This post is dated December, 2019 so a little update (June, 2020) since I’ve seen it on my dash a lot lately:
Amidst the raging pandemic and our Government’s botched handling of it, GOI has found the time to book student activists under a draconian “anti terrorism” law called the UAPA.
Here’s a brief article about what exactly the UAPA is here. It was written in October last year so it’s before all of this, but it highlights the ways it could be misused, and why it’s a cause for concern.
Here’s another article about the same. Has proved prophetic, because our government NEVER fails to let us down!
Many student activists have been booked under UAPA, like Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita. Safoora Zargar, who is pregnant, has been jailed despite concerns about COVID-19 (and this being entirely under an unlawful law).
Here’s a quick twitter thread with the names of other activists booked under UAPA.
[Oh btw, in a completely different story, no charges have been made against those suspected of inciting violence at JNU. It’s under investigation, which sounds promising, but uh, we’ve seen what’s happened in the past. There’s not really a lot of hope there.]
While there are scattered protests about this, and some mild coverage from very few news channels, and people have talked about it a little, it’s been lost under all the noise of the pandemic, the migrant crisis, cyclones, locust invasion and other horrors hitting the country right now. Please, please, PLEASE raise awareness about this.
