इस फर्जी केस पर रोशनी डालते हुए, यह किताब हमें बीके-16 से रूबरू कराती है और उन के लिखे हुए खत व रचनाओं को भी संकलित रूप से रखती है।

Prominent international figures urge release of the BK16 human rights defenders in India

Prominent international figures urge release of the BK16 human rights defenders in India

Prominent international figures support appeal for release of human rights defenders as India faces Covid emergency

10/06/2021

By International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India)

Over 50 prominent international figures support appeal for release of human rights defenders from India’s overcrowded prisons as Covid spreads in jails. Read full statement/signatories:

We urge the immediate release of human rights defenders in India into safe conditions

Accounting for almost a third of deaths from Covid-19 worldwide, the situation in India is grave. We are alarmed that a number of human rights defenders who are currently awaiting trial in Indian jails have developed serious health issues in jail owing to over-congestion and neglect, absence of appropriate medical care, and deplorable hygiene conditions.
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Press Release: Prominent international figures urge release of human rights defenders in India

10/06/2021

By International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India)

Over 50 eminent international figures including members of several European parliaments academics, lawyers, Nobel laureates, civil society leaders, and diasporic organisations have signed a joint statement urging the Indian government to show compassion and responsibility in the current Covid emergency, and call upon the authorities to release all arrested human rights defenders into safe conditions in the light of the dire threats to their health given the spread of Covid in Indian prisons. …

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What does state’s treatment of pre-trial political prisoners tell us?

What does state’s treatment of pre-trial political prisoners tell us?

The Indian Express / by Harsh Mander

Harsh Mander writes: It’s been three years since Bhima Koregaon accused were incarcerated by a state that continues to oppose bail for them, despite Covid and other grave threats to their health.
June 6 was a sombre milestone — the third anniversary of the incarceration of five rights activists in the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case. Eleven more were subsequently jailed for the same conspiracy. These 16 women and men — the BK-16 accused — are intellectuals, lawyers, a poet, professors, cultural and rights activists and an 84-year-old Jesuit priest, all with sterling records of service with India’s most oppressed people.
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Stan Swamy’s endurance has left a message for the world: Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil

Stan Swamy’s endurance has left a message for the world: Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil

The Leaflet / by Thomas Menamparampil

Eighty-four year old Father Stan Swamy who had spent decades serving the tribal people of Jharkhand, was arrested on trumped up charges, subjected to endless interrogations, and confined to Taloja jail for over eight months. As he battles illness, his endurance has left a message for the world says Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.
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Remembering Shoma Sen on the third anniversary of her incarceration – A HEROINE IN OUR HEARTS

Remembering Shoma Sen on the third anniversary of her incarceration – A HEROINE IN OUR HEARTS

By Release Rof Shoma Sen

A HEROINE IN OUR HEARTS

In these sanitized times
Of death-tainted rivers
And doom-scented air,
When that which we
Cannot even see
Has brought us to our knees,
When falsehood rules
And each passing day
In every possible way,
Turns us into curtsying fools,
Dancing in a living hell,
We think of you, in your tiny cell,
Still unbowed, still full of grace,
Raising your maskless face
To watch a small bird fly
Free across a stillblue sky.

And although our facile arts
Can no longer comfort us,
This treasonous vision does,
Of you, the heroine in our hearts.

Com. Ganpat Bhise writes to Sudhir Dhawale

Com. Ganpat Bhise writes to Sudhir Dhawale

Dalit Camera / by by Com. Ganpat Bhise

A letter sent on May 23, 2021 to poet Sudhir Dhawale, editor of the “Vidrohi”, who has been in prison in Taloja jail. Five revolutionaries including Sudhir were arrested today three years back, initiating the beginnings of BK-16 case, as we know it today.

Dear Sudhir,
Jai Bhim!
Lal Salaam!After you were jailed, there has not been much uprising in Maharashtra and the rest of the country. I don’t think many others have suffered much except some of us who have been close to you.
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