Skip to main content

Serial raids, arrest of human rights defenders described attempt to create scaremongering

Sudha Bharadwaj
By A Representative
Prominent civil rights activists have protested against“serial raids” across the country on the homes of activists and public intellectuals, followed by arrest of Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Kranthi Tekula and others, saying this is “nothing but an attempt by the government to strike terror among those who are fighting for justice for the marginalised.”
Calling it an “attempt by the BJP to invent a false enemy" a statement signed by Admiral L Ramdas, Lalita Ramdas, Shabnam Hashmi Shehla Rashid, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Jignesh Mevani, Teesta Setalvad, Swami Agnivesh, and others, says that it is nothing but scaremongering in order to polarise the 2019 elections in its favour.”
The statement says, “The government and the media houses close to the BJP have been trying to spin a false narrative of a Maoist conspiracy since June, 2018. Terms like ‘urban naxals’ are invented in order to stifle any criticism of the government. We have learnt that the Delhi Police, after having arrested Sudha Bharadwaj, waited for Republic TV to arrive before taking her to the court.”
Terming it “a conspiracy to divert attention from the gravity of the Sanatan Sanstha conspiracy to carry out serial bomb attacks on Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi, the statement says, “The same Sanatan Sanstha was also involved in the murder of Gauri Lankesh, as per the ongoing investigations by Karnataka police.” It adds, “By arresting them, the BJP is only exposing its insecurities and its intolerance to any dissent or criticism of its policies.”

Comments

Pravinsinhji Jadeja said…
We condemn the arrest of the social and intellectual prominent personalities under pretext of an anti national or a threat to the social harmony
August 29, 2018
Post a Comment

TRENDING

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad   President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.
Post a Comment
»

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.
2 comments
»

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.
Post a Comment
»