Erendro Leichombam is a 40-year-old political activist who reportedly holds a postgraduate degree in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School, and is a former associate of civil rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila. Leichombam has been lodged in the Sajjwa jail since May 13, 2021, along with journalist Kishorechandra Wangkhem for a Facebook post condoling the death of the state Bhartiya Janta Party President S. Tikendra Singh, who succumbed to Covid-19.

The post highlighted that cow urine and cow dung as cures for the Coronavirus, something often advocated by many members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its other right-wing affiliates, is incorrect. The post also said that it is science and common sense that will save people from the pandemic.

According to media sources, Leichombam was picked up by the Police on May 13 from his Imphal residence after a complaint was filed by state BJP general secretary P. Premachanda Meitei and party vice president Usham Deban. His sister Anupama Leichombam told The Wire, “That night the police team, while dragging him out of the house, also hit my mother on her chest because she asked them to allow him to at least change his night clothes.”

Previous legal troubles over Facebook posts

This is not the first time that Leichombam has been embroiled in a case on trumped up charges. In July 2020, as per a Scroll.in report, Manipur Police had filed a sedition case against him for a particular picture he had posted on July 24 about Sanajaoba Leishemba, the newly-elected Rajya Sabha MP and the titular king of the state. In the image, Leishemba, who was elected on a BJP ticket, was seen bowing down with his hands folded in front of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Erendro had captioned the picture “Minai macha”, which roughly translates to “son of a servant”.

He was arrested in May 2018 for posting a video on Facebook that the police said amounted to “promoting enmity between different groups and criminal intimidation”. After spending about 2 weeks in prison, he was released on bail in June by a local court.

Latest case

In the 2021 case related to a Facebook post over Cow dung as a cure for Covid-19, Erendro and journalist Kishorechandra have been detained under the National Security Act. The District Magistrate, Th. Kirankumar, in his official letters to Kishorchandra and Erendro on May 19, listed out a number of reasons as to why he had ordered their detention under NSA.

According to a report in The Wire, DM Kirankumar referred to the 2018 Facebook post of Erendro to buttress his argument in support of the invocation of a draconian law and also to add to his list of “crimes”. The DM’s letter read, “One video clip (that was) uploaded depicting protest by you and team against the existing government by way of throwing eggs on posters of the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, the then VC (vice chancellor) of Manipur University, Shri A P Pandey, Shri N. Biren Singh, honourable chief minister of Manipur, Shri Syamkesho, Registrar of Manipur University and Shri Yugindro, pro-VC of Manipur University which are displayed on a gate wall.”

Further, citing his latest Facebook post, the DM said, “Your very statement brings or attempts to bring hatred or contempt, or incites or attempts to incite disaffection towards the government established law in India, recites or utters obscene words in social media platform, thereby wilfully insulted and outraged the religious feeling and sentiments of the BJP workers and family members on the occasion of demise of president of BJP Manipur Pradesh namely late Professor S. Tikendra Singh…” The DM has also called him a “habitual offender” committing offences that intend to cause fear or alarm to the public, reported The Wire.

The NSA detention order was issued on May 17, the same day when Leichombam got bail from the local court in Imphal. With most preventive detention and anti-terror laws, it is routine for the executive to invoke such statutes after the alleged accused gets bail. This vindictiveness can be traced in many cases, that of Dr. Kafeel Khan, Dalit rights activist Chandrashekhar Azad among many others. This serial crime registration ensures extended periods of detention and amounts to an abuse of due process of the law.

 Leichombam father has moved a habeas corpus petition against his illegal detention before the Supreme Court and the matter is likely to be heard on July 17.

Draconian Preventive Detention Laws

Despite Constitutional protection provided to every person under Articles 20 and 22 of the Constitution, some laws throttle this very protection. Article 22 specifies rights guaranteed to a person if the person is arrested: (Protection Against Arrest and Detention in Certain Cases). 

Interestingly this Constitutional protection –which includes the right to defend, have a lawyer, be produced before a Magistrate within 24 hours, also allows Parliament in certain instances to enact laws that legitimise/legalise preventive detention beyond three months without obtaining the opinion of an advisory Board (Clause 7 of Article 22). It is under this constitutional cover that such laws remain in our statute books. There is also the critical Article 20 (Protection in Right of Commission of Offences especially sub clause (3) which states, “No person shall be deprived of his life or liberty except according to procedure established by law.” It is under these constitutional protections that law enforcement agencies, executive (State Power) is, supposed to at any rate be accountable and transparent especially when it comes to curtailing freedom of an individual.

Figures

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data of 2017, Manipur recorded six detentions under National Security Act (NSA), and by the end of the year, only one person was released from custody by the Advisory Board. The National Security Act mandates the constitution of Advisory Boards where the Authority issuing the detention order must refer all cases to such a Board within three weeks from the date of the detention order.

The government is also responsible for forwarding any representation made by the detenu and the report of the detaining authority to the Board, under the Act. The Advisory Board is required to submit a report to the detaining Authority within seven weeks of the date of detention. The prime consideration before the Advisory Board is the detention of the person and not the period of detention.

Surprisingly, the NCRB data published under ‘Crime in India’, which was also referred to by the Union Government in September last year to answer a question on imposition of NSA, revealed that Manipur had recorded zero cases under the said Act.

But, the same year, journalist Kishorechandra Wangkhem was detained under the NSA in November, for posting critical comments on Facebook against the Chief Minister N Biren Singh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He allegedly posted videos on Facebook calling the Chief Minister a “puppet” of the Prime Minister, and also criticising the move of the state government to celebrate the birth anniversary of Rani Jhansi as totally unnecessary. This suggests an absence of accuracy in data presented before Parliament.

His representation against the detention order was rejected by the District Magistrate on December 7 and the State Government confirmed his detention on December 14 and fixed the detention period for 12 months. On April 8, 2019, the Manipur High Court quashed his detention order on coming to the conclusion that the detaining authority did not provide Wangkhem with the copies of the Facebook posts and compact disc containing the videos uploaded by him, which resulted in depriving him of the opportunity to make an effective representation against the detention order. This case, somehow, did not reach NCRB data, opening a can of worms regarding the veracity of such government statistics.

Source: National Crime Records Bureau (Crime in India 2019) Table 19A.11

In order to get more details about NSA cases, CJP looked through the Manipur High Court website. In the year 2019, the high court disposed of 7 cases related to habeas corpus writ petitions. Out of these 7 cases, around 5 cases involved the National Security Act. Similarly, in the year 2020, the court disposed of 9 cases, out of which at least 3 were under NSA.

Liberty is a highly cherished constitutional value, as interpreted by most courts, but people like Erendro Leichombam remain incarcerated under a claustrophobic legislation without bail for a mere online post. Attention should be paid to certain sections like section 16 of the NSA. Under this provision, no legal action or proceedings can be initiated against the Central Government or a State Government for it is to be assumed that they acted in “good faith”.

Leichombam, who was whisked away to an Imphal jail, has managed to garner support against his detention. The Harvard Graduate Students Union have started a petition on June 5, urging the government to release him.

Related:

Manipur: Journalist, activist post comment on cow dung, charged under NSA
Manipur journalist jailed under NSA for criticizing BJP on social media
A Legal History of NSA: Independent India’s version of the draconian Rowlatt Act
How NSA is being used against Human Rights Defenders

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Actor Prakash Belawadi, is known to essay complex roles with nuance and his theatre and film performances have won him critical acclaim. He has acted in Kannada, Malayalam,  Telugu, Hindi films and web series, and is also a filmmaker and motivational speaker. However, to the shock of his many fans, he has over time also re-positioned himself as a right wing aligned, minority hating man.

A recent Facebook post by the actor who hails  from Karnataka, was one such example. As reported by sections of the media, Belawadi’s post after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s massive defeat in West Bengal, was aimed against Muslims reportedly blaming them as the  ‘others’ who were responsible for the post poll violence in the state. Belawadi also justifies the 2002 Gujarat Pogrom. (GauriLankesh media)

His post, reportedly read:  “On that morning of 27 February 2002, when a 59 pilgrims were burnt alive in a train at Godhra, a liberal friend, with whom I’m no longer friends, called me from Ahmedabad. of my liberal stance – now no longer with him – phoned from Ahmedabad: “That will teach these Sanghis a lesson” he said, or something to that effect. I said the retaliation would be swift and terrible. It was.. Of course, that riot was practically one-sided, since  Muslims made up only 8% of the population in Gujarat. In West Bengal, it’s different: the Muslim population is over 30%. The retaliation won’t be swift.

But make no mistake, it will come, in the fullness of time, a Hindu-Muslim riot. When it does, it will be tragic, brutal and organised. The state government which seems cool about it now, and all the liberals who seem to think the Sanghis deserve it, will have a reckoning.

It’s already too late to stop it. It is sickeningly inevitable.”

Don’t get incited by the IT Cell strategy to draw you into communal tensions – tensions that they are trying to create. Here is an example. pic.twitter.com/UkQCX9yNPk

— Hansal Mehta (@mehtahansal) May 4, 2021

Belawadi, according to the news report, has generated controversies earlier as well. This time his post seems to indirectly support acts against minorities and his “predicting” that a pogrom can take place in Bengal is shocking. According to the news report the Facebook post has been going viral among the Right-wing networks.

Prakash Belawadi, reported the GauriLankeshNews.com is now preparing the theatre performance of Kannada writer SL Bhairappa’s novel  ‘Parva’, and that its one crore budget “was sanctioned by the state BJP govt.” After his communal post went viral, and his bigotry was called out by many, Belawadi escaped the social media storm by just signing off and posted:  “Now that the argument is going ad hominem, I’m going off FB for a few months. Bye.”

However, the question here remains, why has there been no legal action taken against the actor for such a communal and dangerous social media post?

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Assam BJP MLA Shiladitya Dev’s communally-motivated posts have finally been taken down by Facebook as per the implementation of its community standards. But it was only because of a TIME magazine investigation that the social media giant was jolted into action and took down the hate-filled posts.

Facebook had allegdly even turned a deaf ear to repeated complaints by NGO Avaaz that denounced Dev’s anti-Bangladeshi-Muslims comments. According to the TIME report, Avaaz officials had tried to have a meeting with Facebook officials to talk about the hate-speech posts in India including Dev’s posts. However, the company officials had left the meeting midway citing other important work.

This despite the fact that the MLA had been named in several FIRs earlier this month for describing a beloved personality in Assamese literature as an “intellectual jihadi.”

The sequence of events, concretises a theory suggested by journalist and digital rights activist Nikhil Pahwa during a legislative proceeding last week that Facebook does not act upon its community standards unless shamed by the US media. A pitfall of this apathy is the encouragement it gives to those propagating hate.

In Dev’s case, instead of apologising after the TIME story, he posted the following statement on his other Facebook account suggesting zero remorse for his conduct despite being a people’s representative:

In 2019, Avaaz had included the State Legislative member in its ‘Megaphone For Hate’ report as a promoter of communal hate in Assam. Many Assamese people including officials from the BJP condemned Dev’s remarks about Syed Malik and demanded a public apology. Accordingly, he posted a statement on his Facebook account on August 8:

Loosely translated, Dev wrote in the post that someone had ‘created’ a controversy from his comment on Syed Malik and apologised if his statement had hurt someone which was not his intention. 

However, his apology came too late. Over the years, the man became notorious for denigrating Bangladeshi Muslim to “rapists.”

This makes Facebook’s lax attitude towards Dev’s posts even more upsetting. As journalist and author Paranjoy Guha Thakurta pointed out, Facebook is committing a crime in ignoring posts that have been the subject of FIRs.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported how Facebook’s hate-speech policy implementation was hindered by Indian politics.

As per Facebook’s own community standards, “We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability … and also provide certain protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, harmful stereotypes, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation.”

By its own definition, posts such as those made by Dev fall under the category of hate-speech. Yet the bitter truth remains that the company needs to be scrutinised by US media for such content to meet its consequences.

Related:

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Facebook protects hate speech by ‘regime favourites’ of ruling BJP?

The post BJP MLA’s communal Facebook posts finally removed appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image courtesy: millenniumpost.in

Riots that broke over a blasphemous Facebook post criticizing Prophet Muhammad in Bangladesh on Sunday left at least four people dead.

This death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured are stated to be in a critical condition.

Thousands of Muslims took to the streets in the town of Borhanuddin, about 116kms from Dhaka, to protest against the offensive social media post that was allegedly written by a Hindu man.

An investigation by BBC revealed that Biplab Chandra Baidya, a resident of the Bhola Island in Borhanuddin had allegedly made the comment from his Facebook profile criticizing the Prophet and his youngest daughter. In retaliation to this, around 20,000 Muslims demonstrated at a prayer ground to demand the execution of the young Hindu man for inciting religious hatred.

These protests soon took a violent turn, in response to which the police had to resort to firing. The police claimed that the firing that left 4 dead and at least 50 injured, was done in self-defense as the mob had started throwing rocks at the police officials. The injured also included 10 members of the police. Bangladesh’s leading newspapers reported that at least a 100 people had been hurt in the violence.

The police also resorted to the use of tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Border Guards spokesperson Shariful Islam also said that the police had sent a platoon force by helicopter to the spot.

“At least four people were killed and up to 50 people were injured,” police inspector Salahuddin Mia told the AFP news agency.

Lies

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina urged the crowd to calm down and said that the Facebook account of the man charged with inciting religious tension was hacked by a Muslim person and used to “spread lies”. She said that Baidya was blackmailed to pay 20,000 Bangladeshi Taka (USD 235) or blasphemous content would be posted from his Facebook account.

Bhola Island’s Deputy Police Chief Sheikh Sabbir said that the BiplabBaidya had come to the police station on Saturday, claiming that his account was hacked. Though the charges against him haven’t been dropped the police also believe that Baidya’s account was hacked and the contents were spread through Facebook messenger.

On Monday, the Bhola police enforced an indefinite ban on rallies and booked more than 5,000 unidentified persons for their role in the protests.

Recurring Incidents
The current unrest is not the first time the country is witnessing a situation where the minority community is under attack. The same modus operandi of hacking the account of a person from the minority community and posting derogatory material to give rise to communal hate, has been in use before.

In 2016, angry members from the Muslim community attacked Hindu temples in eastern Brahmanbaria over a post that allegedly mocked one of Islam’s holiest sites.

2012 saw Muslim mobs torching Buddhist monasteries, houses and shops in the coastal area of Cox’s Bazaar following an allegedly defamatory post of a Buddhist youth about the Quran.

The protestors have kept a 6 point demand letter that includes the demand for the execution of the Hindu youth and the removal of the local police chief, failing which they will continue with their protest.

While the PM has ensured swift action in the matter, the lack of verdicts delivered in previous cases of violence point out at the process to finding the truth being a difficult one.

Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country with 90% of the 16.80 crore of the population being Muslims.

Related
Why are Indian Muslims Silent Over Atrocities against Hindus in Neighbouring Bangladesh?
Hate Watch: How Hate Trends On Twitter—A Look into Communal Echo Chambers
Decoding Hate: Murder of local ‘Hindutva’ leader, followers spew communal venom
How Social Media, TV Use Fake News: Basirhat Riots
 

The post Communal violence across borders: Riots erupt in Bangladesh over Facebook post about Islam appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In deeper introspection, it turned out to be a tale of human love cutting across religion and other parochialism that could be an eye opener to those who are forcing the Muslims to chant Jai Sri Ram and killing them for being an Indian Muslim.

The 46-year-old Sreedharan’s facebook post is an amazing account of how interfaith bonds survive in India even in these trouble times when Hindus minds were rigged in just concluded General Election of 2019.

A pious Muslim couple Subaida Thennad and Abdul Azeez Haji had three children of their own and they fostered three more, Sreedharan and his two elder sisters Ramani and Leela. The Muslim couple adopted these Hindu kids when their widow mother, Chakki passed away due to sudden illness. Having no one to look after these three Hindu children, Subaida took them under her wings, with Sreedharan being hardly one, and others being less than five years of age.

The three Hindu children were raised by Subaida in her house as practicing Hindus along with her own three practicing Muslim children. In the mornings, when the three Muslim children went to the madrasa, the three Hindu kids were sent temple to learn about their religion.

All the six children lived in the same house under one roof, in the care of the loving Muslim parents.  They all ate together, played together and slept together and woke up together without an feelings of religious divide between them.

“Our foster parents brought us up like their own children and educated us. They got my sisters married off. Though we were taken in at an impressionable age, they never tried to convert us to their religion, said Sreedharan, who works in Oman in the FB post adding, his foster mother to him was like her own mother (Umma).

News of her mother’s death shattered Sreedharan who cried on his personal loss, holding bottles of perfume that he had bought for his beloved mother in Oman. He chose not to rush home in Kerala as he lacked courage to see her dead body. And instead wept and prayed for the departed soul.

The death of Subaida Thennad would have gone unnoticed outside her home in Kalikavu village in Nilambur taluk of Malappuram district in Kerala. It is her foster son, Sreedharan, who had put up a Facebook post that tickled many funnels hearing such tale of communal harmony, where recently one Tabrez Ansari was done to death by a Hindu mob for reasons Ansari being an Indian Muslim.

Another story of Communal harmony has come from Belarikhan village under the Gosaiganj Assembly constituency in Ayodhya district of Uttar Pradesh. Here in a rare gesture some Hindus have donated 1.25 bighas of land to Muslims for using it as their burial ground.

As per records, the land belonged to the Hindus but some Muslims have buried their dead since it was by the side of a graveyard. The land had been a bone of contention between the two communities and there were disputes and tension over this issue for years between them.

However some nine Hindu gentlemen who were shareholders of the land, signed a registered deed for 1.25 bighas of land in favour of the Qabristan Committee, Gosainganj on to bury their hatchet once and for all.

Khabbu Tiwari, the local BJP MLA who took the initiative said; “It’s a gift from the Hindu community through a proper deed and stamp duty, as the tradition of Hindu-Muslim brotherhood in Ayodhya has a long history. This is a small token of love from Hindus to Muslims and I hope this amity will continue,” he added.

In these days of Hindu religious fundamentalism where some radical Hindus are trying to lynch Muslim through mob attacks, such tales of goodness must be highlighted.  These are rare instances of interfaith gestures of communal harmony in the country and reflect how India society is interwoven from below.

These stories will definitely give a tight slap to those relentlessly working overtime to increase the religious divide between the Hindus and Muslims in the country. It’s also a lesson or two those who are indulging in the conspiracy of silence by not opening up their mouths against those perpetrating hate crimes against Muslims in India.

German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) has rightly said; first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com

Courtesy: Counter Current
 

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