By TCN News
Over 100 academics, students, writers, artists and activists from Australia joined the international community in extending support to the struggles of the student community in India fighting against police excesses, lawyers’ violence and the Government’s Hindutva agenda.
“The labelling of student activists as ‘anti-national’ by invoking the draconian law on sedition (a legacy of British colonial rule) is a blatant attack on academic freedom. These attacks have been orchestrated by the BJP regime to strike fear among citizens who question its practices of anti-minority religious hate mongering and xenophobic propaganda,” they said in a release.
“These attacks on students and free speech are not aberrations or sudden spurts of violence. Rather, they are part of a pattern of attacks on every idea and expression that does not pander to fascist Hindutva ideology,” the release said.
The release, which endorsed the demands made by the protesting students, staff and faculty at JNU and HCU, added, “We acknowledge that our solidarity is being extended from territory occupied by a settler colonial state. We also acknowledge that the Indigenous peoples who have not ceded their sovereignty, own this land. This acknowledgement is a necessary precondition for building transnational solidarity against governments – like those in India and Australia – that use democracy and national security as alibis for legitimising their everyday violence.”