HRF Monthly

The lack of compulsion to prove wrongdoing beyond a reasonable doubt is at the heart of the security laws’ enduring appeal

/ / HRF Monthly

SEDITION & UAPA

 — 

The Indian State has conceived itself as a ‘security State’, and as the police apparatus is heavily overburdened, the fabricated arrests of members of minority communities are sacrifices made to create the appearance of relative safety and a protective State.

—–

THE Counter Terrorism Committee (‘CTC’) of the United Nations (‘UN’) Security Council met in New Delhi in the last week of last month. It adopted the Delhi Declaration which is State-centric, and had little concrete suggestions to protect and enhance citizens’ rights. The UN, as one wag underlined, was “nations united” against “people’s rights”.

…

The lack of compulsion to prove wrongdoing beyond a reasonable doubt is at the heart of the security laws’ enduring appealRead More »

HRF Monthly

The maya factor in Rohingya policy: Illusion and reality

/ / HRF Monthly

·

Union Minister H.S. Puri’s sudden announcement about the housing of Rohingya refugee families in the National Capital Territory of Delhi is either inspired genius or the cat’s paw for the Hindutva dispensation to explore the process of enforced ghettoization, starting with the Rohingyas.

—

Disclaimer: This is an allegory. It is an entry for Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Many truths, deep analysis, some plausible guess work and healthy imagination arising from knowledge of the principal actors reveal a heady cocktail, the classic whodunit. It is advised that it be read with a healthy attitude of Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

What had Puri tweeted?

EARLY yesterday morning, the Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri, tweeted, “India has always welcomed those who have sought refuge in the country. In a landmark decision all #Rohingya #Refugees will be shifted to EWS flats in Bakkarwala area of Delhi. They will be provided basic amenities, UNHCR IDs & round-the-clock @DelhiPolice protection”.

…

The maya factor in Rohingya policy: Illusion and realityRead More »

HRF Monthly

The Emergency, the first few days – A personal recollection

/ / HRF Monthly

·

That day we spent only finding out who all had been arrested and who had escaped the police dragnet. The next day, I had wanted to walk down to the Delhi State Socialist Party office and our trade union office. I was cautioned not to go anywhere near it. It was feared that Gobind, the office caretaker, was a police informer.

——

ON the morning of June 25, 1975, Than Singh Josh, the leader of the socialist trade unions in Delhi, and I had just reached Bangalore, as Bengaluru was then known. From the train station, we took an auto rickshaw to Subedar Chatram Road. We were going to the office of the Karnataka state Socialist Party. It was actually the office of  K.G. Mahewarappa, a lawyer, who was a long time socialist. We were going to sleep there for the week.

…

The Emergency, the first few days – A personal recollectionRead More »

HRF Monthly

The Emergency of 1975-77 and the long shadow it casts today

/ / HRF Monthly

·

Perhaps the legal community would care to demonstrate how they make the fine distinction between an Emergency regime that subverts the Constitution and suspends fundamental rights, and other regimes that do likewise in a society that is bereft of due process of law and is yet considered an electoral democracy, however tawdry.

——-

WRITING in 2013, Justice Rajinder Sachar, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court asked the question as to whether the Emergency would have collapsed if the Supreme Court had decided the ADM Jabalpur case of 1976 differently. The court had failed to show spine and follow well-established law that in cases of habeas corpus, every imprisonment is prima facie unlawful and that it is for a person directing imprisonment to justify the act.

…

The Emergency of 1975-77 and the long shadow it casts todayRead More »

HRF Monthly

Making sense of the Prime Minister’s offer to lift AFSPA in the Northeast

/ / HRF Monthly

·

The AFSPA will figure as a major item in the discussion at the United Human Rights Council  in September this year when it discusses India’s periodic report, and then again at the United Nations Human Rights Committee in November this year.

———

THERE are four audiences that the Prime Minister’s statement on the possible lifting of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 [AFSPA] in northeast India is aimed at. The first audience is the people of the North East. However, the people of Nagaland and Manipur have longer memories than the Prime Minister’s Office and the security establishment allow for. They are still awaiting the sanction for prosecution of Assam Rifles personnel pursuant to the Supreme Court’s EEVFAM judgment of 2016. Forget the detritus of Operation Golden Bird and Operation Bajrang in Assam.

…

Making sense of the Prime Minister’s offer to lift AFSPA in the NortheastRead More »

HRF Monthly

Detention and deportation of Rohingya refugees fly in the face of India’s obligations

/ / HRF Monthly

The new norms of an insensitive government

·

In the absence of a legislation to deal with refugees, India continues to treat Rohingya refugees in an arbitrary manner, discriminating against them in relation to refugees from other nations, and inhumanely detains and deports them, in violation of customary international law and its own international treaty obligations.

——

HASINA Begum, a Rohingya refugee staying in India, was deported to Myanmar on March 22 from the Indian border town of Moreh in Manipur’s Tengnoupal district. She had been in detention at the Kathua sub-jail in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir since March 6 last year. She had UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] registration no. 305-13C01783 as a refugee in India. Her husband and three minor children are still living in the most abject conditions in a slum in Jammu. The minor children have been inconsolable since the detention and deportation of their mother.

…

Detention and deportation of Rohingya refugees fly in the face of India’s obligationsRead More »

Scroll to Top