BK16 – Page 4 – free them all

PCI Conversations │ Ajaz Ashraf and Jenny Rowena discussing Bhima Koregaon

28/06/2024 Asha

by Press Club of India / @PCITweets (June 28):
As part of our #PCIConversation, a discussion on Ajaz Ashraf’s book “Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste” will be discussed
The guests are author himself and Miranda House College’s Jenny Rowena
29 June 2024 (Saturday), 5:30 PM onwards at Conference Hall, Press Club of India

Also read:
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)
▪Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order

Book Review | Those who refuse to be caged

28/06/2024 Asha

The Telegraph / by Lalit Panda

In The Incarcerations, Alpa Shah provides a survey of these men and women that allows us to understand what truly connects them
For many who have followed the news regarding the Bhima Koregaon case, the saga of arrests, press conferences, cyber-forensic reports, bail hearings, statements of condemnation, and protests has gone on long enough and been spread out so thinly that fatigue and forgetfulness are real threats.
Naturally, the opposite has been the case for the 16 individuals arraigned by investigative agencies in the matter. For these persons, the case has illuminated the state of our democracy, the nature of threats against it, and the identity of its most strident defenders.
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The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon And The Search For Democracy In India

Author: Alpa Shah
Publishing Date: March 2024
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Pages: 672
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How The Indian Prison System Denies Basic Freedoms, Rights And Dignity To Political Prisoners

25/06/2024 Asha

The Polis Project / by Bhavya Dore and Sukhada Tatke

In the summer of May 2022, relegated to his oblong-shaped high-security anda cell, GN Saibaba was frequently thirsty. The Delhi University professor, lodged in Nagpur Central Jail at the time, has post-polio paralysis in both legs. He had also lost the use of his left hand after a nerve injury he said he sustained during his arrest. As temperatures reached 45 degrees outside, Saibaba needed help every time he wanted a drink—his wheelchair did not reach the corner of the cell where the pot of water was kept.
… In September 2022, Anand Teltumbde, a human-rights activist and writer, approached the National Investigation Agency court with a plea for mosquito nets. “Taloja central jail is infested with mosquitoes and the mosquito repellent ointments and incense sticks are hardly of any use,” he wrote in his application
Read more

Also read:
▪ INTRODUCING THE BK-16 PRISON DIARIES SERIES (THE POLIS PROJECT / JUNE 2024)
▪ Relatives of BK16 Flag Prison Authorities’ ‘Criminal Negligence’ and Deteriorating Health of Undertrials (Newsclick / Sep 2022)
▪ Punished without trial: How India’s political prisoners are being denied basic rights in jail (Scroll.in / Aug 2022)
▪ Hunger Strike unto death against the harassment from Taloja Central Jail’s apathetic administration (By Sagar Gorkhe / May 2022)

Book Review | Ajaz Ashraf’s Account Is A ‘Museum Of Memories’ For The Dispossessed

25/06/2024 Asha

Kashmir Times / by Gowhar Geelani

“A powerful account that reminds us that all-powerful States possess the power to silence dissenters, normalise fear in society, and criminalise opinions of free-thinking individuals and dreamers of equality, and rely on institutional memory to settle scores with dissenters at the time of its choosing.“
While reading journalist-author Ajaz Ashraf’s latest book “Bhima Koregaon Challenging Caste”, I was instantaneously reminded of Lavrentiy Beria, the longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of oppression in Russia and Eastern Europe.
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Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order

Also read:
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)

▪ The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon And The Search For Democracy In India

Author: Alpa Shah
Publishing Date: March 2024
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Pages: 672
Read more / order

▪ “Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein”

By Family Members and friends of BK16
Edition: June 2021
Language: Hindi
Pages: 69
Access a PDF copy of the book here (15MB)

The Opposition Must Demand the Release of all Political Prisoners

23/06/2024 Asha

The Opposition Must Demand the Release of all Political Prisoners

23/06/2024

The Wire / by Partho Sarothi Ray

It is the duty of a revitalised opposition to prevent the continuation of the darkness that has descended over India in the last 10 years.
The results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, although quite unexpected and surprising for many, has brought a fresh breath of life to the sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic Republic of India. Nay, it might have brought it back from the brink of the precipice into which it would have tumbled with another outright victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Read more

Also read:
▪ To Think of Modi 3.0 as Less Dangerous Would Be a Misreading (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | June 12, 2024)
▪ Who Does June 4 Belong to? (The Wire / June 5, 2024)

Colonial Reality of India’s Criminal Laws Remains Despite the New Hindi Names

21/06/2024 Asha

Colonial Reality of India’s Criminal Laws Remains Despite the New Hindi Names

21/06/2024

The Wire / by Rajshree Chandra

The argument that we are in the process of decolonizing laws is a bogus one and it reveals our hypocrisies more than anything else.
… Arundhati Roy today is now going to be being tried under many provisions of IPC along with the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for a speech she gave in 2010, 14 long years ago.
Fourteen years ago, she was charged with sedition (S. 124 A) based on a complaint that her speech (in Delhi) advocated separation of Kashmir from India and therefore “jeopardised public peace and security”. Fourteen years later, charges have been upgraded, and she is now also charged under the anti-terror law UAPA for reasons that are legally confounding but politically quite apparent.
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SKM condemns prosecution sanction of Arundhati Roy, Showkat Hussain under UAPA

20/06/2024

Deccan Herald / pti

The Delhi LG, earlier last week, gave his sanction to prosecute Roy and Hussain for allegedly making provocative speeches at an event in 2010.
The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) on Thursday condemned Delhi LG V K Saxena’s approval to prosecute author Arundhati Roy and former Central University of Kashmir professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
… “The slapping of UAPA reflects that the present government, although cut down to size in recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, nonetheless wishes to continue with its older line of clamping down on any dissent and branding it as ‘anti-national’,” the organisation added.
The SKM claimed the National Investigation Agency has sent to jail 16 leading intellectuals and activists with “false charges” in the Bhima-Koregaon case.
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Talons intact – Indian democracy is not free from fascism yet

22/06/2024

The Telegraph / by Asim Ali

The electoral setback for the BJP marks an important check on the accelerated process of “fascistization of the regime” as I had noted in my column for The Telegraph last month
The last fortnight has been marked by a widespread sentiment of relief at the failure of the Narendra Modi regime to come back with a full majority. The relief is understandable. The sentiment, which seems out of place, represents the exultation at the triumphant redemption of Indian democracy from the clutches of fascism.
Read more

Also read/watch:
▪ India: Arrests, Raids Target Critics of Government (Amnesty International / Oct 2023)
▪ AI Report: India’s exploitation of terrorism financing assessments to target the civil society (Amnesty.org / Sep 2023)
▪ Arundhati Roy: #Me Too Urban Naxal (Scroll.in / Aug 2018)

▪ Video: PUCL and over hundred organisations present: Repeal UAPA – Persecution by Prosecution

Lawyers, the persecuted, their families and others will present how UAPA is being used to persecute activists and silence dissent. The 3 days will see State-wise sharing from AP, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, J&K, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Telangana & UP

► Repeal UAPA – Day Three (en + … | 2h 51min | Jan 2021)
► Repeal UAPA – Day Two (en +… | 2h 22min | Jan 2021)
► Repeal UAPA – Day One (en + … | 2h 17min | Jan 2021)

BK-16 PRISON DIARIES: VERNON GONSALVES ON THE STRUGGLE TO READ AND WRITE BEHIND BARS

14/06/2024 Asha

To mark six years of the arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of political dissidents in the Bhima Koregaon case, The Polis Project is publishing a series of writings by the BK-16, and their families, friends and partners. By describing various aspects of the past six years, the series offers a glimpse into the BK-16’s lives inside prison, as well as the struggles of their loved ones outside. Each piece in the series is complemented by Arun Ferreira’s striking and evocative artwork.

Credits: Drawing by Arun Ferreira / The Polis Project

BK-16 PRISON DIARIES: VERNON GONSALVES ON THE STRUGGLE TO READ AND WRITE BEHIND BARS

14/06/2024

THE POLIS PROJECT / VERNON GONSALVES

A prison peer-view that I cherish is a drawing by the artist Arun Ferreira, when we were fellow inmates of Nagpur Central Prison in 2011. He shows me sitting at the gate of my cell, writing-pad in hand, and writing—or rather, trying to write. It’s aptly titled, “Some Sophisticated Self-Deception.”
Perhaps I like it because it’s an image that I, like many other political prisoners, wanted as a prison self-image—someone who’s not wasting away his years behind bars. Someone who has some output, even if “only” intellectual output.
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INTRODUCING THE BK-16 PRISON DIARIES SERIES

13/06/2024

THE POLIS PROJECT / By THE POLIS PROJECT

On 1 January 1818, a small British battalion mainly comprising Dalit soldiers from the oppressed Mahar caste defeated an army of dominant-caste Peshwas at Koregaon. The battle gained a legendary status, representing a victory not just in Bhima Koregaon, but against caste injustices perpetrated by the Peshwas. The Mahar community celebrates the anniversary as a festival called “Valour Day,” and many make an annual pilgrimage to an obelisk at the site that memorialises the battle.
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Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste – Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

12/06/2024 Asha

Challenging Caste reads the violence at Bhima Koregaon as a clash between two worldviews — one striving to flatten the social hierarchy, the other justifying and perpetuating it. This book rips apart the Maoist conspiracy theory and the Urban Naxal narrative. It points out the ironies underlying the State’s charges against the sixteen, and the flimsiness of the evidence that is said to have been planted on their hacked computers. The conspiracy against the sixteen that inflicted untold miseries on their families is retold here in their voices.

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496

6 years of Bhima Koregaon witch-hunt / CASR: Formal permission of the protest has been denied

06/06/2024 Asha

by InSAF India / @IndInsaf (June 7)
Yesterday the Campaign Against State Repression gathered at Jantar Mantar to demand the release of all #BhimaKoregaon prisoners
#MaheshRaut #SurendraGadling #SudhirDhawale #RonaWilson #HanyBabu #JyotiJagtap #RameshGaichor #SagarGorkhe
#Freethemall #HumanRightsViolations

by COLLECTIVE Delhi / @COLLECTIVEDelhi (June 6)
6 years of Bhima Koregaon witch-hunt…
We must not stop demanding freedom of all political prisoners arrested in the name of Bhima Koregaon – a symbol of radical Dalit struggle.

by InSAF India / @IndInsaf (June 6):

Also read:
▪ CASR: Release activists incarcerated in Bhima Koregaon Case (Countercurrents.org / June 2023)

In What Language Does Truth Speak to A Tormented People. Statement by Sudhir, Rona, Surendra & Mahesh

06/06/2024 Asha

The Wire / by Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling and Mahesh Raut

Intimations on the sixth year of continuing incarceration of the BK-16.
We live in a moment where truth is treason. Under the fascist onslaught of Brahmanical Hindutva, truth has become consumed with fear – the fear of being watched, being surveilled, being criminalised, neutralised, or even eliminated. But the fear, at the end, is itself a whistleblower.
We, the BK 16, known after the eponymous Bhima Koregaon case, complete six years of incarceration on June 6, 2024 under the stringent anti-terror law, UAPA [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act], where the onus is on the accused to prove their innocence; under heavy odds against the Modi dispensation that dubs speaking truth to power treason, anti-Hindu, an act of terror.
Read full statement

Also read:

‘We are all prisoners of conscience’, say those facing trial in Bhima Koregaon case on the occasion of fourth anniversary of their arrests (The Leaflet / June 2022)