26th January 2022, on the occasion of India’s Republic Day, we began a week-long series sharing resources on some urgent issues affecting the people living within the country’s borders. Please find below all the threads and resources . If you find this set of resources useful, please share it further.
[Note: The following reference resources are only meant as an introduction to the issues discussed.]
Situation of Religion minorities- Muslims in India are at risk!
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum warns India is the 2nd most likely country at risk of a genocide. Gregory Stanton (who had warned of the Rwandan genocide) said early warning signs were visible inIndia and a genocide could well happen here. [Read more]
- On January 1, photographs of more than 100 Muslim women appeared on an app called Bulli Bai with the claim that they were “for sale as maids”. Prominent journalists, actresses and activists were among those who were targeted. [Read more]
- Inter faith marriages between consenting adults have been targeted by Hindu vigilantes, who believe Muslim men are ‘luring’ Hindu women into conversion. Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh governments have passed laws against ‘love jihad’, mainstreaming a once-fringe conspiracy theory. [Read more]
- Muslim women are facing the double peril of misogyny and Islamophobia—which affects even younger women’s opportunities for basic access to education. In Karnataka last week, six college students were asked to leave their classroom for wearing the hijab. [Read more]
- Not isolated incidents, these speeches and abuses are parts of a machinery of hate run by the BJP government. Mainstream media, social media warriors, and leading political figures consistently carry out hate campaigns against Muslims. [Read more]
- Unprovoked attacks on Muslims by Hindu mobs have become routine in India – lynchings of Muslim men by cow protection groups, attacks on mosques, barriers to pray are commonplace in Modi’s India. [Read more]
- In February 2020, a 4-day pogrom in Delhi left over 50 people dead, the majority of victims Muslims. Targeted by Hindu nationalist groups with the support of the Delhi Police, the chant of a Hindu god became a war cry. [Read more]
- Using the law to discriminate, in 2019, the Indian government amended its citizenship laws with a plan to officialize the exclusion of Muslims and brutally suppressed those who protested. [Read more]
- Not just Muslims, Christians as a religious minority in India are increasingly being attacked in the bigger plan to exclude minorities and work towards a Hindu state. A Hindu state would be the death of the Indian Republic. [Read more]
Continuing colonisation and repression of the people of Kashmir
- Kashmir Valley is today one of the most militarized zones in the world. In Kashmir’s rural areas one finds a military camp at every three kilometres, and in some places the presence is even stronger. [Read more]
- The status and autonomy of Kashmir has been contested since the moment of India and Pakistan’s independence. Often framed as an India-Pakistan conflict, this rhetoric erases the desires and right of the Kashmiri people towards their own self determination. [Read more]
- Over the decades, the Indian govt has responded increasingly harshly to the demands for autonomy + independence from Kashmiris. Since the late 80s/90s, a strong military presence has crushed social + public life and unleashed horrifying human rights abuses by security personnel. Thousands of Kashmiris, mostly men, have been ‘disappeared’ over these decades. Such enforced disappearances have broken familial and social bonds, have created mass grief and pain in Kashmir; the Indian govt + army have refused total accountability. [Read more]
- Only a decade ago, mass graves were discovered in Kashmir where several bodies of citizens were found, allegedly victims of enforced disappearances. Under AFSPA, the Indian Army in Kashmir is shielded from prosecution for abuses of power. [Read more]
- The militarisation of Kashmir has also made battlegrounds of women’s bodies. Rape, sexual assault and harassment from the army have characterised women’s experience of military presence, with any accusations made against the army leading nowhere. [Read more]
- In this highly militarized zone the life and liberty of people is governed by laws such as AFSPA, UAPA, etc, which awards police/army forces arbitrary, excessive powers of preventive detention, arrest, search, seizure, to shoot to kill on suspicion. [Read more]
- The Indian state, in order to protect its army, uses a network of other institutions—particularly the judiciary, the media and the bureaucracy— to mask the crimes committed by its forces in Kashmir. [Read more]
- In 2019, India revoked Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, an event which was followed by a long security and communication lockdown. Hundreds of Kashmiris were detained, interrogated, tortured. With impunity, the Indian state committed widespread, systemic human rights abuses. [Read more]
- At the time, the UN special rapporteurs termed the communication blockade (internet + telecom shutdown) on Kashmir “a form of collective punishment of the people of Jammu & Kashmir, without even a pretext of a precipitating offence.” [Read more]
- Kashmiris have termed this ‘unilateral action’ as an attempt by the ultra-right wing Modi govt to change the status of Kashmir as a disputed territory, and to bring about a demographic change along the lines of settlements in Occupied Palestine. [Read more]
- Kashmiris have lost all social spaces. Trade unions, rights bodies, civil society groups have vanished. “The [Kashmir] press club is the latest independent civil society… to be forcibly prevented from holding elections since August 2019.” [Read more]
- In 2021, prominent human rights activist Khurram Parvez was arrested under UAPA. Khurram’s arrest “is not an attack against one individual alone but systemic, purposeful erasure of civil society movements in Kashmir that seek accountability.” [Read more]
- Along with his work with Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), Khurram Parvez provided a space for the victims of violence to seek justice. “With him in jail, hardly any ears are left to hear such pleas or even record any abuse or excesses,” says a Kashmiri journalist. [Read more]
- Press Freedom in Kashmir is severely threatened. Journalists “have been arrested, interrogated and investigated under harsh anti-terror laws… local press has largely wilted under pressure.” The Indian state is lenient only to “government stenographers.” [Read more]
- Recently a Kashmiri journalist, Sajad Gul, was booked under Public Safety Act and jailed at the high security Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu. Concerns of “national interest” and “the country’s sovereignty” are increasingly used to silence journalists, activists. [Read more]
- Since 2019, the UN special rapporteur for protection of the right to freedom of expression has written on at least three occasions to the government of India over reports of “arbitrary detentions and intimidation of journalists” in Kashmir”. [Read more]
- Only this week, a London-based law firm “filed an application with British police Tuesday seeking the arrest of India’s army chief and a senior Indian government official over their alleged roles in war crimes in disputed “Kashmir”. [Read more]
Caste discrimination and violence
- As the lowest in the caste hierarchy, Dalits in India have historically faced caste-based exclusion from economic, civil, cultural and political rights. Caste discrimination and violence is very prevalent and deeply entrenched in the India society.
- Caste discrimination is exemplified both through overt acts of violence as well as through significant differences in economic and social opportunities between “upper-caste” and “lower-caste” communities. [Read more]
- India is seeing a sharp escalation in violence against Dalits in the last few years- from sexual violence to public assault and killings to social boycott. [Read more]
- Sexual violence against Dalit women and girls by upper caste men is extremely prevalent. Women and girls from the community suffer discrimination due to the intersection of gender and caste. [Read more]
- Survivors and their families are systemically silenced and face police inaction and collaboration with the upper caste perpetrators. The government, police, and the judiciary—all have failed to deliver justice. [Read more]
- Dalits who have converted to another religion continue to face caste discrimination, but the Indian state excludes Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims from affirmative action programs and legal protection. [Read more]
- Caste-discrimination and violence isn’t just confined to rural India, it’s also practiced in urban India. [Read more]
- While affirmative action programs provide, to some extent, access to public education institutes for Dalit students, their representation is still low. [Read more]
- A recent study says that casteism is not only prevalent but also institutionalised in the Indian higher educational institutions particularly in the technical fields of medicine and engineering. [Read more]
- Members of the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) are over-represented, in relation to their population, in India’s prisons. [Read more]
- The prejudice and caste hierarchies have also replicated themselves in private industries which are mostly dominated by upper caste men. Recently, many reports on caste discrimination in the tech-sector have come to light. [Read more]
- Caste-discrimination is not limited to India’s borders but is also present in the Indian diaspora, rampantly practiced by upper-caste Indians based in other countries. [Read more]
- The social and economic impact of COVID19 has been disproportionally higher on those at the bottom of the caste ladder highlighting the pervasiveness of caste system. [Read more]
Rights concerns of the Sikh community, in India & the people of Punjab
- Having survived a decade of mass state crimes, Sikh community and the people of Punjab continue to be subjected to repressive economic & political policies in India.
- For decades, loved ones of thousands of extrajudicially killed or disappeared people in Punjab, continue to be denied justice & remedy, as courts & governments continue to provide impunity to perpetrators. [Read more]
- On one hand, journalists & advocates working on rights concerns of Sikhs & Punjabis were put under surveillance & censored by the Indian state in connivance with SM companies. [Read more]
- On the other hand, genocidal speech against the Sikh community went unchecked, and was often viral or trending on social media platforms in the last couple of years. [Read more]
- Despite police kidnappings, violent attacks by BJP and state brutality & apathy that killed over 600 protestors, farmers from primarily Punjab & Haryana, successfully led a 1.5 years long, largest protest & forced Modi government to make a retreat. [Read more]
- Mass incarceration of Sikhs & curtailment of Sikh political aspirations continue through the use of repressive anti-terror legislation like UAPA. [Read more]
Violation of rights of the indigenous people/ Adivasis of India
- For decades indigenous communities have faced dispossession, violence & militarization on their land and forest for corporate interests. [Read more]
- Against a history of relentless dispossession, many Adivasi regions have been a site of ongoing armed conflict and have seen unprecedented levels of genocidal violence, sexual violence, mass displacement & human rights violations. [Read more]
- The Indian State repeatedly uses sexual violence as a means of repression and torture, in order to humiliate and terrorise indigenous people and curb dissent, particularly in regions such as Bastar. [Read more]
- Sexual violence as a tool in counter-insurgency operations is not only condoned by the State but infact state ensures that such acts, including extra judicial killings, torture are accompanied by complete impunity. [Read more]
- The militarization often occurs to facilitate “developmental activities” in the form of extractive projects and any protests against the occupation of their forests, land and hills are violently suppressed. [Read more]
- While there are various laws which recognize and protect individual and community rights of indigenous people on their land and forest, those laws continue to be violated. [Read more]
- Acquisition of land by the state and private corporations occurs without consent of communities living on this land or many times by employment of forceful means. Existing laws requires informed consent of the affected communities. [Read more]
- The Modi government has introduced new laws that reverse existing constitutional & statutory guarantees against corporate land grabs, resulting in far-reaching consequences for environment & the very survival of the Adivasis. [Read more]
- The diversion of forests for mining & the dilution of rights protections with absolute impunity is severely impacting both the environment and physical and mental health of the Adivasis. [Read more]
- With an aggressive push for a neoliberal development paradigm & militarization, there has been a parallel intensification of attacks against human rights defenders working on issues of land grab & human rights violations by security forces. [Read more]
India’s repressive laws.
- A cocktail of laws like Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) are used to criminalize political agency of minorities in India.They give wide powers to state to facilitate prolonged incarceration of Human Rights Defenders and give police a pliant tool to target innocent minorities. [Read more]
- 53% of undertrials in Indian prisons are Dalit, Muslim & Adivasis, but they constitute 39% of India’s population (State of Policing in India, 2019). Similarly, Sikhs are roughly 1.7% of the population but 3.3% of the undertrials. [Read more]
- Offences under UAPA are covered under regular criminal law BUT UAPA allows police to negate accused’s rights whereas under regular criminal law they must follow procedural safeguards that protect the rights of the accused. [Read more]
- UAPA creates an exception to procedural safeguards denying fundamental rights, including increasing likelihood of police torture in custody, restriction on bail & essentially serving to “punish the accused before the trial is over”. [Read more]
- The most distressing aspect of such laws is not in the main cities of the country where terror accused have access to legal counsel and courts are used to such offences. These laws are most misused in the hinterland and in conflict zones. [Read more]
- UAPA has become a handy tool for the Modi government to manipulate investigations into mass violence incidents,protect real perpetrators,quell peaceful protests+persecute HRDs. Trials under UAPA which come to fruition see a high rate of acquittal. [Read more]
Situation of political prisoners in India and Kashmir.
- India is aggressively targeting dissenting voices against the government’s majoritarian, regressive politics of Hindu nationalism, with many being arrested in fabricated cases. [Read more]
- To quell months-long protests by the Muslim community, students & pro-rights groups, against the discriminatory citizenship laws that exclude Muslims, targeted mass violence against Muslims was orchestrated by members of the ruling party- the BJP. [Read more]
- In the following months, mass arrests of protestors took place in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Out of the 18 activists arrested in Delhi under UAPA, 13 – all Muslims – continue to languish in prison for about two years not without a trial. [Read more]
- In Kashmir, over the years, the Indian state has arrested 100s of youth, journalists, political leaders, human right defenders and others for speaking out against the atrocities being committed by Indian security forces in Kashmir. [Read more]
- Recently, prominent Kashmiri human rights activist, Khurram Parvez, was arrested under the draconian anti-terror law UAPA. [Read more]
- Adivasi and indigenous rights defenders face severe persecution for protesting militarization, occupation, and destruction of their land, forests, and hills. [Read more]
- Violence broke out after Hindu right-wing groups attacked an anti-caste commemoration in Maharashtra (Jan 2018); despite the eye-witness testimonies, the Indian government used the opportunity to frame and arrest human rights defenders. [Read more]
- Initially the police arrested 5 contract workers under the draconian anti-terror law – UAPA – for their alleged involvement in the violence. This was done to sabotage their union work – i.e., fights for the right of contract workers. [Read more]
- Soon after in July 2018, the government started a series of arrests of 16 activists, journalists, lawyers, intellectuals, and artists (also under UAPA) in what came to be known as the Bhima Koregaon case. [Read more]
- All 16 arrested have a record of writing, speaking, and organizing for the rights of workers, minorities, Dalits, and Adivasis. 3.5 years since the first arrest, with no hopes of the trial starting soon, 14 of them continue to languish in jail. [Read more]
- In the Bhima Koregaon case, recent reports by a forensic investigation firm revealed that the “incriminating evidence” used to justify the arrest was remotely planted by using a malware. [Read more]
- While pro-government journalists are getting away with promoting communal agenda against the minorities, independent journalists who question or criticize the Modi government are being hounded, and many arrested. [Read more]
- Muslim journalists have been particularly targeted and subjected to hostility and state repression for their work. [Read more]
- Journalist Siddique Kappan was arrested while on his way to the site of a gang rape and murder of a young Dalit woman. He now faces charges that include sedition, conspiracy to incite violence, outraging religious feelings, and terrorism. [Read more]
- Journalists in Kashmir have been facing increased harassment since the Indian government scrapped the region’s autonomy. [Read more]
Link to the twitter threads: