Category Archives: Government Oppression

Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla, argues the Biden administration isnt showing leadership at the border or when it comes to Cuba.

The U.S. State Department released a statement Friday detailing additional sanctions levied against Cuban officials in response to the countrys crackdown against peaceful protesters in recent weeks.

"In recent weeks, the United States imposed sanctions on Cuban military and security leaders and units in response to the Cuban regimes violent suppression of peaceful protesters on and after July 11," the State Department said in a statement. "Today, we are enacting additional sanctions in connection with this repression. We take this action pursuant to Executive Order 13818, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act."

GOP CONGRESSWOMAN ASKS BLACK CAUCUS TO HELP BIDEN SEE OPPRESSION IN CUBA

The State Department said it has targeted Romrico Vidal Sotomayor Garca, chief of the Political Directorate of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior; Pedro Orlando Martnez Fernndez, chief of the Political Directorate of the Cuban National Revolutionary Police; and the Tropas de Prevencin of the Cuban Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Sotomayor Garcia and Martinez Fernandez, according to the State Department, were tasked by the Cuban government with "maintaining loyalty" within the ranks of the Communist Party and allegedly were instrumental in carrying out violent crackdowns against protesters demanding more freedoms from the oppressive regime.

REPUBLICANS MARCH WITH PROTESTERS FOR CUBAN FREEDOM AS THEY PUSHED BIDEN FOR MORE SUPPORT

"We stand in solidarity with the courageous Cubans who are protesting for human rights and fundamental freedoms, exercising their rights in the face of repeated oppression and abuse from the Cuban regime," the statement added. "The Cuban people deserve the ability to safely protest against an authoritarian regime and the failed system that has denied them access to basic necessities for decades."

Last month, protesters across the island took to the streets demanding changes and economic relief from Cubas communist government, resulting in violent crackdowns that ended with hundreds reportedly thrown in jail.

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Republicans, and some Democrats, have pressured the Biden administration to act in defense of the protesters and sanction Cuba for their response to the protests.

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More Cuban officials sanctioned by US in response to protest crackdown - Fox Business

Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) president and chief of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Fazl) Maulana Fazlur Rehman on Wednesday said the opposition alliance had decided to focus "all its attention and energies" on ensuring that transparent elections were held in the country.

Talking to the media in Islamabad after the PDM's first high-level meeting since May, Rehman said the opposition party leaders, including PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif and Vice President Maryam Nawaz who participated via video link, had analysed in detail the overall situation in the country as well as internal and foreign matters.

The PDM meeting "condemned in the strongest words the worst inflation" in the country, he said, adding that the PTI government had "broken records of inflation, unemployment and oppression".

"The lives of the public have been made impossible. The last drop of blood is being drained from the people for oppressive taxes and fulfilling the conditions of the IMF (International Monetary Fund)."

To deal with the situation, the PDM's steering committee will meet in Islamabad on August 21 after the parties in the alliance discuss the recommendations made during today's meeting so they can be given a "practical shape", Rehman said.

The PDM leadership will then hold a meeting on Aug 28 in Karachi to discuss the recommendations agreed upon by the steering committee and make decisions. "A splendid and unparalleled rally organised by PDM will be held on Aug 29 in Karachi," Rehman announced.

The meeting agreed that Pakistan was facing "very serious internal and external dangers" and the "fake" PTI government was facing defeat on all fronts, he said, adding that the country was also facing the "worst isolation internationally".

Referring to the recent United Nations Security Council session on the situation in Afghanistan in which Pakistan was denied the opportunity to address the council, the PDM president said not only had the country's interest been harmed but its honour had also been "destroyed".

He said the PDM "supports in very clear words" a political solution through negotiation to the conflict in Afghanistan. "Pakistan wants a political and stable Afghanistan," he stressed.

Rehman said the meeting demanded that the opposition be taken into confidence regarding the Afghan situation because an "important and concrete part of the parliament is not aware of the situation because facts are being hidden from them".

The PDM president claimed that "constitutional governance in the country has [disappeared] and constitutional institutions have been suspended.

"Freedom of expression has been throttled. Worst dictatorial [and] black-handed tactics have been imposed on the media. Journalists are being attacked," he said, adding that the meeting expressed serious concern over the situation and condemned it.

He reiterated the PDM's basic objectives which he said included ensuring that all institutions "fulfil their responsibilities while remaining within the bounds of the law and the Constitution and end their role beyond their authority".

Referring to electronic voting machines (EVMs) which the PTI government recently unveiled, Rehman said he had heard that the machine was the "easiest way to do rigging".

He said the alliance wanted to make it clear that the PTI government's "unilateral electoral reforms" and steps taken to implement those reforms were rejected. The PDM also rejected the results of the elections held in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) last month as well as the results of the general elections held in 2018.

"We believe that the public has the right to select its representatives and will not allow it to be stolen in any way. We believe that an election-thieving, selected government is imposed on the country. We reject any kind of electoral reforms and legislation (by them)."

Rehman said the PDM also believed that the National Accountability Bureau and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) have become "political organisations and lost their independence and objectivity" and were being used to take "political revenge" from the opposition.

The alliance also rejected "[restrictions] on media freedoms" and cases on journalists by the FIA and demanded that all the cases be taken back and "thuggery" against media be stopped, he added.

The rest is here:

PDM vows to focus on 'transparent elections' in first high-level meeting since May - DAWN.com

Rajesh Ramachandran

For nearly a hundred years Marxists have been plotting and prophesying the Indian Revolution and the Maoists have been ritualistically offering adivasi blood to recycle the Chinese Revolution. But all this while, without much ado, the Indian Revolution has been happening at a Hindu rate of growth at a painfully slow pace. The latest golden glimmer of it is Neeraj Chopra from Khandra village in Haryanas Panipat. His father is from a poor joint family of many brothers with about 10 acres of land and no means for first-world facilities or even an athletes diet Neeraj was a vegetarian to begin with, like most others of his Ror community.

This is the Indian uprising, whose vanguard is the lower middle class, semi-literate, sometimes desperately poor, deeply rooted in traditions and WhatsApp universities, tied to the village, believers and amazingly aspirational. They are the engines of the nations imagination; totally antithetical to the value systems of the elite. They too might become the elite in a couple of generations, but till then they create the dreams for a new India. What else explains the strange desi phenomenon of the elite schools producing kurta-clad rulers while the government ones in remote tribal hamlets churn out Deep Grace Ekkas?

There are tribals, Dalits, minorities, OBCs and upper castes amongst the Indian sporting heroes, and just about every part of the country is represented. But the common feature for these athletes is that not a single person has a privileged upbringing (apart from those participating in patently rich mans events like shooting). Unseeingly, unknowingly, the society has been throwing up fired-up youngsters from down below, beating all odds and conquering the world for themselves and the nation. It is time for us to map the pattern emerging in the villages from Panipat in Haryana to Sundargarh in Odisha. Is this how radical change happens in India without Maoist butchery or Talibanesque beheading, despite deadly caste oppression and the Ranvir Senas?

Nisha Warsi, the daughter of a poor Muslim tailor from Sonepat, not only avenged the humiliation of her family for having daughters but also changed the dress code of the mohalla by being the winner in shorts. No sermons, no political theories, no pamphlets and no guns fired; but an ordinary girls extraordinary commitment brings about societal validation for change. The Dalit part of Uttarakhands Roshnabad village has been suffering immense discrimination after the dominant castes had come into money, selling off their land and thus alienating themselves from Dalit labourers. But the casteist slurs against hat-trick scorer Vandana Katariya have landed her neighbours in police custody. No mean achievement in a terribly caste-ridden locality, where the police refuse to book the perpetrators of caste atrocities.

Of course, our oppressive society does not change overnight, but the very fact that it has to acknowledge and even worship heroes from the dusty villages, Dalit shanties and tribal colonies is proof of opportunity and possibility for change. Socially, these simple, deeply religious people may come across as illiberal to the city-slickers. After all, these very same villages and communities can also cast murderers in the shape of cow vigilantes and bigots. It is this classs aspiration that marks them out as different. If they are offered land and water, they will produce bumper crops; if they are assured of jobs, they will run and wrestle. Incidentally, the recruitment into the armed forces is a similar saga of grit to progress and prosper. Much of the social elite of north India owes its status to the recruitment to the British forces during the World Wars.

Every recent effort in political mobilisation is aimed at this class, be it the Mandal drive to seek OBC votes, the temple agitation promoting non-dominant OBC leadership, the giant rural employment guarantee scheme of Sonia Gandhis Congress and, of course, the anti-elite attack of the Kejri-Hazare team, which was hijacked by the BJP. The Aam Aadmi, derisively termed the mango man, is this lower middle class rural aspirant, eternally hopeful of change. It is his optimism that is getting tapped and turned into political energy. He can get excited and incited to commit violence if he is convinced of the other robbing him of his opportunity. Unfortunately, the other keeps shifting: while the Mandalites shape the upper castes as the other, the Hindutvavadis caricature Muslims as the other, denying the aspirational class their destiny.

The latest faultlines are getting drawn over the caste census. Those who refused to publish the caste census when it was first conducted and while they were in power now want to do that to prove that the upper castes are in a terrible minority and yet they are occupying positions of importance vastly disproportional to their numerical strength. The Mandalites believe that this attack on Brahmins, Baniyas and Thakurs Hindutvas core constituency will trigger a social divide that can bring in political dividends. That is a possibility, but it can get neutralised by the Sangh Parivar creating a stronger OBC leadership than that of Modis.

Ideally, the fight over the political spoils of the caste census should end up with another instance of national upheaval. While there is a possibility of a large section of upper castes like the Marathas and Jats getting co-opted as OBCs, the remaining ones should be confined to the Economically Weaker Section quota, thereby dividing government jobs only in terms of quotas. Right now, the Dalits and upper castes have a privilege: the rich compete and take a disproportionate advantage against the poor among them. Once the caste census is published and the quota division of the job cookie is done, all government jobs should be reserved for those below the creamy layer, for those who studied in government schools.

Reconciliation, assimilation and renunciation are the beautiful aspects of the Gandhian Revolution that won us our freedom. In the seventy-fifth year of our Independence, the empowered lot should willingly give way to the lesser privileged. After having been a beneficiary for god knows how many generations, I have no qualms in declaring my children ineligible for government jobs.

If with nobodys help a Dalit dhaba cleaner can be part of the worlds third-best hockey team, a bureaucracy of the aspirational class might turn us into world leaders. Long live the Indian Revolution! Happy Independence Day.

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The Indian Revolution - The Tribune India

A plot to kill or injure Myanmars UN Ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun was exposed in the first week of August with the FBI arresting two suspects. While the people of Myanmar drew the conclusion that the military regime was behind the plot, the latter has denied any involvement.

The plot bears testimony to the fact that the bloody tradition of eliminating political dissidents is still entrenched in Myanmars politics.

Unfortunately, this tradition began with the assassination of Myanmars independence hero General Aung San and his colleagues in 1947, a year before Myanmar was freed from colonial rule, by a political rival. Several more assassinations happened after the military coup in 1962 and the practice still flourishes today. A closer look at these assassination plots some failed reveals the alarming fact that most of the politically motivated killings took place when Myanmar was under military rule. Lets take a look.

Captain Kyaw Zwa Myint

The first attempted assassination after the 1962 coup took place in 1965. The target was Captain Kyaw Zwa Myint, a former personal assistant to General Ne Win. The captain fled the dictator to Thailand. Ne Win reportedly much appreciated the smart, 34-year-old Christian Anglo-Burmese soldier.

There were different stories about why he ran away from the military dictator. Some said he got too close to Ne Wins wife Daw Khin May Than. Some said he questioned Ne Wins nation-building ideology, the Burmese Way to Socialism, which later proved to be destructive to the countrys economy. Some said he sold a military secret to the Thai military attache for US$35,000. Rumours had it that he attempted to poison Ne Win over the dictators oppression of Christians in the country.

Captain Kyaw Zwa Myint did flee, and his former boss did order that he be found at any cost. His family was detained as he fled. An assassin sent by Myanmar stabbed the former captain while he was eating at a Bangkok restaurant, but Kyaw Zwa Myint managed to survive, wrote Kyi Win Sein Ne Wins protege who served as a business consultant and legal adviser for the regime in his book e and the Generals of the Revolutionary Council. Kyaw Zwa Myint later took refuge in Australia and died of cancer at the age of 49 in 1981.

U Win Ko and U Hla Pe

In 1993, U Win Ko and U Hla Pe, of the government-in-exile known as the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), were killed abroad. The military regime led by Senior General Than Shwe had declared the two ministers fugitives.

U Win Ko was from Daw Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD), and elected in Ye-U Township in the 1990 general election, whose result the military refused to recognize. He served as the finance minister in the NCGUB headed by Sein Win, a cousin of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. He was murdered while staying at a hotel in Chinas Kunming. He was 58.

U Hla Pe was also a minister. The NLD member was elected in Pyawbwe Township in the 1990 poll. He was assassinated in Bangkok. He was 54. The two fled a few months after the 1990 election, after the military started to imprison lawmakers-elect instead of transferring power to them.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself was targeted as the top opposition figure to military rule. Thousands of regime-backed thugs armed with swords, spears and sharpened bamboo sticks attacked Daw Aung San Suu Kyis motorcade in Kyee Village, on the outskirts of Sagaing Regions Tabayin Township, on May 30, 2003.

About 70 people were killed and others severely injured, although Daw Aung San Suu Kyis vehicle managed to escape. Former Military Intelligence chief Major General Khin Nyunt wrote in his autobiography that Than Shwe ordered his deputy Soe Win (who later became the prime minister of the regime) to stop Daw Aung San Suu Kyis motorcade by any means.

Myanmar State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi. Photo: Ye Aung Thu/Pool via Reuters

Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan

On February 14, 2008, Karen National Union (KNU) general secretary Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan, 65, was assassinated by gunmen at his home in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

The outspoken KNU leader was well respected not only by the Karen people, but also by Bamar political activists for the broad-minded leadership he provided to the democracy movement.

Three days before his assassination, he said in an interview with The Irrawaddy: We cant rely on the State Peace and Development Council [which the military regime called itself] for a genuine democracy and Union system to emerge. The military dictatorship and [Bamar] chauvinism must be wiped out.

The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army and Karen National Liberation Army-Peace Council, which have close ties with the military regime, were blamed for the assassination. There was speculation Major General Mya Tun Oo (now a general and defence minister in Min Aung Hlaings regime) was involved in the assassination.

Mya Tun Oo has served as commander of No. 101 Infantry Division Headquarters, principal of the Defense Services Academy, and commander of the Central East Command. He is reported to have helped improve relations between the military and Karen armed groups and is also a military representative to the ongoing ceasefire talks between the government and ethnic armed groups.

Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan. Photo: Facebook/zoyaphanpage

U Ko Ni

Legal expert U Ko Ni, a prominent legal adviser to the NLD, was gunned down at Yangon International Airport in broad daylight in 2017. The 64-year-old lawyer was credited with creating the position of state counsellor for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is constitutionally barred from the presidency, after the NLD won a landslide victory in the 2015 general election. He was also one of the most vocal critics of the military-drafted 2008 constitution.

The assassination was orchestrated by a former major with Myanmars military. It is widely believed that Myanmars military was involved in his assassination. Ex-major Aung Win Khaing, who hired gunman Kyi Lin, is still at large.

U Ko Ni. Photo: Kryptonova Z/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

UN Ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun

In the latest of the assassinations or attempted assassinations, Phyo Hein Htut, 28, and Ye Hein Zaw, 20, plotted to seriously injure or kill Myanmars UN ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun. Phyo Hein Htut told FBI investigators that an arms dealer in Thailand had contacted him online and offered him money to hire attackers to hurt the ambassador and force him to step down.

Myanmars ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun addresses the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 11, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File

U Kyaw Moe Tun said the FBI and New York police are currently providing security for him. He publicly opposed military rule in Myanmar during a UN meeting in February after the coup. Since then the regime has tried to replace the ambassador, but in vain so far, as the UN has not taken action at the juntas request. Currently, he represents Myanmars National Unity Government formed by lawmakers from the ousted government and ethnic minority representatives.

This article was first published on The Irrawaddy. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

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Assassination Plot Against Myanmars UN Ambassador Is Testimony to a Bloody Tradition - The Wire

The recent revelations about the widespread spying on Indian citizens by governmental agencies, mediated by the Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group, have justifiably shocked a lot of us, but not most of us. In such circumstances, we might even believe that in the age of social media and the attention economy, people are quite happy to be watched by anonymous government agents as long as it means someone is following them.

When asked about these reports in parliament, the only reply that the minister in charge of information technology gave was that illegal surveillance is not possible in India. The nonchalance with which the current government waved off all the reports and allegations on the misuse of Pegasus just goes to show that it truly understands the nature of modern governance as a vast operation of information capture. Modern governance is fundamentally founded on surveillance. The only difference between the routine functioning of governmental agencies and the current Pegasus hacking scandal is that the latter simply shifts the focus from the surveillance of populations to authorised spying on individual citizens categorised as threats to the state (a list which apparently included the current minister for information technology himself). In a strange way, Ashwini Vaishnaws response in parliament seems to be making the case for normalising spying as a routine and even benign governmental activity.

Shivangi NarayanSurveillance as Governance: Aadhaar Big Data in GovernancePeoples Literature Publication (June 2021)

In her book Surveillance as Governance: Aadhaar | Big Data in Governance, Shivangi Narayan makes the argument that we do not really know how to respond to the reality of governance as surveillance. In most cases we take, the paradigm of governmental surveillance appears to be hacking or tapping phones, invading digital privacy, or even shadowy government agents following us around. Surveillance is seen through the prism of George Orwells 1984, where Big Brother is always actively watching. In her book on the UIDAI or Aadhaar project, Narayan finds this paradigm to be lacking. The major flaw of the Aadhaar project, she argues, is not characterised by active governmental interference in the lives of citizens, but passive governmental neglect. It is more Kafkaesque (like in The Trial) than Orwellian.

By focussing on the Orwellian metaphor, Narayan argues, we become captive to the myth of a smoothly running bureaucracy and updated infrastructure. It assumes that all the information collected by the state is stored and analysed without any losses by the infrastructure and the bureaucracy functions perfectly to use the said information. In this paradigm, privacy becomes a matter of concern for those who are involved in criminal activities, and it becomes difficult to understand why the collection of information from law-abiding citizens would still be problematic. To understand Aadhaar and its problems vis--vis privacy and the surveillance state we must shift from the Orwellian paradigm to the Kafkaesque where the latter is characterised by a thoughtless bureaucracyarbitrary errors and dehumanisation.

The genealogy of the modern state, Narayan argues, is built on surveillance as a tool to gather information on citizens that plays two essential functions: firstly to target its policies (welfare, infrastructure, healthcare, education and so on) more efficiently and secondly for training and converting a population into efficient and productive individuals. The logic of the modern Indian state conforms absolutely to this managerial model, especially when it comes to the Aadhaar project. Indeed the former CEO of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, was the chairman of UIDAI. Each Aadhaar card has a unique 12-digit number which is supposed to be linked with government schemes and policies to ensure efficient transfer of benefits and services to all those who are authorised to receive them. Yet as Narayan shows in her book through a detailed analysis of the governments flagship welfare schemes public distribution system, public health, MGNREGS, public education, and efforts at financial inclusion, claims of greater efficiency and productivity remain unfounded.

For example, the Aadhaar card is supposed to be used to authenticate the beneficiary at the PDS or ration shop. But as Narayan argues, citing a news report, most of the time the machines that authenticate Aadhaar cards are not working, so the disbursal is done manually. The authentication process itself takes up to eight minutes, so rather than allowing for greater efficiency, it slows down the process of distribution. In the case of public education, for example, Narayan finds the same inefficiency. In 2016, the minister for human resources, Smriti Irani had announced the governments intention to track 200 million school-going children daily online. As Narayan writes, no such database exists, though the portal is up and running. If you click on the report section of the portal, it has nothing to show.

Also Read: The Different Ways in Which Aadhaar Infringes on Privacy

Narayans book seems to be making two arguments against the pervasive nature of modern governmental surveillance. Firstly, its utopian claims of greater efficiency are bellied by the actual shoddiness of the physical and bureaucratic infrastructure that is supposed to ensure the smoothness of the process. Internet connectivity is mostly absent, PoS authentication machines do not work, websites are set up without any data, fingerprint readers malfunction and the bureaucracy remains idle and indifferent. Secondly, Narayan argues that the use of Big Data in governance simply ignores social discrimination and bias, amplifying it rather than getting rid of it. Without understanding the structural forms of oppression and discrimination that are part and parcel of every society, the dream of efficiency and productivity will rather lead to a nightmare where people are excluded from state welfare on the basis of algorithmic decisions that are absolutely opaque even to the bureaucrats who use them.

Narayans book hesitates at this point. The solution to the first problem is quite obvious: greater connectivity, functioning machinery, fewer bureaucratic hurdles, in short better and more efficient use of technology, which is usually accomplished by the privatisation of governmental services. The solution to the second one is much more difficult: a sensitised bureaucracy, a greater understanding of prevalent forms of discrimination and bias, and more checks and balances in order to avoid black box algorithmic decision making. The problem however is that it seems difficult to achieve both these things together. The greater the efficiency of technology, the greater its functional opacity and the obliviousness to the lives of individuals. The institution of more bureaucratic checks and balances would work well to counter these tendencies, but at the cost of more red-tapism and lower governmental efficiency. This point, at which Narayans book is compelled to hesitate, does not mark the limits of her discourse on governmental surveillance. This limit, this impasse, at which her argument hesitates is nothing but the limit of the discourse of modern governmentality itself.

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Book Review: Why Collection of Information From Law-Abiding Citizens Is Still Problematic - The Wire

In two excellent anti-CRT letters Aug. 3, Catherine Fahrig of Sandpoint and Melinda Rossman from Sagle, are on target with their sentiments.

Yes we need to stop government school educators from pushing this phony "law school, graduate course" theory on our kids. There's little reason except Democrats are a special class that always get their way.

Melinda's premonition, which she shared anecdotally, is derived from decades of oppression under a teachers' union. Specifically she said CRT is a racist form of "social justice" designed to divide us and "brainwash the weak."

I believe you, Melinda.

Then there's Catherine. She's been doing some studying. She said, "About ten years ago, someone had the bright idea to revamp the socialist push (from the '60s), but instead of using the proletariat they substituted racism for the evil promulgated by our capitalist society."

Then powerful teacher's unions " took up the banner of CRT. In the 2020 election cycle, they donated $65 million to Democrat politicians and liberal support groups. All this to support CRT, a left wing racist and toxic ideology."

I believe Catherine, too. "Critical race theory is the most racist vile ideology, based in hatred. Hatred of our country, hatred of our federal republic, and hatred of religion," she said.

Please go online to read the Bee's Aug. 3 letters penned by Melinda and Catherine.

MIKE FRANCO

Trestle Creek

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Letters are on target on views about critical race theory - Bonner County Daily Bee

By Express News Service

CHENNAI:As much as a democracy is the sum of all its people, so is freedom the aggregation of all the rights they enjoy. Yet, 75 years into independence, our country doesnt seem to fare well on so many parameters considered paramount for freedom. As citizens express what they seek in this country of liberty, heres the reality they have to make do with.

Swetha V Pillai, content creator

Freedom from patriarchyFreedom is the ability to break the patriarchy. To be able to stand by myself as a woman with an identity of my own is very difficult in our country. Sure, we have come a long way from where we were but there is much more to be changed. For example, people now may be more accepting of those who do not wish to adopt their husbands name after marriage but the default is to have your fathers name instead. There is no other alternative. I will know that I am a free human in this country when I can independently make decisions for who I am as a woman.

Irfan Ahmed* (Name changed on request), product manager

Freedom to live without the fear of being killedJust a few days ago, at less than 1 km from the Parliament of India, members and a few ex-members of the ruling party organised and participated in a rally where they explicitly called for the genocide of Muslims. While the Delhi police have registered complaints against unknown persons, the faces of the participants are observable in the recorded videos of the hate rally. However, the police detained people who went to protest against this hate rally. This shouldnt become the norm. I dont want wrongdoers to go unpunished. I dont want them to be accepted or even worse, celebrated. I would like to see them arrested, tried in court, and punished. This will give me and the 20 crore Indians the freedom to be alive, and be alive without the fear of being lynched on the street.

Evidence Kathir,human rights activist

Civil rightsWhen we talk about liberty, dignity and the right to equality are tied to this. The Constitution lays it down in many ways freedom of speech, right to livelihood, and protection against bonded labour, untouchability and discrimination. Am I ensured my rights? Be it access to justice or education, shelter, security, gender equality or job opportunities. Ours continues to be a country without these civil rights.

Vignesh Chandrashekaran, entrepreneur

Freedom of pressFrom a common mans point of view, the press does enjoy a lot of freedom in India. Of course, theres a lot of (political and corporate) influence but theres freedom nevertheless. But, is the press making good use of this freedom? You see people put up videos on YouTube with a tantalising title and having you watch something. These days, news is going the same way too in a lot of organisations. Maybe this is a reason the government steps in with restrictions?

Revanthi Manjubalu,TNPSC aspirant

Feminism and gender equalityThe condition of women in a nation is the real measure of its progress. Recently, social media users were enraged when the video of a girl from Lucknow slapping a cab driver surfaced, and trended the hashtag #arrestLucknowgirl and went on to question the tenets of feminism, simply because the person who was observed as the wrongdoer was a woman. However, the incident had nothing to do with feminism or the existence of feminists. It was shocking how a part of the country came together to dis feminism and equality in line with this incident. It was a showcase of our feeble state of understanding of feminism. Equality is a very important indicator of freedom and we are far behind in it. Womanhood can feel euphoric only when independence from patriarchy is achieved.

Asha Jhabakh, homemaker

Voting rightsIndia is entering its 75th year of independence and we have the choice to choose our government. That to me is a very important indicator of freedom and independence. However, where we as citizens stand in exercising this right is questionable. There are people who feel that their votes dont matter and are on the fence when they have to cast a ballot. Going forward, voting should turn into a collective movement wherein the entire country comes out in full strength to vote. This not only indicates freedom but also becomes an important point to ensure that other indicators are in line.

D Ganesan, educator and sparrow conservationist

Accessible, quality educationEducation is the most important factor. And this doesnt just mean the education we get from schools and colleges; its also things we learn from practical work and experience. While there are countries that do better than us in this aspect, we are not bad in this regard. That too South India fares better than the North, I would say.

Subramaniam,retired stockbroker

Freedom of pressBe it newspapers or social media, people are able to voice their opinions boldly. While a lot of organisations do have biased news, there is room for independent opinion. Id give it 8 out of 10, taking away two points for the repercussions people face from time to time. But, compared to other countries, I think we do better.

Mahesh Ramani, marketing communications and L&D specialist

Our Forgotten Indigenous TribesAll our politicians have given a raw deal to our tribalsthe original settlers of our lands. Be it the Irulas in Tamil Nadu, the Gonds in Central India, or tribes of the North Eastern states; they are yet to receive their basic rights. A recent article highlighted how Irulas live without basic amenities less than 80 km from Chennai. Even something as basic as clean drinking water or electricity is a challenge. Perhaps, true freedom can only be achieved once they are integrated within our society as regular people, and not some exotic specimen.

Shalin Maria Lawrence,author and activist

Freedom to live without fearWhere the mind is without fear, and the head is held high. I was 13 when I was introduced to these lines of Tagore; since then, for me, freedom was fearlessness and dignity. But, as a Dalit woman, I have to fear for my life and dignity from the time I was conceived. I cannot criticise the systematic oppression happening to me; I cannot dissent. As a religious minority, I fear; as a free thinking individual, I fear; as a writer, I fear; as a citizen, I fear the state. So, I think the country doesnt fare well in this regard.

Hari Ramanathan, audio visual professional

Wholesome educationThe education system in our country often fails to recognise and encourage the curiosity of a child. I saw an interview where the speakers were talking about how children enter the school system with the most profound, uninhibited questions about nature, politics etc., but tend to lose this by the end of their education. I think freedom means moulding a better education system that allows the young minds of our country to express and explore their curiosity without restrictions.

Deepan, advocate

Freedom of expressionEvery living being has the right to share this world. But, we have to look at who is oppressing this right. Be it constantly suppressing free speech or what we eat or even how we talk. I love to speak in the Chennai slang. But its looked at as something inferior. But freedom is being able to express without hesitation or hurting anyone (in body or mind) what we want to. This is how I see it. And we are far from reaching that freedom.

Yuvan Aves, naturalist

Proactive & informed publicProactive engagement with matters of community and environment, being concerned and informed are essential elements/facilitators of a free society and. Passivity, lack of social/environmental concern, being stuck in privileged comfort zones are the signs of the absence of freedom. India doesnt do too well in this aspect. But, recent active youth participation in various spheres of political decision-making augurs well.

Jaya, General Managerat Sahodaran NGO

LGBTQIA+ rightsWhen people of the LGBTQIA+ community get all their rights is when we will have attained true freedom. Even though there are laws and court rulings in favour of the community, till today, there is no understanding or acceptance for them among the public. This has to change. If Central and State governments were to follow the recommendations given recently by Justice Anand, I think theres room for people to move towards acceptance.

Freedom to livewithout fearThe US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has named India under Countries of Particular Concern, tagging it as one of the worst violators of religious freedoms in 2020.

Voting rightsInternational organisation Freedom House, in its annual assessment report, gave India a score of 34/40 for its Political Rights. While it did well in terms of people being and to form a party and strength of the opposition, it didnt fare well in terms of representation & safeguard against corruption.

Freedom of pressThe 2021 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders ranks India at 142 out of 180 countries. Indias previous rank, in 2016, had been 133.

Freedom from patriarchyWorld Economic Forums Global Gender Gap Report 2021 puts India in the 140th rank among 156 countries. It had ranked 112 among 153 counties in 2020.

Wholesome educationWorldwide Educating for the Future Index 2019 put India in the 35th place. The index ranks countries based on their abilities to equip students with skill-based education.

Accessible, quality educationThe Wave-1 of the ASER (2020) survey by the non-profit Pratham, reported that a mere 18.3 per cent children in rural areas enrolled in government schools have accessed video recordings, and 8.1 per cent have attended live online classes. This increases slightly for children in private schools (28.7 and 17.7 per cent)

Civil rightsThe international organisation Freedom House, in its annual assessment report, gave India a score of 37 out of 60 for its Civil Liberties.

Proactive and informed publicFreedom House gives the country 2 out of 4 points for freedom of assembly and freedom of work for NGOs.

Freedom of expressionIn the past 1.5 years, people have been arrested or have had cases registered against them for social media posts on environment, politicians, mob lynching, RSS violence, pandemic and more.

LGBTQIA+ rightsA study by independent researchers Lyric & Asher Fergusson that ranks the safest, least and most homophobic countries in the world places India as the 82nd best travel destination worldwide for LGBTQIA+ travellers.

See the rest here:

Freedom where it counts - The New Indian Express

Montoursville, PA-The concept of important racial theory was undefined, but was fiercely contested at a nearly three-hour school board meeting on Tuesday.

Most notably, a resolution called the Snell Resolution after director Ron Snell, who introduced the document, received more general support than opposition, but was never passed during the meeting.

NSintellectual Legal analysis movement based on and a loosely organized framework Premise It Race Is not a natural and biologically grounded feature of the physically different subgroups of humans, but a socially constructed (culturally invented) used to suppress and exploit people of color. ) Category.

An important racial theorist says that US law and legal system are essentially Racist Especially as long as it functions to create and maintain social, economic and political inequality between whites and non-whites. African American..

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Reason: The ambiguous nature of the language in the statement of resolution. Multiple board members are on the alert due to gray areas, undefined parameters, and ambiguity in the copy.

The agenda is G-1: A motion by the Montoursville Regional School District to approve a resolution against curriculum guidance in public and charter schools, or to promote important racial theory, or to gender, race, or ethnicity. It was a material that advocated a similar concept of division related to it. , Color or country origin.

August 10 Snell Resolution appeared on the agenda of the MASD Board of Education.

The theory itself was not defined in a way that softened either side of the passage. In fact, none of the speakers at the conference provided a true definition. Michael Kraft of Montoursville gave a presentation on the Critical Race Theory (CRT), identifying this subject as a means of informing government policy reforms.

CRTs are a rarely taught law school / graduate level sociology topic that is not part of the PA curriculum expectations and is not suitable for kindergarten to high school research.

Nikki Young, Bucknell Universitys Equity and Inclusive Excellence quasi-Provost expressed a similar view. CRTs are academic studies in higher education, she said. How people approach this concept is likely to be part of the high school curriculum.

More appropriate, instead of working to build a concept of race, the school asks, Does this curriculum apply to everyone? Is it accurate? Is this a story that leads to further oppression? She said it should.

According to Young, teaching to be more inclusive, more accurate and more excluded from undervalued racial stories is not the same concept as CRTs.

Rebuilding how we tell the story of race in the United States, said Joselin Scott, director of Equity and Inclusive Excellence at Bucknell University, is part of the school conversation. He added that it should be.

The problem died on the floor when one of the members of the board did not follow the second when Snell voted for the motion on Tuesday night. According to some who explained their hesitation, it was the language within the resolution that gave them a pause.

Im against anything that promotes peoples division based on skin color, said Board of Education Bill Ruffing. Ive never seen the problem of having more gray areas than CRTs.

A PowerPoint presentation by Michael Craft of Montuasville asked board members questions on Tuesday night in a fierce debate about critical racing theory.

C. Polling / NCPA

Who decides who will train teachers to teach content that is considered within the CRT curriculum? Who decides the CRT curriculum? He asked a question. I dont think its necessary.

Dave Simmel, director of the school board, also agreed. I am confident that the staff will teach children how to think critically. [resolution] there is no need. Its an insult to the staff to say this is necessary.

Members of the community were on the podium in support of the Snell Resolution before being voted.

Critical law is the background of the CRT, and the theory is rooted in Marxist idealism. We teach children to hate Americans, said local lawyer Karen Disalvo. Insisted.

Kathy Barnes, who lives in Montoursville, said the basics of American democracy are no longer taught in schools. We canceled God and replaced him with Satan, she said, calling CRT steroid racism.

Whether they know it or not, they are pushing for a divisive and political agenda, said Brenda Oberheim. I need more than the districts words that they dont allow the divided and wrong message she said I need this resolution promoted by the CRT.

The goal is division, said Kyle Taylor. [CRT] It creates a grudge because it presents the spirit of an injustice victim. The perceived racial disparity is intolerable of facts and reasons.

The really oppressed, minority people deserve the real roots of the problem, Taylor said after the meeting. Instead of investigating the causes of inequality, we envision racism, he said, advocating a actually functioning and stricter curriculum.

But Cindy Wentsler, a longtime English teacher at Montuasville Regional High School, wondered what he could teach and what wasnt under the resolution. After all, the purpose of studying literature is to investigate what is considered a divisional concept related to gender, race, ethnicity, color, or country of origin.

If you couldnt discuss the text for one group [being at a disadvantage] As another major theme, we will lose: Thousands of wonderful suns. Kite Runner, to kill Mockingbird; Hackfin; Jane Air; Dollhouse; Canterbury Story; Crucible; Raisin in the Sun.

And it can be argued that these are potentially disruptive: the brave new world; animal farms; mice and men; sold; glass castles, she continued. And thats just an English class. Imagine the impact of social studies. You cant talk about elections unless the elections aredivided.

Wentsler pointed out the ambiguity in the definition of CRT presented in the resolution. As an expert, I know how to discuss controversial subjects withouteducation, he said, saying he was there to protect his children from progressive rhetoric and activist propaganda. A word used by many parents who said it.

Young, Vice President of Bucknell University, suggested practical issues that kindergarten to high school districts should consider. Changes in the authors we read, she said. And who and how do we read? What concepts are important, what resources are available, and what simple learning activities can be implemented in relation to a more comprehensive curriculum? What is your budget for more comprehensive learning materials?

If you dont have the budget, they say theyre already investing in the story we want to tell, she said.

Our content is free, but journalists are working hard. 100% of your contribution to NorthcentralPa.com is directed directly to helping us cover important news and events in our area. Thanks for saying that local news is important!

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Resolution against critical race theory dies unvoted by Montersville Board of Education | Community

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Resolution against critical race theory dies unvoted by Montersville Board of Education | Community - Pennsylvanianewstoday.com

In April 2018, a large group of policemen arrived at the Delhi flat of Rona Wilson, a 47-year-old human rights activist. They had travelled from Pune in the western state of Maharashtra, and appeared, accompanied by Delhi police officials, at Wilsons single-room flat at 6am. For the next eight hours, they scoured the modest premises, searching the files on Wilsons laptop and rifling through his books. Annoyed and short of sleep, he asked that they be put back in place after they had been scrutinised. When the police eventually left, they took away Wilsons Hewlett-Packard laptop, a SanDisk thumb drive and his mobile phone.

Seven weeks later, the police were back at Wilsons flat, this time to arrest him. He was accused of conspiring to assassinate the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and planning to overthrow the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Evidence of these crimes had allegedly been found on his laptop. Wilson was flown to Pune, charged under Indias anti-terror law and incarcerated. More than three years after the arrest, he remains in prison.

Wilson, who appeared in press photographs with flowing, shoulder-length hair, squeezed between two plainclothes policemen on the backseat of an unmarked van, seems an unlikely candidate for violent conspiracy. A Malayalam-speaking Christian who grew up in the southern state of Kerala, Wilsons life in Delhi had been wholly devoted to campaigning on behalf of political prisoners. He made visits to inmates in Tihar jail, Indias largest prison, to lawyers offices to help with campaigns for their release, and to dozens of media organisations in the centre of New Delhi to raise awareness of the plight of those he believed had been falsely incarcerated.

Just before his arrest, Wilson had applied to the PhD programme in political science at Surrey University, and was hoping to leave for the UK if he managed to get a scholarship. The documentary film-maker Sanjay Kak, who has known Wilson for nearly two decades and worked with him on campaigns for the release of political prisoners, described him as completely devoted to the cause. Rona in many ways exemplifies an Indian kind of activist quiet, self-effacing and yet deeply committed to what they do, he said. The tragedy of what has happened to him is that he has been drawn in by the very machine he worked so hard to dismantle all his life.

Wilson is one of 16 people arrested since June 2018 for their part in an alleged Maoist conspiracy to foment an uprising against Modis government. The origin of this so-called conspiracy was traced to a festival called the Elgaar Parishad (meaning loud assembly) held in Pune on 31 December 2017. Organised by two progressive retired judges, the festival was looking ahead to the 200th anniversary of a famous Dalit victory in the nearby village of Bhima Koregaon in 1818, when historically oppressed Dalit soldiers serving in a British regiment defeated an upper-caste Hindu army.

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During the festival, speakers criticised the ruling BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), often described as its paramilitary branch, for their promotion of a Hindu majoritarian state and for their attempts to subvert Indias constitution, which upholds the principles of religious and ethnic equality. The next day, 1 January 2018, clashes broke out as Dalits converging upon Bhima Koregaon were beaten and pelted with stones by mobs waving the distinctive saffron flags of the Hindu right. One man was killed in the riots, and property was smashed and burned.

Although those initially accused of instigating the violence were two local men with longstanding links to the Hindu right, the investigation quickly altered course. By April, the focus of police inquiries had become a convoluted plot involving urban Naxals a catchphrase popularised by the Hindu right for activists and intellectuals with progressive leanings operating as a front for underground Maoist groups and inciting Dalits to rise up against the government. This alleged incitement to insurrection was named the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy.

There are thousands of political detainees currently held in Indias prisons, but more than any other mass arrest, the Bhima Koregaon case shows the way Modis government cracks down on criticism of its Hindu nationalist ideology and disguises its harsh repression as part of a war on terror.

Wilson had been nowhere near the Elgaar Parishad event. In fact, he was not even in Maharashtra at the time. According to his legal team, he was in Delhi. After the raid on his flat, the police, however, claimed that an analysis of Wilsons computer and thumb drive had revealed several incriminating documents, including a letter in which Wilson had written about targeting Modis road-shows in another Rajiv Gandhi type incident a reference to the assassination of Indias former prime minister by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber in 1991.

On 6 June 2018, the day the police arrested Wilson in Delhi, they also took in four other activists in different parts of India who had allegedly worked with Wilson on the conspiracy. Like Wilson, the other detainees Surendra Gadling (53), a Dalit lawyer; Sudhir Dhawale (52), a Dalit writer; Shoma Sen (63), a feminist literature professor, and Mahesh Raut (34), a land rights activist had no record of violence.

Their activism, often challenging the excesses of the state and Hindu-right organisations, was a matter of public record, carried out largely in courts, panels, rallies and press conferences. The government nevertheless extended its net further over the following two years, arresting people in Hyderabad, Delhi and Ranchi, until by October 2020 the total number of those detained had risen to 16.

Known to activists and the media as the BK 16, the detainees included Anand Teltumbde (71), a Dalit public intellectual who is married to the granddaughter of BR Ambedkar, the Dalit architect of the Indian constitution; Sudha Bhardwaj (59), a Boston-born lawyer who represented workers and indigenous people in central India; and Stan Swamy, an octogenarian activist and Jesuit priest suffering from Parkinsons. Swamy, arrested last October, was denied bail by a judge who refused to accept that his health was precarious. He contracted Covid while in prison and died on 5 July this year, which prompted widespread global condemnation and yet drew no response from Modi.

Wilson remains in Taloja mens prison in Mumbai, as do most of his fellow accused. Fourteen of the BK 16 have been denied bail. The only exceptions are the 81-year-old poet and activist Varavara Rao, who tested positive for Covid-19 last year, and who will return to prison when his six-month bail comes to an end this month; and Gadling, who has been given one weeks bail, starting next week, to perform rites for his mother on the first anniversary of her death.

Mihir Desai, a lawyer representing the BK 16, described their long incarceration without trial as characteristic of Indias draconian anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which makes getting bail almost impossible. Once the trial begins, it could take anything from five to 10 years. Most of them have been in jail for three years already, and the trial is a long way away, Desai said with some weariness. The prosecution claims that it has 200 witnesses. Just imagine how long it will take to question them all.

The governments case against the BK 16 is notable both for its sheer size apart from 200 witnesses, the charges filed against the BK 16 run to a total of 17,000 pages as well as the seemingly outlandish nature of the plot it claims to have uncovered. In the electronic communications allegedly found by the investigation and leaked to a compliant mainstream media, Wilson and his co-accused freely address one another by their first names while discussing plans to acquire arms and ammunition for the assassination of the prime minister, and forming an anti-fascist front as a prelude to an uprising.

The charge sheets filed by the police and the federal anti-terror body, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), are filled with wild, unproven, and possibly unprovable, assertions. In order to further activities of CPI (Maoist) on an international level, reads the charge against Teltumbde, he used to attend international conferences under the guise of his academic visits at Canada, Pakistan, the USA, France etc. In the said conferences, he used to exchange literature on ideology, training and working strategy of CPI (Maoist) with international communist organizations. The charge sheets and evidence list include bewildering diagrams titled Mobile Connectivity Chart and Email Connectivity Chart, a photocopy of Marx for Beginners, and a book with cover picture of lady wearing white colour sari with written thereon in English words as Accused INDIAN ARMY.

Further evidence comes from an assortment of computers, mobile phones, cameras, sim cards and thumb drives seized from the accused. But the information discovered on these electronic devices is dubious, and not just because of the suspiciously bad writing and transparent scheming on display in the emails allegedly exchanged between Wilson and Comrade Prakash (supposedly the code name for an underground militant).

Alarmed by the suspect nature of the arrests and charges, activists and lawyers working to free the BK 16 got in touch with the human rights section of the American Bar Association. The ABA looked into the judicial records in the case and, in a preliminary report in October 2019, found that they raised serious concerns of procedural irregularities, abuse of process and violations of fundamental human rights. Through the ABA, Wilsons lawyers approached a US-based digital forensics firm, Arsenal Consulting, to dig further into the case.

In July 2020, a hard drive from Mumbai containing cloned copies of Wilsons laptop and thumb drives arrived at Arsenals office in Massachusetts. In February 2021, Arsenal presented its initial findings in the first of a series of reports on the BK 16. We had sent it to them thinking that evidence might have been planted on the devices by the police after the raid, a member of the defence said. But Arsenals findings astonished them. They appeared to show that incriminating documents had been planted on computers belonging to the accused in a clandestine operation dating back years before the alleged role of the BK 16 in the Bhima Koregaon riots.

Studying clones of the laptop and thumb drive seized by the police from Wilson, Arsenal came to the conclusion that hackers had planted malware on Wilsons laptop 22 months before the police showed up on his doorstep. Through a series of emails to Wilson purportedly from the account of Varavara Rao, the poet, the attacker got Wilson to open what he thought was a Dropbox link, but was actually a link to what the Arsenal report identified as a malicious command and control server. Once the malware was installed, the hacker deposited 32 incriminating documents including the letter discussing the assassination of Modi on Wilsons laptop over a period of nearly a year. Throughout, according to Arsenals analysts, the attacker was able to control Wilsons laptop, conceal the fact that incriminating documents had been planted, and spy on Wilson browsing websites, submitting passwords, composing emails, and editing documents.

Before Arsenals reports, other organisations had discovered that associates of the BK 16 were being targeted. An investigation by Citizen Lab Canada found that between February and May 2019, the phones of Teltumbde, who had not been arrested at that point, as well as more than 20 people connected to the BK 16, had been targeted by the military-grade Pegasus spyware sold to governments by the Israeli firm NSO. In September and October that year, a study by a digital division of Amnesty International showed that many of the same people were sent a series of emails containing malware.

In July 2021, the Guardian and a consortium of news organisations revealed that Pegasus spyware had been used by a number of repressive governments around the world to spy on human rights defenders, activists and journalists. Modis government was said to be among those using Pegasus, and it was reportedly found to be targeting opposition politicians, journalists and activists in India. Among potential targets were, it was claimed, eight of the BK 16, including Rona Wilson.

The NIA has dismissed Arsenals findings, saying the company has no locus standi to give opinion, and noting that the Indian governments own forensics lab discovered no malware on Wilsons devices. Mark Spencer, president of Arsenal, said in response: Arsenal digital forensics reports are extremely detailed, thorough and clear they speak for themselves. When the Washington Post contacted three different digital forensics experts in the US with Arsenals first report, all three stated that Arsenals findings were sound. These findings were also supported by an investigation by the Delhi-based magazine Caravan, which had examined a copy of Wilsons hard drive in March 2020 and discovered malware pointing to manipulation of evidence in the case against the BK16.

Arsenal uses a forensic technique that can accurately identify the date documents were uploaded. They were convinced that the planting of malware and incriminating documents on Wilsons devices were not isolated events. They say that the attacker who had infected Wilsons devices with the incriminating documents had also been targeting Wilsons co-accused in the BK 16 for more than four years.

An expert who chose to remain anonymous but who is extremely familiar with Arsenals investigations detailed across three reports, the latest of them released in July 2021 described the attacks as revealing a massive infrastructure involving layers of bogus accounts used by the attackers, many different kinds of malware, different crypters, compiling source code just prior to launching attacks, compromising email accounts to deploy malware in some situations, and using email forgery services.

Taken together, this suggests that behind the alleged Bhima Koregaon conspiracy there is another conspiracy one that originates from entities whose interests coincide entirely with Modi and his Hindu right government.

The cascade of events that started with a peaceful gathering and ended with the round-up of the BK 16 under the anti-terror act reveals a chillingly familiar picture of repression throughout Modis India, one that follows a well established pattern of turning victims into perpetrators by manipulating the legal system.

In January 2020 a new law, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), came into effect. It threatened to discriminate against Muslims and strip them of their rights as Indian nationals. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Delhi not just Muslims, but a cross-section of people who had come together in solidarity. On 23 February, a wave of violence broke out in the city when the protesters were attacked by thugs of the Hindu right and the Delhi police. By the time the riots ended, 53 people had died in the clashes, two-thirds of whom were Muslim.

A report by The Caravan magazine in September 2020 detailed the states shocking complicity in the violence. Like the Dalit commemoration in Bhima Koregaon two years before, the protests had started out as peaceful gatherings. Yet Hindu right leaders portrayed the protesters as aggressive, ignorant Muslims opposing rights for Hindus, instigating violence that eventually turned into large-scale rioting.

After the violence came the conspiracy theories. On 11 March 2020, an organisation calling itself the Group of Intellectuals and Academicians a group with no known intellectual or academic credentials, but with close links to the Hindu right submitted a report to the government suggesting that the violence in Delhi had been the work of that bogeyman of the right, the Urban Naxal-Jihadi network. Soon a series of arrests began, focusing not on the widely documented perpetrators of the violence and those who had goaded them on, but on protesters.

As with the BK16, the instrument used to go after the protesters was the anti-terror law. Although the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) was first passed in 1967 and was updated in 2008 by the Congress government, Modi has seized upon it with vigour to pursue opponents of his Hindu nationalist movement. In the four years after Modi became prime minister, cases brought under the act almost doubled, to 5,102. In July 2019, shortly after Modi was reelected, the act was further revised to allow the government to designate any individual as a terrorist without having to establish their membership or association with any banned organisations.

On 16 May 2020, Asif Iqbal Tanha (25), a member of a group that had been at the forefront of protests against the CAA, was arrested at his flat in Jamia Nagar in south-east Delhi. After he was allowed out on bail, in June, I spoke to him in the apartment of a fellow activist. Sitting in a room with a table holding at least 50 bulky folders copies of the anti-terror charges against protesters Tanha described how he had been accused of buying a sim card with false documents and passing the sim card on to another protester.

Ive never been to the mobile phone shop they accused me of visiting, never met the man they said I bought the sim card from, and never had a sim card other than the one in my phone, which the police had seized more than a month before they decided to arrest me, Tanha told me. He said he had nevertheless been subjected to a bewildering sequence of charges, interrogations, arrests and court appearances. Held overnight at the office of the Delhi police special cell an anti-terror division notorious for torture and extra-judicial executions and then incarcerated in Tihar jail, he had been beaten by special cell officers, he said: Seven or eight people punched and kicked me. Finally, I was left alone but with a bright halogen light on my eyes all night long. When I was moved to Tihar, I was again assaulted by officials as well as by prisoners who accused me of being a jihadi.

Civil rights campaigner Nadeem Khan described the crackdown on anti CAA protests. Nearly 400 people, mostly poor Muslim students, were called in for interrogation and pressured to turn witnesses for the government in their conspiracy case. I myself was called in twice, he said. They wanted to send a message to everyone who had challenged them, and they used the terror act because it allows you to send the harshest of messages, which is that you must remain silent in the face of all oppression.

It was a message that had been made abundantly clear in the case of the BK 16.

After the rioting in Bhima Koregaon, rumours of a leftist conspiracy began with a complaint, filed by a local businessman, alleging that the violence had been instigated by Maoists speaking at the Elgaar Parishad. A similar accusation was made in a report produced by the Forum for Integrated National Security, an obscure thinktank composed of former military officials and headed by Seshadri Chari, an RSS man who is also a member of the BJPs national executive committee. By April 2018, the police investigations had become entirely focused on this so-called conspiracy, via a series of raids and interrogations. By June, the first group of activists, including Rona Wilson, had been arrested.

In November 2019, the BJP lost the state elections in Maharashtra. The new coalition government of Maharashtra, following information that the BK 16 investigation had been mishandled, announced its intention to open an inquiry into the case. The case was rapidly transferred to the NIA by the central government, to which the NIA reports, burying any chance of an inquiry. The NIA is headed by YC Modi (no relation), a police officer who was in charge of investigations into Narendra Modis role in the Gujarat riots when he was chief minister of the state. The panels headed by YC Modi found Modi innocent of any wrongdoing.

With the NIA now handling the Bhima Koregaon investigations, another round of arrests began. Among those detained were Gautam Navlakha (68), a journalist and civil rights activist, and Anand Teltumbde. Hany Babu (55), a Muslim professor at Delhi University who campaigns for the rights of political prisoners, was arrested. Sagar Gorkhe (34), Ramesh Gaichor (37) and Jyoti Jagtap (33), members of a Maharashtra-based Dalit cultural group, were also detained without bail. The conditions of their detention have aroused much concern for their safety, especially with the indifferent response of Modis government to the Covid-19 pandemic, including to the virulent Delta variant, which was first discovered in Maharashtra.

At the height of the first wave of the pandemic, on 8 October 2020, police barged into the one-room home of 83-year-old Stan Swamy in the eastern Indian city of Ranchi and took him into custody. Frail and shaking, unable to drink from a glass because of Parkinsons, Swamy had to appeal to the court after his arrest for a straw and a sipper cup. The request took nearly two months to be approved. Denied bail by a judge who argued that Swamys alleged sickness was outweighed by the collective interest of the community, Swamy was subsequently moved to a church-run hospital in May last year after complaining of Covid-19 symptoms. He remained there, under custody, until he died this July.

Swamys loss was widely mourned. I knew him for over 20 years, Father Joseph Xavier, a Jesuit priest, told me, and to the very end, his idea of freedom was not just a matter of getting bail from the courts but to be among the indigenous people he admired, fought for and worked with all his life.

A further six of the BK 16 have tested positive for Covid-19 in jail. There are 3,000 prisoners in Taloja and not a single doctor, Jenny Rowena, Hany Babus partner, told me. All they have are three ayurvedic specialists, unqualified in western medicine, who prescribe drugs. Conditions are equally bad for the three being held at Byculla womens prison Sudha Bhardwaj, who was born in the US but gave up her American citizenship so that she could work in India as a labour activist and human rights lawyer; Shoma Sen, the literature professor, who is a Dalit and womens rights activist; and Jyoti Jagtap, the Dalit singer and activist, who was arrested by the police at a traffic light while riding to work on a motorcycle. Both groups are subject to the petty cruelties and vindictiveness rife in the prison system, with arbitrary denials of medical care, proper food, sanitary conditions, reading matter, or contact with family members and lawyers.

Shalini Gera, a colleague of Bhardwajs and one of her legal defence team, described to me how Bhardwaj and Sen, as political prisoners, were kept in solitary cells on death row in Pune. They were allowed into a small yard for exercise, but never together. Both Bhardwaj and Sen had been attacked by mentally disturbed inmates on death row, Gera said. After Bhardwaj appealed to the courts to be allowed more than two books a month, for a while the distribution of books to prisoners had been stopped altogether.

Intimidation of those involved in the case extends beyond the prisons. Gera told me of her surprise on learning from Citizen Lab Canada, in October 2019, while she was working on Bhardwajs defence, that her own WhatsApp account had been targeted by Pegasus. Like most activists in India, I had always assumed that most of my emails, texts, phone calls were insecure, like everybody elses. It took some time for it to actually sink in that this was some highly sophisticated surveillance and some VERY expensive software!!! she told me via text message.

Neither the Pegasus findings nor the global outcry after Swamys death has done anything to change the intimidation, surveillance and fear of entrapment experienced by the BK16 or their supporters. A judge who expressed sadness at Swamys death was rebuked by the NIA for affecting the morale of its officers; the judge apologised and withdrew his comments.

All institutions have lost credibility, said Suchitra Vijayan, a New York-based writer and barrister who had been following the protests while travelling in India. The silencing of critical voices is a core component of an authoritarian regime and that is what we can see going on here, accompanied by institutional erosion. Earlier, they never went after lawyers, but they do now. The police in India have a long history of planting evidence, but now it is done with sophisticated technology that has immense resources behind it. The judiciary has become complicit.

Across India, vital democratic norms are being eroded. You should come to Uttar Pradesh and see how many people have been locked up there under sedition charges, the civil rights campaigner Nadeem Khan told me. There is a range of laws, some of them dating back to the colonial era, supplying the government with a massive toolkit of repression. When Kashmir erupted in protests after Modi unilaterally revoked its notionally autonomous status in August 2019, more than 5,000 people were imprisoned, many of them booked under a public order law specific to Kashmir.

The UAPA, however, has become the governments most valuable weapon, allowing it to suspend most fundamental rights while preserving the appearance of legality, and it is increasingly applied everywhere there is opposition to Modi. In Kashmir, there were 255 cases brought under the terror act by the end of 2019, the third-highest number among Indian states. In the north-eastern state of Assam, Akhil Gogoi, a worker and peasant leader opposed to the Hindu right, was arrested on terror charges in December 2019. (Gogoi contested state elections from prison this May and won; he was released this July, the charges against him dismissed.) In August 2020, Siddique Kappan, a Muslim journalist from Kerala, was arrested under the UAPA in Uttar Pradesh while trying to report on the rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman. In the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, Hidme Markam, an indigenous anti-mining activist, was arrested under the terror law this March while attending an International Womens Day event commemorating indigenous women who have been victims of state violence.

The NIA and police are not really concerned with evidence when it comes to the UAPA, Desai told me, but with keeping people behind bars as long as possible. It is common for police to produce redacted witness statements, where details of the witnesses are withheld. Under UAPA, there is no way to discuss evidence during application for bail. That can happen only during the trial, and, as everyone can see, it takes years to get there.

Anti-terror laws that preceded the UAPA, brutal in their own ways, nevertheless contained the provision of compensation in case of false imprisonment; with UAPA, there is none. It is possible to file a civil suit for wrongful imprisonment, Desai said, but such trials can take more than a decade in India. Most victims, like two Muslim men who were released this June for lack of evidence after spending nine years in prison, were too afraid of being imprisoned again on false charges to risk seeking compensation in a civil suit.

If the case of the BK 16 stands out from Indias vast ranks of political prisoners, it is for the vision of India it reveals. The case of the BK 16 is not merely the Hindu rights response to the assertion of Dalit rights around the anniversary at Bhima Koregaon. It is about the Modi government seizing the opportunity to put some very troublesome opponents behind bars, people it had long ago identified as a threat because of their commitment to civil rights and equality.

The arrests had been planned and prepared for by the establishment of a massive project of surveillance, entrapment and incarceration. That project is still alive, still picking its way stealthily through the devices of other people who have chosen to stand up against Modis violently authoritarian version of India.

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The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged with plotting to kill India's prime minister framed? - The Guardian

Former Edinboro professor discusses critical race theory

Lewis A. Brownlee, a former fellow at Edinboro University, discusses the controversy over critical race theory with Times-News reporter Matthew Rink.

Matthew Rink, Erie Times-News

Erie School District Superintendent Brian Polito stood in the church sanctuary-turned-town hall and declared the good news all $90 million of it.

For the first time in history, money is no object, he said.

The task for those gathered at theMay 11 education conference organized by Victory Christian Centers Bishop Dwane Brock: Help the district craft a plan to better address achievement gaps that prevent students of color and their city from realizing their full potential.It marked a momentous turning point, given the dire financial straits from which the district recently emerged and the deep problems it confronts. Racial disparities that game human prospects in Erie register painfully in the districts test scores, attendance, discipline and graduation rates.

More: Building bridges: Erie teachers discuss becoming 'culturally responsive' to Black students

Even with that historic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, Polito pointed to progress:

And yet, he said, the piece in need of attention:Creating a safe climate and stronger relationships, especially for students of color.

It was, as Brock said, a serious conversation crucial for the district, Erie and the nation.

How did we get here?" he asked. "Why are so many African American boys not graduating from high school? Why is the dropout rate as high as it is? Why are there 1 million African American males in prison?

The discussion of uneven educational outcomes in Erie typically homes in on the kids, their race, ethnicity, income and families. The keynote speaker, Jawanza Kunjufu, shiftedattention to the other half of the equation for academic success teachers. High-performing schools, even those with punishing demographics like Eries, he said, look to the quality of teaching to secure outcomes.

Students might face steep disadvantages in the classroom, but so do teachers. Kunjufu noted that 83% of the nations teachers are white females who might know little about the culture, learning styles, interests or needs of Black students.

The Black Lives Matter movement and police murder of George Floyd reawakened many white Americans to the scale of enduring racial injustice in the U.S. The rush on books and documentaries that spotlight history and inequity and the pledges of reform from white people, education and government leadersand corporate America are welcome and overdue.

But Black students? Kunjufu said they are tired of hearing about slavery.Start their history lessons not with the arrival of slave ships in 1619 but centuries earlier when their ancestors were kings and queens, or inventors of medicine, like Imhotep. Give them books to read where they can see themselves.

Past public meetings about Erie schools racial disparities have boiled over in pain and anger. There was none of that on this day. Groups broke off to brainstorm.

Across the nation, those who stand to gain by whitewashing the nations racist past fuel bad faith backlash for political gain. They baselessly cast efforts to reckon withthis nations corrosivelegacy of racial oppression, terror and exclusion as somehow unpatriotic.

What could bea more deeply authentic American enterprise than appraising history and the status quo to discover what impedes liberty and justice and any otherunrealized promises in our founding documents and acting with intention to remove those barriers especially when evidence of the damage they cause is so persistent and glaring?

Fortunately, that is what is happening here as the Erie community reflects on both its glory a proud, gritty history of ingenuity, innovation and resilience and shame a legacy of ethnic tribalism, prejudice,and practices, such as redlining and restrictive deed covenants, that exacta lasting human toll.

More: Erie County Council designates racism a public health crisis

The schooldistrict aimsstrategies honed with deep public input at bridging the racial gap. The city of Erie and Erie County declared racism a public health emergency and the city recently launched the Erie Racial Justice Policy Initiative.Erie police seek to increase diversity and strengthen ties with the minority community. The Erie County Community College, an overdue ladder to opportunity, is set to begin classes. Eries Black Wall Street burgeons with new entrepreneurs.Grassroots activistsserve up diverse slates of candidates. Mentorshipprograms wax, as do new relevant styles of teaching, including at Brock'sEagle's Nest School of Academic Distinction.

More: Erie youth programs focus on character, 'mastering information'

More: With open hearts, Strengthening Police Community Partnerships Council unites Erie

Polito went to the group of educators seeking advice on how to spend some of the pandemic windfall to better meet students' needs. What flowed from the small groups were not material demands but calls to the heart: Forge relationships between teachers and the communities they serve. Invite parents into schools for more than just teacher conferences. Offer GED services and reading instructionso that parents can help their children. Help teachers learn the history they were never taught so they can be more culturally responsive and better serve their students.

Polito took it all in.

We are really down to changing mindsets. Thats what I heard loud and clear today, he said.

It is something we all need to hear. Lets get on with it.

Contact Lisa Thompson lthompson@timesenws.com. Follow her on Twitter @ETNthompson.

More here:

Erie School District aims at bridging the racial divide with education, community relationships - GoErie.com