Condemning Arrests of Activists |
We the undersigned are utterly shocked and appalled by the simultaneous arrests of several prominent civil rights activists in different parts of the country, and the raids on their houses and those of many others. The exact nature of the alleged unlawful activities of those arrested has not been made clear though they are booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act; in many instances, even the families are unaware of the charges on which they have been arrested; where some charges have been reported, they appear utterly weird and outlandish; and the documents occasionally mentioned as evidence against them are of highly questionable authenticity. Besides, all those arrested can by no stretch of imagination be said to belong to any one particular group; in fact, the only thing that is common to them is that they have all been in the forefront of the struggle to defend the democratic rights of various oppressed and marginalized sections of society. The conclusion is inescapable that what is being conducted is a witch-hunt against those who dare to take up the cause of the downtrodden and who dare to criticize the government for trampling upon their rights. While the BJP government in power in the country had until now been implicitly supportive of lynch-mobs targeting minorities and dissident intellectuals, large-scale arrests of critics of the government had been avoided. Even that restraint, it seems, is now being abandoned. The threat that this poses to our democracy is palpable and serious. We condemn these arrests in the strongest and most unequivocal terms, and demand that the arrested civil rights activists be released forthwith.
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Irfan Habib Amiya Kumar Bagchi Prabhat Patnaik Vivan Sundaram M.K. Raina Sohail Hashmi Madangopal Singh Ram Rahman Zoya Hasan D. N. Jha C.P. Bhambri Jayati Ghosh C.P. Chandrasekhar Geeta Kapur Saeed Mirza Sashi Kumar A. Amarender Reddy A. Muthukrishnan Aban Raza Abhilasha Kumari Aditya Mukherjee Ahmar Raza Alok Rai Amar Farooqui Amitesh Kumar Anand K. Sahay Anantjeet Kaur Ananya Vajpeyi Anil Bhatti Anil Chandra Anil Sadgopal Anita Cherian Anita Ghai Antara Dev Sen Anuradha Kapur Archana Prasad Arjun Dev Arpana Caur Arunkumar H.G. Asghar Wajahat Asmita Aasaavari Atlury Murali Badri Raina Barnita Bagchi Brij Tankha Chanchal Chauhan Diamond Oberoi Vahali Pieter Friedrich Prabhakar Pachpute Prasanna Ramaswamy Praveen Jha Pulin Nayak Pushpamala N. Qurban Ali Radhika Menon Rahul Roy Rahul Verma Raj Chauhan Rajeev Bhargava Rajinder Arora Rajiv Gupta Rajni Arora Rakhi Sehgal Ramakrishna Chatterjee Rana Behal Rashmi Varma Rekha Awasthi Rekha Rodwittiya Rimli Bhattacharya Ritambhara Shastri Roop Rekha Verma Rukmini Sen Saba Hasan Sanjeev Kumar Santosh Dash Shabari Rao Dinesh Abrol Dinesh Mohan Dushyant Gauri Gill Geetha Mehra Gernot Wieland Githa Hariharan Hilal Ahmed Indira Arjun Dev Indira Chandrasekhar Iqtidar Alam Khan Ira Bhaskar Jennifer Mirza Josna T. Jacob K. L. Tuteja K. M. Shrimali Kamini Tankha Keval Arora Kirti Jain Kumar Shahani Lata Singh Latika Gupta Laxmi Murthy Lokesh Khodke M.M.P. Singh Madhu Prasad Mandira Mitra Mangalesh Dabral Manish Agarwal Maseeh Rahman Maya John Maya Krishna Rao Maya Sriram Mithu Sen Mohan Rao Mridula Mukherjee Mushirul Hasan N.K. Sharma Nadeem Rezavi Nalini Nayak Nandini Nayak Neeladri Bhattacharya Nilima Sheikh Nina Rao O.P. Jaiswal P.K. Shukla Parthiv Shah Shakti Kak Shalin Jain Sherna Dastur Shireen Gandhi Shireen Moosvi Shubhra Chakrabarti Sidheeq Kappan Sreelakshmi Subir Sinha Sudhanva Deshpande Sudhir Chandra Sukirat Anand Sukumar Murlidharan Sumangala Damodaran Sumit Sarkar Surendran Nair Suvira Jaiswal Tani Bhargava Tanika V. Ramakrishna Valay Singhrai Vasudha Dalmia Vasundhara Chauhan Veer Munshi Vikas Rawal Vishwamohan Jha Yashodhara Dalmia Zasha Colah |