Why stigmatise social protesters?

Should a demonstration against global warming provoke the police to employ laws which are meant to punish terrorists? Certainly not.

Should a demonstration against global warming provoke the police to employ laws which are meant to punish terrorists? Certainly not. But ordinary residents of the area adjoining Heathrow airport in London who had been opposing its expansion discovered that the police had no qualms about warning the public through a government document that it would use counter-terrorism powers to deal “robustly” with any illegal protests.

Post 9/11, no one would consider this move by the London police particularly surprising. With more than 50 countries passing loosely worded ‘anti-terrorism’ laws, the world today is witness to the growing propensity of those in charge of law and order to use laws which have sweeping powers with few procedural safeguards and which invite harsh penalties.

Closer home, take the recent arrest under the draconian provisions of the National Security Act of a social activist, Roma, who with her two associates, Shanta and Malati, was working in the tribal-dominated district of Sonbhadra, Uttar Pradesh. These women who have been working in a backward area among deprived sections of society under the banner of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Savitri Bai Phule, Birsa Munda and Rani Lakshmibai had never resorted to any kind of violent means. But because dalits and tribals in the area had started claiming land which had belonged to them, the land mafia active in the area felt threatened.

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Then the manner in which the Karnataka police released a list of individuals and organisations which were accused of being “sympathisers of Naxalites”. In June, Ashok of the Komu Sauhardu Vedike (forum for communal harmony), Kadial Shamanna, a farmers’ leader from the Malnad region, and Kalkulli Vittal Hedge, who is working for the tribals facing displacement because of the creation of the Kudremukh National Park, and many others who enjoy great respect all over the state, were appalled to find that their names have also been included in this list.

It has been more than three months that Dr Binayak Sen, a paediatrician and human rights activist belonging to Chhattisgarh, has been in jail under the draconian Chhattisgarh Public Security Act and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Dr Binayak happens to be a recipient of the famous Paul Harrison award for working for community health, and was arrested basically to send a clear message to the defenders of human rights in the state that they are under watch.

The growing list of people who find themselves threatened, attacked and jailed just for speaking up for those who cannot do so reflects the hollowing out of Indian democracy. We need to recognise and respond to this extremely disturbing trend.