Renowned human rights activist and former IAS officer, Harsh Mander, visited Kanpur, U.P. on 14th February to meet the victims of alleged police firing. He also held a press conference and released a comprehensive report in both Hindi and English titled “A State at War with its people”. If the title is disturbing, the contents are even more so.
Mander, together with Dr John Dayal and members of his team Karwan-e-Mohabbat (Caravan of Love) made a brief visit to this city of 5 million. They first went to Babupurwa, the worst affected area, where three young Muslim men were killed after their Friday prayers on 20th December 2019. It may be recalled that on the preceding day there were country wide protests against the newly legislated Citizens Amendment Act (CAA).
On 20th December an estimated 150,000 Muslims had gathered after Friday prayers in different mosques of the city. Violence erupted only in the Babupurwa area. Residents allege that some dubious local journalists and communal elements instigated the cops to attack the protestors.
Mander, Dayal and other team members Natasha Badhwar, Varna Balakrishnan and Akram Akhtar met the parents of some of the deceased, as also the injured. Their stories were very similar. The deceased were not involved in the violence, and all were from very poor families, sometimes the only breadwinners. Others alleged that police just barged into their houses, using choicest communal expletives, beat people ruthlessly and arrested them. Of 35 persons arrested, 4 were sent to jail, of whom two have since obtained bail from the Allahabad High Court.
The locals were coerced into making false statements that the police did not attack anyone and the victims were shot by other rioters. They further alleged that on the 20th night the cops wantonly smashed cars and scooters parked in the vicinity, but nobody dared complain because of the reign of terror unleashed by the cops.
Others were slapped with recovery notices for so-called damage to public property. At the time of writing, good news trickled in that the Allahabad High Court had stayed the recovery proceedings for being contrary to established norms. While interacting with the victims Mander observed that he himself had been a collector in 6 districts, hence knew only too well the inside story of how a Govt official could prevent or perpetrate violence.
Later in the day, under the aegis of the Kanpur Nagrik Manch (Citizens’ Forum) a press conference was held wherein the team report was released. It is worth quoting from it:
“The State of Uttar Pradesh stands out for the intense harshness of State action to crush the voices of dissent … It is only in U.P. (and to a much lesser degree in coastal Karnataka and Bihar) that these protests have turned violent”. Incidentally they are BJP ruled States.
The report states that as on 27th December 2019, 19 people had died, 1,113 had been arrested and 5,558 preventive arrests had been made. It castigated U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s call for “revenge” with its consequent brutal police assaults, and the issue of illegal Recovery notices. Yet the “Chief Minister issued a triumphalistic message of self congratulations … Every rioter is stunned, every trouble maker is shocked. Everyone has fallen silent awed by the strict Yogi Govt”.
The report echoes what the Kanpur victims had just testified to that there was a “rampage of hate by men in uniform, even inside their homes … televisions and washing machines were smashed, cash and jewellery looted, crockery even toys shattered, a lifetime of a family’s belongings devastated in minutes”. One hears of marauding armies doing this to teach enemies a lesson. It is frightening if such tactics are used by the State machinery to assault its own hapless citizens, especially those of a vulnerable Minority community.
The report further states that a Public Tribunal was constituted in New Delhi this 16th January, presided over by former judges of the Supreme Court. After hearing, seeing and recording the statements of victims and eye witnesses across the State the Tribunal concluded that “What emerges is an extremely disturbing picture of the wilful subversion of all democratic principles by a State which has declared war on both dissent and a section of its people”.
Justice (Retd) Sudarshan Reddy of the Supreme Court had this to say, “It appears that there is a collapse of liberal, constitutional values in the entire State of U.P. We constantly talk about economic recession; this is a case of democratic recession”.
The report also castigates the Govt for its suppression of all forms of dissent and protest by imposing restrictions like Section 144 and curtailment of internet services. It also condemned the attacks on journalists, human rights activists and lawyers for speaking out against injustice. It further states that “The Chief Minister of U.P. indulges in culpable hate speech … The State administration is utterly intolerant of dissent, and had tried to crush it through banning of peaceful assembly and cutting internet … U.P. is in the throes of what is fast threatening to become a gravely culpable crime against humanity. It appears that Adityanath has declared war on the Muslim citizens of the State, inciting and encouraging his police forces to unleash upon them an unlawful and brutal reign of terror … What is unfolding in U.P. is on a scale and with a methodological deliberateness not witnessed so far outside Kashmir and the North East”. So does the Chief Minister want to convert U.P. into another Kashmir? History will not forgive him.
Mander said that he had taken his Karawan-e-Mohabbat to 34 places where there had been human rights violations. Invariably the protestors were led by the affected persons. Here in Kanpur he was pleasantly surprised to see the movement led by citizens who were not the affected persons. They included this writer, Vishnu Shukla, Kuldeep Saxena, Khan Ahmed Farooq, Suresh Gupta, Sardar Harvinder Singh Lard, Alfred Peter, Adv Nazam and others. So there is always hope midst the encircling gloom.
FEBRUARY 2020
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