A nationwide call was given by various peasant unions seeking justice for the 6 farmers killed in Mandsaur. They were protesting seeking Minimum Support Price for their produce when police opened fire. Newsclick spoke to protesters in Gurgaon.
Courtesy: Newsclick.in
Jawaharlal Nehru University witnessed an undemocratic Academic Council meeting on 16th June. The people from the administration siding with the Vice Chancellor, heckled teachers and JNUSU representatives. The vice chancellor passed all the agenda items of the AC without allowing any deliberations. This meeting was a continuation of 143rd AC which was adjourned on May 9. It was held to discuss JNU admission policies and M.Phil. -Ph.D. seat cuts.
JNU VC, Prof. Jagadish Kumar imposed his decisions on students and teachers. When the JNU students’ union and JNU teachers’ association representatives pointed out the authoritarianism, the administration tried to manhandle them.
“There was no space for democratic discussion and deliberation. The Vice Chancellor and the administration were passing their agendas one after other without any discussion. And when we objected it, VC’s minions started to manhandle the student representatives,” said Mohit Kumar Pandey, JNUSU president.
“Atul Kumar Johri and Ashwini Mohapatra, held JNUSU Joint Secretary Tabrez Hassan by his collar and heckled him,” Mohit added.
“It is not an isolated event, but a continuation of events occurred in the past,” said Mohit, referring to undemocratic proceedings of the previous AC meetings. He further added that JNUSU has filed a complaint against the teachers- Atul Johari and Ashwini Mohapatra- who had manhandled the representatives during AC meeting.
Satarupa Chakraborty, JNUSU General Secretary said, “the VC did not allow anyone to speak on any agenda item. He did not even allow dissent to be recorded. An agenda items were stated and considered passed. VC gave the mic only to certain members to speak. No deliberations were allowed.”
“Atul Johri is not even a part of the Academic Council. He came as a special invitee of the VC. He was attacking the students when we tried to record the meeting”, Satarupa added
“JNU is mainly a research university, they are trying to impose Engineering and other certificate and diploma courses, including a course on yoga philosophy. Some members said there is no need for an entirely different course on it. If needed it could be incorporated in other courses. The VC agrees to only a certain kind of training for the course. The critical reflection of yoga philosophy would not be a part of it. A certificate course on yoga philosophy was passed. Earlier AC had clearly directed revision in the course as well as raised concerns over introducing such certificate courses. The VC unilaterally announced the course as approved. Similarly, a special center for disaster research, on which an overwhelming majority in AC objected, was passed without any discussion. While, a fundamental course on introduction of MSc Mathematics under School of Physical Sciences was obstructed by VC, along with Amita Singh and the Chairperson of Center for Sanskrit Studies. All these proposals have been passed undemocratically in the meeting. Hindutva agenda is clearly being imposed on the university.”, said Satarupa. She also said that the Nafey committee recommendations, which were accepted by the earlier AC, are being tampered with. The weightage of viva-voce with respect to written was 30-70 in JNU. Prof. Abdul Nafey recommended that seeing the discrimination faced by students from deprived sections, viva voce with respect to written should be made 20-80. She added, "By making the Viva 100 % and introducing 50% blanket eligibility criteria, the reservation policy is being scuttled with. The VC didn't allow any discussion on these issues saying that the matter is subjudice. If the matter is subjudice, how can intake and Viva Voce marks, following UGC Gazette, be a part of the agenda? And how were they unilaterally passed by the VC?"
JNUSU has condemned the authoritarianism of administration and physical attack on students’ representatives in a press release. The release added, “In the coming days, the students will fight back all these anti-student policies being imposed by the VC in authoritarian manner. We will also fight against the physical threats and intimidations. Our political and legal battle against the authoritarian JNU administration continues.”
Courtesy: Newsclick.in
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 14) states, ‘everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution’. In keeping with the letter and spirit of this Right, more than 145 countries of the world have signed the United Nations ‘1951 Refugee Convention’ and the ‘Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees 1967’
Photo by BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images
India is one of the few democracies in the world that is not a signatory to both the Refugee Convention and the Protocol. This is very unfortunate and certainly beyond comprehension. India has a track record of hosting millions of refugees from the neighbouring countries and even from some African ones. Thanks to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her Government in May 1971, India provided refuge to more than ten million Bangla Deshis, in the wake of the civil war there. Today, besides the many Bangla Deshis who have continued to stay on, there are thousands of Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamils, Afghanis, and Rohingyas from Myanmar, Bhutanese from Nepal and even from Sudan, Somalia and other sub- Saharan African countries who have sought refuge in India.
The refugee crisis has gripped the world as never before! Sometime ago, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) pegged the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people around the world as 65.3 million. This means that one in every 113 people on earth has now been driven from their home by war, persecution, human rights violations or climate change (which is erroneously and conveniently referred to as ‘natural disasters’). To put it more graphically each minute about 24 people around the world have to flee their home for no fault of their own. With the escalation of violence in several countries like Yemen, DRC, South Sudan, northeast Nigeria and that more than 20 million people are affected across Africa because of war, drought and hunger- the actual figures of refugees and the displaced might be much more.
More than half of the refugees (53%) today come from just three countries: Syria (4.9m), Afghanistan (2.7m) and Somalia (1.1m). Strangely enough and contrary to public perception the countries which host the most amount of refugees today are Turkey(2.5m), Pakistan(1.6m),Lebanon(1.1m), Iran(979,400), Ethiopia(736,100) and Jordan(664,100).
Sadly xenophobia, jingoism, exclusiveness, racism, discrimination is also on the rise. This prompted the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to recently condemn “aggressive nationalism” in western democracies and called for greater social cohesion saying that, “It is essential to not just address the humanitarian crises, but to build resilience – of populations, of regions and countries – to create the conditions for those humanitarian crises not to be repeated.” Speaking about refugees he says, “I’ve met so many who have lost so much. But they never lose their dreams for their children or their desire to better our world. They ask for little in return-only our support in their time of greatest need.”
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are often conveniently forgotten. A recently published report of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (of the Norwegian Refugee Council) states that, “more than 31 million people- one every second- were uprooted in their home country in 2016 because of conflicts and disasters, and numbers will grow unless the underlying causes like climate change and political turmoil are tackled.”. The added woes of the IDPs that unlike refugees who seek asylum in other countries, they are unable to claim any international protection since they remain in their own country.
IDPs in India could easily run into a mind-boggling figure. Communal and caste violence in several parts of the country, the construction of mega-projects by powerful vested interests and even by Government, perennial famines, floods and other ‘natural’ disasters have displaced hundreds of thousands all over the country(the oustees of the Narmada Dam area and those displaced by the Gujarat Carnage of 2002 are recent examples). Most of those affected are the poor and vulnerable like the adivasis, dalits and minorities. The official response to the plight of IDPs is criminally pathetic.
The military- industrial complex profits greatly from wars and conflicts all over. India’s budgetary outlay for arms and ammunition puts into shade the much needed expenditure for the social sector. The global refugee crisis is bound to continue as long as countries like the US continue to produce arms and ammunition and sell them to countries like Saudi Arabia. Recently US and Saudi Arabia signed an arms deal of $110 billion. Saudi Arabia is well known for its human rights violations and for fomenting terrorism (the US conveniently forgets that those mainly behind the 9/11 attacks were the Saudis).Sadly, there is no international outrage condemning such arms deal.
Minority communities are most affected by war and persecution. According to a recent UN report, Myanmar’s forces and the majority Buddhist community have committed mass killings and gang rapes against the Rohingya community. Although they have lived in Myanmar for more than two centuries, this Muslim minority is not among those officially recognised by the authorities there. Stateless, rejected and persecuted, in recent months tens of thousands of them have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, where they are crammed into shanty settlements and live terrible lives.
World Refugee Day, will once again be observed on June 20th ‘to honour the courage, strength and determination of women, men and children who are forced to flee their homeland under threat of persecution, conflict and violence’. It may continue to be yet another cosmetic observance unless the world wakes up urgently to the endemic causes, which create forcible displacements and ultimately refugees.
Many refugees and displaced are also subject to torture, both in India and in other other countries. Article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT)states, ‘No state party shall expel, return (refouler) or extradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.’ June 26th is observed as the UN ‘International Day in Support of Victims of Torture’. India has still not ratified the UNCAT.
In June 2016, the UNHCR launched a global campaign #WithRefugees demanding that world leaders and governments work together and do much more for refugees. There is certainly much more to be done! A wake up call for all particularly for India to ratify the Refugee Convention and Protocol and UNCAT! We must stand with the refugees and the displaced now!
* (Fr Cedric Prakash sj is a human rights activist and is currently based in Lebanon and engaged with the Jesuit Refugee Service(JRS) in the Middle East on advocacy and communications.
Contact cedricprakash@gmail.com )
Only in seven of India’s 36 states/union territories did 90% or more women in the 15-24 age group use hygienic protection during menstruation, according to the latest national health data.
Not even 50% women used clean methods of dealing with menstrual hygiene in eight states/union territories. The mean for these eight states was 43.5%, with Bihar the worst at 31%, according to the National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS), released in 2015-16.
In seven states — Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, NCT Delhi, Kerala, Mizoram, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu — 92% of the female population, on average, used hygienic methods of menstrual protection. Lakshadweep topped the list at 97.1%.
Menstruation is still a taboo subject in India. Even now, women are considered “impure” during their period, subjected to social, religious and cultural restrictions, according to a study on menstrual health management. It was conducted by a collective of organisations dealing with water, sanitation and hygiene.
These practices have resulted in a culture of silence around the subject of period hygiene — 70% of Indian mothers consider menstruation “dirty”, as per the findings of the study.
This shame around menstruation also forces girls to opt out of school once they reach puberty, impeding the growth of female literacy in India. In rural India, 23% of girls have listed menstruation as the chief reason for dropping out of school. As many as 28% of them said they do not go to school during their period because they lack clean and affordable protection, according to figures collated by Rutgers, an organisation for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Urban India fares better, rural Madhya Pradesh the worst
In the urban areas of 11 states or union territories, more than 90% of women used hygienic period protection, according to NFHS-4.
Bihar (55.6%), Dadra Nagar Haveli (66.4%), Madhya Pradesh (65.4%), Tripura (56.5%) and Uttar Pradesh (68.6%) are exceptions to the rule that more than 70% urban women in India maintain period hygiene.
The numbers are poor for villages, with ten states/union territories reporting an average of 39%. Madhya Pradesh fares the worst at 26.4%.
Only two union territories — Lakshadweep (98.4%) and Puducherry (97.8%) – showed a high number of rural women observing clean period protection.
Only 55% girls believe that periods are normal
There is very little awareness about the facts of menstruation among young girls in India. Only 55% of them consider it a natural and normal physical process, according to the study conducted jointly by Water Aid, PATH, Zariya, Development Solutions and Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.
Only 48% girls were aware of menstruation before they attained puberty, and no more than 23% knew that the uterus is the source of the bleeding, according to research conducted by the menstrual hygiene management study.
Teachers and health workers are not common sources of information for young girls on the subject of menstruation; mothers are, for 54%, according to the collective study.
Sanitary pads are too expensive, unavailable
The Rutgers study revealed that for the absorption of the menstrual blood, 89% women used cloth, 2% used cotton wool, 7% sanitary pads and 2% ash. Among those who used cloth, 60% changed it only once a day. These practices could explain why 14% girls reported menstrual infections.
Sanitary pads are either too expensive or unavailable for women in many parts of India.
(Rao is an intern with IndiaSpend.)
Courtesy: India Spend
Ravish Kumar Speaks about the emergence of fake news and the consequences it is having on Indian Society at present.
Video Courtesy: BoltaHindustan
After a decade-long legal battle, the Supreme Court in April 2017 ruled that permanent jobs be given to 2,700 contract workers of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India’s richest municipal corporation.
These contract workers, who sweep streets, collect garbage and clean sewers, were not entitled to health and other benefits, vacation, rest days and pension. They will now get back pay of two years and employee benefits, such as weekly offs and medical leave without a pay cut.
Milind Ranade, a textile engineer who is a general secretary of the Mumbai’s sanitation workers’ union–he got involved when he once saw workers eating lunch perched atop a pile of garbage, found they were on contract and not entitled to a lunch room–told IndiaSpend that the contract system was exploited by municipal corporations nationwide, encouraging exploitation, perpetuating poor working conditions and apathy towards the workers, who are usually Dalits.
Indeed, on July 12, 2017, 6,000 contract sweepers in Bangalore struck work on similar grounds. Paid Rs 5,000 a month with no sign of a promised hike, toilets and safety gear, they said they were treated like bonded labour, with passbooks and ATM cards confiscated by contractors, who are supposed to pay salaries directly into bank accounts. The government later promised that these workers would get regular jobs.
The Mumbai union, called Kachra Vahatuk Shramik Sangh (KVSS), first challenged the contract status of sanitation workers in a Mumbai industrial tribunal in 2007, but the BMC challenged the order in Bombay High Court. In December 2016, the High Court dismissed the BMC’s case. The BMC appealed to the Supreme Court and lost again.
Ranade was (and is) a member of a communist outfit called the Lal Nishan Party (Red Flag Party), when he and other colleagues formed the KVSS in 1997. Its first demand they had was that the BMC provide drinking water to contract workers. These workers did not have changing rooms or baths, which they particularly need because working with the city’s trash and filth makes them smell. Since then the union has succeeded in getting workers raincoats, boots, provident fund, medical leave, minimum wage (Rs 13,936 per month; 536 per day for Zone A which includes Mumbai, according to April 2017 notification), drinking-water taps and wash areas.
Ranade quit his job at a pharmaceutical company, Extrusion Processes, to launch the KVSS and works on a voluntary basis. His wife, Ashwini Ranade, is also a member of Lal Nishan Party but she is also a lecturer at Acharya Marathe College, supporting the family while Ranade continues his battles with the government.
Ranade spoke to IndiaSpend in trade union’s office at Shramik, Dadar, which serves as a party office for many trade unions in Mumbai.
How many workers are on temporary contracts in the BMC? What does the April 2017 Supreme Court verdict that 2,700 such workers get regular jobs mean for them?
So, there are 28,000 permanent workers in the BMC and 6,500 contractual workers. The Kachra Vahatuk Shramik Sangh is the biggest union among contractual workers with more than 5,000 contractual workers as members. There are four cases filed by us pending (in courts) for their permanency–to become permanent workers. First, we have to approach the labour commissioner, then the industrial tribunal, then the High Court and then the Supreme Court. Apart from this case of 2,700 workers which is settled, there is another case of 580 contractual workers pending in industrial tribunal, and two other cases of 1,300 workers and 1,100 workers. The first case which was filed in 1997 was settled in 2003 and 1,204 workers were made permanent. We went for an out-of-court settlement, even though we could have won it because it took 20 years, and at the end of the 20 years, the BMC would have to pay Rs 200 crore as compensation to the workers. So, for us, it was a matter of time; for the BMC, it was a matter of money. With the sanction of the government of Maharashtra, there was an out-of-court settlement. So, of 6,500 (workers on contract), 5,000 now have permanent jobs through the various cases.
When did the BMC first use the contract system to hire sanitation workers? In what way does the contract system deny benefits?
BMC started hiring contract workers in the 1980s. They were meant to lift debris. The word ‘debris’ was used to camouflage the fact that they were lifting garbage, since debris is not the responsibility of the corporation, but lifting refuse and garbage is. So, these particular workers were removing debris from where? The dustbin. No one throws debris in a dustbin. They (BMC) defined debris as cow-dung, hospital waste, domestic waste, hotel waste, silt–essentially everything.
Under the garb of debris, these workers were doing BMC’s work. This was in the 1980s.
Then, after we won the case in 1999, the BMC stopped all the contract work, then they restarted it in 2004. This time they called it the Hyderabad pattern.
What is the Hyderabad pattern? Each contractor employs less than 20 workers. If you have 20 workers, all the labour laws are applicable. So, to get out the purview of the labour laws, they kept it at 18 workers.
In BMC, there are now more than 350 contractors, every employer using less than 20 workers. Now under the present Narendra Modi government, the limit has been raised to 50 in the name of ease of business. Anywhere in India, the safai (sanitation) work is done only by dalits, no other castes are willing to do this work. They will prefer to be unemployed than do this work.
In some places, you find Brahmins are permanent workers, but they are not actually doing it (sanitation work). The salary is Rs 21,000, he is paying a dalit to do the work at Rs 5,000, while is on paper the employee is marked ‘present’ and gets Rs 15,000, while Rs 1,000 is given for officials as dasturi (commision) to keep quiet.
So, all over India, workers who are working for sanitation department are dalits, that is there is 100% reservation, and no one has challenged this. No one asks why there aren’t Marathas, Thakurs or Kayasths (upper castes) working in this field.
Each state now uses contract workers for statutory (fulfilling core functions of the corporation) and perennial work. This means only dalits are becoming contract workers, but instead of getting permanent employment with some social security, they work with no job security or social security, without any protection of law… they are out of the purview of the law, so you do not need to give them provident fund, gratuity or anything else.
Everywhere in India, these dalit safai workers are getting less than minimum wage: Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra. This is called the Hyderabad pattern because it (the system) was invented in Hyderabad. Under this pattern, workers are called volunteers, a salary is termed honorarium. With every contractor, there are 80 workers, the contract is for seven months, so that you don’t complete 280 days. If you complete 280 days, you have some grounds to ask for permanency. So, you are kept from every benefit.
How many contract workers are there across India?
No one knows, but the numbers are in thousands. In Mumbai, there are 6,500, there are another 9,000 working in dattak vasti (slum areas where community organisations do the sanitation work), where they are not even counted as contract workers. In Thane, there are 2,000, in Navi Mumbai there are 6,000, and it (Navi Mumbai) is the only corporation without a single permanent safai worker. In Nashik there are 500, in Pune there are 500. In Kolhapur, 500 contract workers were paid 50% less than the minimum wage, and we had to fight for two years in the (Bombay) High Court and then they got arrears of minimum wage, which was Rs 3.7 crore, or Rs 1 lakh per worker.
In Thane, workers are not paid arrears of minimum wages for 24 months, so per worker the arrears are Rs 120,000. In Nagpur and Amravati also, they (contract workers) are not paid (minimum wages).
The worst thing is that for every set of workers, you have to go to the court; you have to start with the industrial tribunal and work your way up to the higher courts..
How do companies with contract workers manipulate the system so these workers are kept from regular jobs?
When we formed the union, all (contract) workers in Mumbai were paid Rs 2,000 less than minimum wage until 2005. So, 6,500 multiplied by Rs 2,000 is Rs 1.3 crore per month. This amount was siphoned by municipal officers and contractors. This is how the nexus was created. These are dalit workers, they have migrated from drought-prone areas, they live in jhuggi-jhopdis (slums), which are demolished every now and then, so they have no ration cards. These are most vulnerable workers and being dalits, they are the easiest to exploit. They don’t get social security–no boots, gloves or masks. Hundreds of workers have died on duty, but no one knows.
The BMC’s own study in 2015 revealed that 1,386 sanitation workers died in six years due to poor working conditions.
These figures doesn’t include contract workers, only permanent workers. Their life expectancy is shortened, many die between 40 and 55 years of age and among those who do the full length service, very few reach 70.
Have the lives of sanitation workers been affected in any way after the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan?
Yes, they are required to do more work. No one bothers whether they (sanitation workers) get full payment or not. If their provident fund is deposited in their accounts or if they get ESIS (Employee State Insurance Scheme). No one comes if there is an accident. Who is keeping Bharat swacch (clean)? The Prime Minister, who holds the broom for five minutes? Who is keeping India clean? Chief Ministers, MPs, film stars or cricketers?
It is the worker, and the contract worker works even more than the permanent worker. They work for eight hours. Working eight hours in an office and the hours spent sweeping are different. Imagine, where will they eat? Where will they wash? Are they not humans? Should they not get water to wash? Where will they sit?
All the laws, the guidelines, the acts are on the paper, but if you want to find out the reality, go to the labour commissioner’s office and ask, how many safai workers are there in Maharashtra and how many get minimum wage.
(Yadavar is principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)
Courtesy: India Spend
On Friday, 24 years after the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993, a special court convicted Abu Salem, Mustafa Dossa, Firoz Khan, Tahir Merchant and Riyaz Siddiqui for the serial explosions that killed 257 people. Another accused man, Abdul Qayyum, was acquitted of all charges.
Immediately after the blasts, the state government set up a special court under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act to hold trials in the blast cases. So far, the TADA court has convicted 106 people for their involvement in carrying out the bomb blasts. Yakub Memon, one of the convicts, was hanged in July 2015.
The 12 blasts rippled down the spine of Mumbai on the afternoon of March 12, 1993. Orchestrated by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, the blasts were an act of revenge against the communal riots that swept through Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. At least 900 people were killed in the riots and more than 2,000 were injured – the majority of them Muslims.
However, the state government’s response to the communal riots was significantly different.
After the riots of December 1992 and January 1993, the state government set up a Commission of Inquiry under Justice BN Srikrishna. The Commission spent more than five years investigating the events of the riots, and published a comprehensive report that proved damning for the Shiv Sena, the nativist party that was elected to the Maharashtra government in 1995.
The Srikrishna Commission report indicted Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, other party leaders as well as the party mouthpiece Saamna for playing a major role in inciting communal passions and triggering Hindu attacks on Muslims during the riots. It described Thakeray’s role as that of a “veteran General” who “commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims”.
But even after conducting exhaustive investigations – much like a court of law – the Srikrishna Commission did not have the power convict any of the alleged perpetrators named in its report. Under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, an inquiry cannot be considered a court of law. Unsurprisingly, state governments appoint such commissions whenever they have no will to actually bring justice to crimes.
By constituting it as a commission of inquiry, the state government restricted the Commission’s powers to merely making recommendations for prosecution. Its recommendations were then taken up by the police for further investigation.
The recommendations in the Srikrishna Commission report were rejected outright by the Shiv Sena government, and over the years, successive state governments too did not act upon the recommendations.
So far, only three people have been convicted for their involvement in the riots, all on relatively minor charges like hate speech and inciting violence. No one has been convicted for the serious charges of murder, rape or arson, not even the many assailants named in the Commission’s report based on witness testimonies. In the majority of cases, the police simply chose to close the investigations.
Over the years, several of the police personnel indicted in the report for their complicity in the violence went on to get promotions.
One of the three convicts was former Shiv Sena MP Madhukar Sarpotdar, who was found guilty in 2008 of carrying weapons during the riots. Sarpotdar died in 2010 without ever serving his jail sentence, and today, he has a park in suburban Mumbai named after him.
Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, whose recorded speeches from 1992 openly incited violence against Muslims, was arrested briefly, but the court eventually dismissed the charges against him by saying the statute of limitations had expired. When Thackeray died in 2012, he was given a state funeral.
This article was first published on Scroll.in
Taking a cue from the ongoing mass campaign Black Lives Matter, South Asian Minorities Lawyers Association has decided to launch a campaign for three most oppressed communities of India i.e. Dalit, Minority and Tribals and named it as Dalit Minority Tribal Lives Matter.
Representation Image
As a precursor to a formal nationwide campaign, a get together of like-minded people from these three communities is being organized to chalk out the future course of action for the movement on July 4 at the Indian Law Institute, New Delhi.
South Asian Minorities Lawyers Association (SAMLA) was formed with the aim of building an organisation of legal practitioners and other individuals having interest in espousing the cause of weaker sections of the society through legal and constitutional means. Though SAMLA is predominantly a lawyer’s association, it also strives to work for the upliftment of minorities in South Asia and aims at bringing social justice to people irrespective of caste, creed, religion, or sex.
SAMLA, which works in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, believes that protection of minority rights is necessary to attain peace and prosperity in the region.
SAMLA President and renowned lawyer Mehmood Parcha talked with TwoCircles.net about various aspects of the campaign. He said, “Not only we have took inspiration from the Black Lives Matter, but we are associated with them. Our campaign will run alongside of Black Lives Matter. Several leaders from Black Lives Matter will come to India to take part in our campaign and our representative will go US to take part in their campaign.
“With globalisation, all economic and social powers took advantage but marginal sections were left. That marginal section which include Dalits, Tribals and minorities has seen its oppression and importance in recent times so the uprising is happening,” Parcha added.
Talking about the perspective and future of the campaign, advocate Parcha said, “Our campaign is going to become larger than all and there are various reasons behind it. First that we have larger population than US or other countries, second there are severe cases of oppression and lastly the uprising is evident in recent times. More importantly, Black Lives Matter shall join hands with us.”
Courtesy: Two Circles
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