Senior Activists Condemn the Government’s Attempts to Criminalize Legitimate Protest

Close on the heels of alleged violence by agitating farmers on 26th January, 2021 at Red fort, a group of senior academics, activists and lawyers, stood in support of the on-going farmers’ movement, to strongly condemn the government’s attempt to criminalize and break a legitimate people’s movement.

Addressing a Press conference, Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan, Secretary of the Gandhi Peace Foundation – Kumar Prashant ,  Activist Shabnam Hashmi, Economist Atul Sood, Scientist and Co-Convener of the Nation For Farmers Dinesh Abrol described state conspiracy against their own citizens of country.

Despite the clear, unequivocal condemnation by farmers leaders, of any violence on January 26, the government has activated the criminal justice machinery to lodge FIRs against them under a range of criminal laws, including shockingly an anti-terror law, the UAPA. This is now becoming a familiar playbook of the ruling establishment, last seen in the winter of 2019, when the equal citizenship movement against the CAA-NRC, and its young leadership, was similarly vilified, terrorized, charged under UAPA, and arrested. The speakers demanded an unconditional withdrawal of these motivated FIRs against the leadership of the farmers movement, calling it a brazen misuse of the police and the law to silence people’s legitimate democratic expression.

The fake State narrative of the farmers movement as a ‘violent conspiracy’ against India, is an exact copy-paste of the narrative we saw last year around the anti-CAA movement, once again being spun to try and tar and supress the democratic voices of our people. Violent mobs are being deliberately incited, to target individual farmers leaders and at protest sites. Again, a page from the familiar playbook of last year.

The speakers drew attention to the section of a subservient media that is, once again, pushing these lies. Several speakers spoke of the completely peaceful nature of large sections of the farmers rally on January 26th, where with pride and the tricolour aloft their thousands of tractors, farmers made their way into the capital city of their republic. This vision of a people’s democracy on display was entirely obliterated by the mainstream media, and only the discordant violence by some, was made the dominant story.  Any individual striking even a marginally different note to the dominant state-sponsored narrative, is now been targeted. Speakers expressed alarm at how senior journalists and public figures, have been charged with sedition among other criminal sections of the IPC, simply for a tweet, that was retracted.

They  appealed to all Indians to organize day long fast,  All Religion Prayer Meetings, in their respective towns and cities, at 5. 17 pm or protest on January 30, on the occasion of Shaheed Diwas, the day Gandhiji was assassinated, in solidarity with the farmers movement. In Delhi the prayer meeting will be held at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, near ITO

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