TCN News
An online press meet was organized by activists, advocates and community leaders on Tuesday to condemn the misuse of law and order by the Uttar Pradesh government.
The press briefing discussed abuse of civil rights by the BJP-ruled state governments amid the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), highlighting that democratic agitations against the discriminatory Act was met with “brutality,” where the authorities “violated the very ethos the nation has been founded on.” Accusing UP Chief Minister Adityanath to have given “the police and right-wing goons free rein and impunity to shoot, destroy properties and torture people for exercising their democratic rights to dissent and protest peacefully,” the session made some more notable points.
Prominent personalities like Ravi Nair (Director, South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre), Obaidullah Khan Azmi (Ex-MP, Uttar Pradesh), Seema Azad (Editor, Dastak Magazine), Sharfuddin Ahmad (National Vice President, Social Democratic Party of India), KK Roy (Allahabad High Court), E.M. Abdul Rahiman (Vice Chairman, Popular Front of India), Rajeev Yadav (General Secretary, Rihai Manch) and A. Mohamed Yusuff (Secretary, National Confederation of Human Rights Organizations) were on the panel of speakers, who drew attention to alarming levels of fabricated cases, extrajudicial killings and harassment of innocents by the government.
The conference highlighted that the government is “defaming protestors by calling them as rioters,” and that all those who have been vocal against state atrocities have been penalized with “brutal oppression.” The speakers mentioned Sharjeel Usmani, Muhammed Shahzad, and Dr Kafeel Khan, and several other activists – all of whom are incarcerated on fake charges and “are being harassed continuously under UAPA and NSA. It highlighted that Dr Kafeel Khan’s case is “clear evidence of vendetta politics where the BJP government is using all means available to destroy his life.”
The press meet pointed that it is ironical that the provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986 and UP Control of Goondas Act, 1970 “are invoked against the activists who had democratically fought for their right to live in the country they were born, while the literal goondas, gangsters and anti-social elements are roaming free across the state with impunity.” It added that this is, in fact, a strategy of the BJP government under which “anyone can be booked by alleging their involvement in rioting cases and their property can be attached,” alleging that UP state government, through such anti-democratic and violent measures seeks to eliminate all forms of opposition in the state. The speakers iterated that it is “unfortunate that the leading opposition parties in the state are silent on these issues, giving the state government a clean run to implement these measures.”
The conference condemned all such autocratic measures by the UP government, demanding a Supreme Court-monitored judicial enquiry be held in the recent extrajudicial execution of some criminals in Kanpur and other places in UP. In its endnote, it also urged all political parties who reject communal politics “to come out and voice their protest against these human rights violations in Uttar Pradesh.”