Human Rights Day once again! Another anniversary, when post World War- II the world gave itself the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- a pathbreaking and much needed Magna Carta. Sadly, for many (particularly for India) this past year has been a bad one: the pandemic Covid-19 has played havoc with lives and livelihoods of millions everywhere.

It has been a particularly bad year for human rights in India: in a systematic but brutal manner, the legitimate rights of people are not only denied but are crushed. The victims as usual are the poor and the marginalised; the Adivasis and the Dalits; women and children; the excluded and other vulnerable workers. To add to it, human rights defenders, and others who take a visible and vocal stand against a regime which day by day prove to be anti-people, anti- Democracy and anti-Constitutional are at the receiving end of a system which reeks of vendetta.

On November 26, (the Constitution Day in India) it was estimated that more than 250 million people in India went on strike protesting against the anti-farmer and anti-labour policies of the Government. On December 9, after a Nation-wide bandh the previous day, millions of farmers were still demanding their legitimate rights!

The farmers are denied their rights: today thousands of them are literally on the warpath, converging in Delhi, ensuring a massive blockade. Their message is clear: it is they who provide the nation with sustenance through their toil and sweat; they no longer wish to be taken for granted; as a group that can just be treated with disdain: as a vote-bank. Their protest is apolitical yet members of the ruling class have called them names like ‘Khalistanis’, terrorists etc. They demand that their legitimate rights are respected: they want an immediate roll back of three bills recently passed by the Government; they are convinced that these bills will have a negative impact on their livelihood and are blatantly designed to help the crony capitalists to profit. In a statement the farmer groups said that in their talks with the government they have asked for the withdrawal of the three laws that they say will leave them at the mercy of large corporations and override safeguards against being cheated. Support for the farmers rights is pouring in from all over the country but also from abroad.

The migrants are denied their rights: the nation witnessed their plight from the night of March 24/25 when the lockdown was first announced. Millions of migrants were stranded overnight without food, cash, and shelter. What the Government did not visualize was that they would have the grit and determination to walk back home. There are the terrible pictures and footage of them walking miles back to their native places. They were subjected to violation of their fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15, 19, and 21 and often to severe police harassment on interstate borders. Many reportedly died as a result of the lockdown, due to exhaustion en route home, starvation, suicides, police excesses, illnesses, and rail and road accidents. There is a Supreme Court order demanding that the plight of these migrants is not only looked into but their suffering is also alleviated; but who cares?

The workers are denied their rights: the working class has suffered tremendously during this pandemic.  Besides, the Government denying them public transportation for almost two months to return home, they were also denied wages when their establishments were closed during the lockdown. The Government seemed to desperately have wanted to keep them back at their ‘workplace’ so that they could be available as soon as the lockdown to work once again at the mercy of their employer; many of them are back for long hours of work but with reduced wages.

To add salt to their wounds, on September 23, Parliament passed three labour code Bills when the opposition was boycotting the monsoon session on the issue of the farm Bills. The three Bills, the Industrial Relations (IR) Code, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code, and the Social Security Code, along with the Code on Wages, 2019, amalgamate 44 labour laws. All these Codes deal with wages, industrial relations, social security, safety, and welfare conditions. There are several features of the Codes which are problematic and go against the rights of workers; besides, the process by which they were pushed through was hardly transparent. For one, all central trade unions were opposed to the amalgamation of the hard-won labour laws and had submitted their objections on several occasions. The Government however, does not relent.

The Adivasis are denied their rights: one experiences this, the way the jal-jungle-jameen is being taken away from them. The areas which they have inhabited for centuries is being for industrialisation, for mining, for so called ‘development’ works and other mega-projects. More than two million of them and other forest-dwellers remain at risk of forced displaced and loss of livelihoods after their claims to stay on in their habitats under the Forest Rights Act were rejected. Many Adivasis from the Kevadia area (which is around India’s latest white elephant – a gross statue in the name of Sardar Patel) were made to leave their homes overnight. PESA is the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 -a law enacted by the Government of India for ensuring self-governance through traditional Gram Sabhas for people living in the Scheduled Areas of India. The sad part is that the Adivasis are also being denied their rights under PESA.

Human rights defenders and NGOs are denied their rights: this Government brooks no dissent. What is happening to this essential dimension of democracy has come in from no less a person than the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet who on 20 October appealed to the Government of India to safeguard the rights of human rights defenders and NGOs, and their ability to carry out their crucial work on behalf of the many groups they represent. Bachelet expressed regret at the tightening of space for human rights NGOs in particular, including by the application of vaguely worded laws that constrain NGOs’ activities and restrict foreign funding. In a strongly worded statement Bachelet said, “India has long had a strong civil society, which has been at the forefront of groundbreaking human rights advocacy within the country and globally, but I am concerned that vaguely defined laws are increasingly being used to stifle these voices.” Adding, “I am concerned that such actions based on the grounds of vaguely defined ‘public interest’ leave this law open to abuse, and that it is indeed actually being used to deter or punish NGOs for human rights reporting and advocacy that the authorities perceive as critical in nature. Constructive criticism is the lifeblood of democracy. Even if the authorities find it uncomfortable, it should never be criminalized or outlawed in this way.”

What is happening to Fr Stan Swamy and the fifteen others arrested (and now languishing in prison) under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for involvement in the Bhima- Koregaon violence, is a case in point. Many others are detained for no reason.

The minorities are denied their rights: it keeps happening at a frightening regularity. Muslims and Christians are at the receiving end of venomous hate speeches, constant denigration and even attacks.  The Babri Masjid – Ram Mandir issue had two Supreme Court verdicts with communal overtones favouring the majoritarian community.  Come December 6, one is reminded of that infamous day in the annals of the country when the Sangh Parivar destroyed the Babri Masjid in 1992- of course no one was declared guilty of this heinous crime! The abrogation of Articles 370 and 35 A in Kashmir has enhanced the communal divide. The ‘Love Jihad’ law of UP is clearly focussed on a Muslim boy marrying a Hindu girl. Besides it is expected to lead to a spate of anti-conversion laws in the country. A real bogey and which certainly violates the fundamental rights of a citizen. The recently concluded Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections had very strong communal messages delivered which has polarised the communities there very sharply. The Government conveniently forgets that India is a secular country.  

Ordinary citizens are denied their rights to a clean, green ‘common home’! Recently, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has given a green signal to more than forty projects without the mandatory environmental clearances. Most of these projects favour their rich crony capitalist friends literally giving them a license to loot, plunder and rape the environment and much more! The felling of thousands of trees and the destruction of a natural sanctuary in Mollem, Goa – has brought thousands of Goans out on the streets. The aim of this project is to build a double track railway line for the shipping of coal for the Corporation of one of the country’s henchmen. Our precious biodiversity and our fragile ecosystems are being destroyed. The Government today just does not care and has clearly gone on a downward spiral: doing everything they can to destroy the environment: The Western Ghats and the Aravalli Hills; the building of a dam in Dibang; the selling of coal mines to private companies and much more

The environment is destroyed with the growth of polluting industries without the necessary environmental safeguards because of callousness and corruption. On 7 May, a gas leak that occurred at the LG Polymers chemical plant near Visakhapatnam killed eleven persons and affecting more than a thousand others. December 3 marked  36 years since the highly toxic chemical methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked from a storage tank in Bhopal’s Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) plant killed around 25,000 people and injured nearly 550,000 people in 1984 .Three and a half decades later, the latter continues to demand justice from India’s judiciary and governance with the help of some civil rights groups; in a joint  press release recently they said, “The year 2020 has been an extremely traumatic period for Bhopal gas victims. The struggle for justice, which gas-victims had been relentlessly waging for the previous 35 years, was itself a testimony to the failure of the Indian State to mete out justice in all these years.” The main culprits have however got away with murder and in connivance with ruling regimes.

The rights of women and children, the rights of Dalits, of the excluded and other vulnerable groups are being denied in a calculated manner. The right to freedom of speech and expression and of religion, the right to dissent – are all being denied by a fascist regime, a spineless judiciary, a pliant executive, a godified media and corrupt vested interest groups.

Human Rights Day 2020 is therefore a call to wake-up from our slumber, shake off the apathy and to rise together: demanding and ensuring- HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL!

Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is a human rights & peace activist/writer.

Other pieces by Fr Cedric Prakash:

Refugees Matter!

‘We’, not ‘us’ and ‘them’

Whither Freedom of Press in India?

The post Our Human Rights are denied! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: https://immortalart.co.za/
 
The brutal murder of Inspector Subodh Kumar and another local youth in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr on December 3 says it all. Inspector Kumar was killed by a right-wing mob in the context of an ‘allegation’ of some ‘illegal cow slaughter’. Nothing has been proved to date. Incidentally, Inspector Kumar was the investigating officer in the Akhlaq lynching case of 2015. This is not a one-off case or an aberration. The connivance of Uttar Pradesh Government and even the Central Government is so obvious! Over the past four years, the human rights situation in India has been steadily deteriorating. In the 2018 Human Development Index, India has reached an all-time low of ranking 130 on a list of 189 countries. As far as democracies go – this is just not acceptable. In almost all other international analysis and studies, which are fairly objective and unbiased, India has touched abysmal depths. All this certainly does no credit to a country, in which the ruling kingpins, at the cost of the taxpayer, continue to travel across the globe, foisting on gullible people, a whole string of lies, myths and illusions!
 
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to be aware of the human rights violations in the country today. If it is not the ruling political dispensation, then it is either their henchmen or their crony capitalist friends, who look with disdain on the rights of others. They continue with impunity and with an air of immunity, knowing fully well, that the wheels of justice often move very slowly in India. So as the world gets its act together for the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(UDHR) on 10 December, it is imperative for the people of India to wake themselves from their unconcerned slumber, shake off their complacency, to stand up(visibly and vocally) for human rights and to ensure that they are in the mainstream.
 
In an in-depth analysis of the human rights situation in India, ‘Human Rights Watch’, in its Annual Report 2018, stated, “Vigilante violence aimed at religious minorities, marginalized communities, and critics of the government—often carried out by groups claiming to support the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)—became an increasing threat in India in 2017.
 
The government failed to promptly or credibly investigate the attacks, while many senior BJP leaders publicly promoted Hindu supremacy and ultra-nationalism, which encouraged further violence. Dissent was labelled anti-national and activists, journalists, and academics were targeted for their views and free expression. Foreign funding regulations were used to target nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) critical of government actions or policies. Lack of accountability for past abuses committed by security forces persisted even as there were new allegations of torture and extrajudicial killings, including in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, and Jammu and Kashmir”.
 
Whereas ‘Amnesty International’ in their Report of 2017/18, echoed similar thoughts, “Religious minority groups, particularly Muslims, faced increasing demonization by hardline Hindu groups, pro-government media and some state officials. Adivasi communities continued to be displaced by industrial projects, and hate crimes against Dalits remained widespread. Authorities were openly critical of human rights defenders and organizations, contributing to a climate of hostility against them. Mob violence intensified, including by vigilante cow protection groups. Press freedom and free speech in universities came under attack. India failed to respect its human rights commitments made before the UN Human Rights Council. The Supreme Court and High Courts delivered several progressive judgments, but some rulings undermined human rights. Impunity for human rights abuses persisted.”
 
‘Amnesty India’ soon became the latest target of the Narendra Modi government’s assault on civil society. On 25 October, the Enforcement Directorate, an agency that looks into financial crimes, raided the organization’s office and froze its bank accounts, effectively stopping its vital human rights work. Swift on the heels of its assault on ‘Greenpeace India’ earlier this month, when the environmental group’s bank accounts were frozen, the Indian government is claiming violations of foreign funding regulations to shut down another prominent NGO. In a statement, Aakar Patel, Amnesty International India’s Executive Director said, “The Enforcement Directorate’s raid on our office today shows how the authorities are now treating human rights organizations like criminal enterprises, using heavy-handed methods that are commonly found in repressive states. Our staff have been harassed and intimidated.”
 
‘Amnesty International’ and ‘Greenpeace’ are not the only human rights organization that is targeted; anyone (individual or group) who dares take on the Government or their foot soldiers are dealt with an iron hand. Minorities and their organizations are just not spared. On 28 August, the Pune police raided the homes of several frontline activists like Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Jesuit Fr. Stan Swamy, Varavara Rao and his family members, Kranti Tekula and Naseem, Anand Teltumbde. Five of them Gonsalves, Ferreira, Navlakha, Rao and Bharadwaj were later arrested. The final verdict on all of them is still not out! Several other human rights defenders, like Teesta Setalvad, continue to be harassed and have false cases foisted on them. The ‘powers’ really feel threatened by those who uphold the rights enshrined in the Constitutions and who expose the violations.
 
On 29- 30 November, hundreds of thousands of farmers from all over India marched into Delhi and to the Parliament, on a two-day protest. Their demands included loan waivers and better prices for their produce. In the last few years, the Government has consistently denied the legitimate rights of those who are the backbone of the Indian economy. The farmers, with red caps and flags, were shouting slogans like “Ayodhya nahi, karzi maaf chahiye” (We don’t need Ayodhya but a debt waiver). Thousands of farmers have committed suicide in different parts of the country. According to Government statistics between March to May 2018, 639 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra, alone. On 2 October, thousands of protesting farmers entering Delhi from Uttar Pradesh were brutally attacked and tear-gassed by the police.
 
The ‘farmers protest’ in Delhi should have hogged the headlines and been prime-time news all over, resulting in national outrage. However, most media channels hardly gave it the coverage it deserved (their focus was ‘Pakistan’). The media in India as the fourth pillar of democracy should have taken up cudgels and highlighted the human rights violations in the country. A sizeable section of the media in India has been throttled and muzzled, becoming pawns in the hands of murderous groups and corrupt corporations. So practically, no one dares speak about the death of CBI Judge BH Loya and why one Judge after the other (one as recently as 28 November) recuses themselves from hearing the petition. It is common knowledge as to who was responsible for the killing of Soharabuddin Shaikh on 26 November 2005 in a ‘fake’ encounter. Justice Loya who was hearing the case, died a very ‘unnatural’ death because he refused to succumb to the terrorist deeds of the mighty in the country.
 
A couple of weeks ago, the renowned Carnatic musician, S. M. Krishna was invited to perform in Delhi by the Airports Authority of India and SPIC MACAY. Krishna transcends the confines of religion and his music is all about communal harmony and peace and respect for all faiths. The organizers of the programme started receiving threating messages from the ‘Sangh Parivar’ calling Krishna an ‘Urban Naxal’ and lambasting that he sang songs about Jesus and Allah. The organisers got cold feet and abruptly called off the performance. However, Delhi’s AAP Government stepped in and on 18 November, Krishna actually performed to a huge and appreciative audience in Delhi. The ‘right to freedom of opinion and expression’ (#19) has been systematically destroyed in the country. Several media persons and other intellectuals, who have stood up for justice and truth, like Gauri Lankesh, Kalaburgi, Dabholkar, Pansare, Bhaumik and others have been killed, many more are intimidated and harassed and even have false cases slapped on them. Films are either banned or not allowed to be screened. Social media activists are closely monitored controlled and some have even been arrested. Those who stand up for truth and speak out on critical issues and human rights violations are immediately dubbed as ‘anti-nationals’ or as ‘urban naxals’. On the other hand, those in power continue foisting myths, lies and fake news on the nation. India is placed a woeful 139 out of 176 countries in the World Press Freedom Index 2018.
 
Freedom of Religion or Belief, guaranteed in the Constitution of India is once again on the backfoot. According to a recent report, there more than 200 attacks on Christians and their houses of worship in the recent months, ending October 2018. On 25 November a Minister of Gujarat ridiculously stated that the late Dr. Verghese Kurien, the founder of ‘Amul’ and regarded as the “Milkman of India”, diverted Amul’s profits to fund conversions of tribals to Christianity. This was immediately rubbished by Kurien’s daughter who maintained that her father was an atheist.
 
The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath has gone on a name-changing spree, renaming important cities, which have some Muslim significance like Allahabad, with a Hindu-sounding one. It will be another ‘Black Day’ in the country on December 6, as the country remembers the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid. The Sanghis have once again made the building of the temple a divisive poll issue. The fundamentalists thrive on ‘hate speech’. The Government does all they can to prevent the citizens from exercising Article 18 of the UDHR which states “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
 
The rights of children and women are violated. Millions of children still labour in hazardous occupations in several parts of the country. Besides being denied their right to education, they are deprived of their childhood. Women despite the platitudes that are dished out, continue to be treated as second-class citizens. The Government of India’s stand on the Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution from Myanmar – besides violating the rights of refugees, goes totally against the basic spirit of compassion and hospitality. The LGBT community is still looked down upon and treated very unjustly in India.
 
The economy is on a downward spiral; demonetisation has had an extremely negative impact particularly on the common person (in a new book the former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramaniam refers to it as “a massive, draconian monetary shock”). The poor and the vulnerable find it impossible to make both ends meet due to the escalation of prices on essential commodities. Those who dissent and take on the Government are harassed no end and even killed. December 3 was yet another anniversary of the 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy. However, does anyone care? Powerful vested interests continue to loot natural resources, destroy the environment and displace thousands of poor people everywhere. There is a growing gap between the rich and poor- that is alarming!
 
The country is being dragged into disaster by the Government and its unholy nexus with a small group of anti-national forces of fundamentalists, fascists, fanatics and other fringe elements! The so-called ‘rulers’ have abdicated their role and responsibility to protect and promote the rights guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution: the right to life and liberty; to dignity and equality; to freedom of speech and expression; to freedom to preach, practise and propagate one’s religion; the right to livelihood, to eat, to dress and to see and to read what one chooses to; and all the other fundamental rights guaranteed to the citizens. The Government no longer cares about the right to information, the right to food, the right to a clean environment and to safe drinking water.
 
A year ago, in preparation for the 70th anniversary of the UDHR, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) launched www.standup4humanrights.org. This highly interactive website has on one of its key pages this quote “No democracy! No Human Rights! Male police beating up women in a peaceful protest in Lucknow UP 23 October 2017.” Not a laudatory comment on the reality of the largest democracy in the world; indeed a big shame and a terrible blot on the country that this incident should figure in the world’s premier human rights body. The plain truth, however, is that this is indicative of the ground reality in India today: human rights of the ordinary citizens are trampled upon as never before!
 
On Human Rights Day we need to remind ourselves, that the sacred document of 1948, the ‘Universal Declaration of Universal Rights’, to which India is also a signatory, is systematically being torn to shreds in our country. Citizens need to awake now and stand up together, to prevent the human rights situation in the country, from deteriorating further.
 
Human rights must be mainstreamed in the country. Those responsible for governing this country must be held accountable and be made to realise that ‘human rights are universal and inalienable; indivisible; interdependent and interrelated. They are universal because everyone is born with and possesses the same rights, regardless of where they live, their gender or race, or their religious, cultural or ethnic background’. The words of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar are more than relevant today, “We must stand on our own feet and fight as best as we can for our rights. So, carry on your agitation and organize your forces. Power and prestige will come to you through struggle”. In the same vein, Rabindranath Tagore challenges us, “into that heaven of freedom my Father, let my country awake!”

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Rohingya women and children being moved on a truck south of Yangon, Myanmar. AAP/EPA/Lynn Bo Bo

1. Australia’s first year on the UN Human Rights Council
Australia took its place on the UN Human Rights Council this year for a three-year term. Australia delivered a strong statement about Myanmar’s atrocities against ethnic Rohingya Muslims, but was criticised for holding refugees and asylum seekers offshore. While Australia supported important country resolutions, it failed to take a leadership role on any key issues.

2. United States’ retreat from Human Rights Council
The US faced international condemnation when it quit the Human Rights Council, calling it a “protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias”. The US has long complained of the council’s perceived bias against Israel. But, by withdrawing, the US decreased its options for confronting and addressing human rights violators. This increases the responsibility of governments like Australia’s to ensure the council addresses the world’s most serious human rights violations.

3. Violence against women
In Australia, while the #MeToo movement has spurred women to come forward with their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse, a number of high-profile cases of alleged sexual harassment by actors and politicians highlighted ongoing barriers to justice for victims. At the same time, the #countingdeadwomen femicide index reports that one woman in Australia is killed every week by an intimate partner.

4. Facebook’s reckoning
Free speech, privacy and electoral integrity came under the microscope in March, when a former employee of Cambridge Analytica blew the whistle on its practice of harvesting data from millions of US Facebook users in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential elections.
Cambridge Analytica was also investigated in the UK for a possible role in the Brexit referendum.

There is also growing criticism of Facebook for not doing enough to stop its use to spread hate speech. For example, in Myanmar it has been used as a tool to incite violence against Rohingya.

5. Rohingya crisis
In August, a UN Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar, which included Australian human rights expert Chris Sidoti, delivered a scathing report detailing crimes against humanity, war crimes, sexual violence and possible genocide by Myanmar’s security forces against the Rohingya.

The UN Human Rights Council, in response, created a mechanism to collect and preserve evidence to aid future prosecutions for atrocity crimes in Myanmar. Australia joined other Western nations in imposing targeted sanctions on military officers named in the UN report. While the Australian government maintains an arms embargo on Myanmar, our defence forces continue to provide training to the Myanmar military.

6. Crackdown against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang
Turkic Muslims in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region have long faced repression. In 2018, Human Rights Watch and others reported an escalation in this repression with the government detaining 1 million people in political re-education camps, with evidence of their torture and mistreatment. Muslims not detained still face pervasive controls on freedom of movement and religion. The Foreign Affairs Department revealed under parliamentary questioning that three Australians were detained in the camps.

7. Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia made international headlines when a prominent journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The case prompted a closer examination of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. The country’s repression, imprisonment and ill-treatment of activists includes the alleged torture of leading women’s rights defenders.

In Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition has committed many violations of international humanitarian law, including apparent war crimes, killing thousands of civilians. Millions of Yemenis are confronting a famine, in part because of restrictions on aid delivery. Yet the USA, UK, France and Australia sell the Saudi government weapons and military equipment that may well contribute to its Yemen campaign.

Millions of Yemenis are facing a famine. Yarya Arhab/AAP/EPA

8. Children off Nauru
Australia’s government appeared to respond to the “Kids Off Nauru” campaign launched by civil society groups, medical professionals and lawyers. December figures show ten refugee children remain on the island, down from 119 children in August.

Mounting political pressure forced the government to remove children who had been transferred there in 2013 and 2014, though many were removed from Nauru only after legal proceedings were started. But the departure of families makes the situation even more desperate for the adults left behind. And those transferred to Australia are told they will not remain permanently, keeping them in limbo.

9. One year since the Uluru statement
Indigenous communities have fought hard throughout 2018 to have the federal government focus on the Uluru Statement from the Heart, after the Turnbull government dismissed it out of hand in 2017.

The statement calls for a constitutionally enshrined “First Nations Voice” in parliament and the establishment of a Makarrata Commission to supervise agreement-making between governments and First Nations, and facilitate truth-telling of First Nations’ histories. These steps were seen as laying the foundation for a treaty with Australia’s First Nations peoples. A 2018 parliamentary committee endorsed the need for a voice in parliament and has called for a process of co-design between Indigenous people and government appointees.

10. LGBTI discrimination
One year on from the breakthrough on marriage equality, the parliamentary year ended with Australia’s politicians unable to find a way to remove legislative exemptions allowing religious schools to discriminate against LGBTI pupils and teachers.

Advocates and the Labor opposition rejected government amendments that sought to stop schools being able to exclude students on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex characteristics, but would also allow them to enforce rules in line with their religious teachings.
 

Louise Chappell, Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute; Professor of Law, UNSW and Elaine Pearson, Adjunct Lecturer in Law, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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90 days down, the build up to an All India University Strike

It has been close to three months since the‪ #Occupy UGC movement started as a spontaneous response of students to UGC's utterly rash decision of discontinuation of the non-NET fellowship scheme.

Due to the sustained protests, the government was compelled to review the decision, pass it on to the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) which has further passed the matter on to a Review Committee. There is still no clear communication from the Government about the proceedings or decisions of the MHRD, the UGC or the Review committee on the status of the non-NET fellowships.

Over two months ago, on November 5, 2015 the HRD Minister, Smriti Irani had given certain reassurances to the protesting students. There has been no clear-cut reassurance however, from the MHRD, backed by any written order (government resolution) indicating clearly that the fellowship(s) would be either enhanced or expanded. When she met the protesting students, Irani had also assured them of fair representation before the Review Committee; far from representation, for over a month after the first protest, students were not even given an appointment with the Ministry. On January 13, 2016 when irate students finally blocked the road in front of the MHRD, they were given an audience with officials in the MHRD, but not with the Minister.

The workings of the Review Committee meant to look into the usefulness of the fellowship are also suspect. Students were first put in touch with the head of the Review committee who informed them of the Committee’s meeting slated for January 16, 2016. Since then however students have been informed that no further date for any meeting has been fixed. This has been the reason, among others of the decision of the protesting students to intensify the protest. The #Occupy UGC group of protesting students has called the attitude of the government towards students' issues ‘irresponsible’ and further criticized the government for lack of accountability in the functioning of the UGC and the MHRD.

The indefinite delay on part of the government in resolving the issue — discontinuation of the non-NET fellowship scheme that benefits students with lack of opportunity and access—is completely unjustified and intolerable. There is a sense of restlessness and impatience at the absence of any written commitment, Order or GR from the MHRD.

Hence the next one month will see spiraling protests:
1)   A nationwide signature campaign will be started on the January 18, 2016 reiterating the demands for an increase in the budgetary allocation to the non-NET fellowship and an expansion of the non-NET scheme to state universities without any exclusionary criteria, for all research scholars. Also, the signature campaign will raise the demand that the overall budgetary allocation for education be increased to 10 per cent in the upcoming budget session, as fund-cuts in education under World Bank and WTO diktats are undermining the education system in the country.

2)   The signature campaign will conclude by the February 15, 2016 and students from all Universities have been urged to send signatures sheets to the JNU Students' Union office till February 17, 2016. The signatures will be submitted to the MHRD, the President of India and the Prime Minister of India. The signature campaign will also run online, to ensure maximum participation.

3)   The #Occupy UGC Campaign has also called for an All-India University Strike on the February 18, 2016 in all Central and State universities, demanding adequate funds for research fellowships. On the day of the strike, the signatures collected thus far will be submitted to the MHRD.

References:
1. To Study or to Not be Able to Study
2.  Where is the news? Peaceful students protest faces police brutality in Delhi
3. Why higher education in India must not bow to the market

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For those of us who rely on our Facebook friends and Twitter accounts on social media for our news, the only information of police brutality on protesting students at the #Occupy UGC protest march to Parliament on December 9, 2015 were the photographs of bleeding students, with swollen and bruised faces and bandaged heads, and the spray of water cannons.

Print and broadcast media, barring a few exceptions, decided the story wasn’t simply worth covering.  Or, if it did, it was only in the context of traffic disruptions, as the Delhi edition of Hindustan Times (HT) decided on Dec 10, 2015!

On the same day, there was another vigorous protest by youth from Manipur but, curiously, HT decided the news wasn’t worth covering, except in a passing mention in a ‘crime’ report on a stabbing attack on one of the organisers of the protest!

Clearly, there was no attempt to join the dots or even find out if there was anything more to the attack.
The Delhi edition of The Times of India on the same day, that is December 10, decided a photo-story on page 4 would suffice, with a picture of the police beating up students and a caption that also provided the police with its exit option: that the students were throwing stones at the police!

Of course, as this video shows, there isn’t a single stone on the very clean streets of Janpath and nor can one spot a single stone thrower!

What one sees, quite clearly, was a very spirited, but peaceful, march that managed to break one cordon quite easily and effortlessly. When the students proceeded ahead and neared the second cordon, a police vehicle and presumably also, police from the first cordon, which allowed themselves to be pushed aside, begin to close in. And beat up the ambushed students from behind! The police particularly targeted women protestors, shoving their lathis between their thighs and groping them even when they were in the three buses they (the police) deployed to take the students to the police station.
 
It was only this this report by Rahul M, an independent journalist, in The Caravan that gives us a comprehensive account of what actually transpired and why the students were agitating. For the media, the student’ protest over privatization of higher education and the shift in the state’s commitment to universities as centres of higher learning to the WTO-mandated ‘commercial’ ventures are not stories worth giving attention to.
 
This government has clearly decided to ignore the anger of students across the country – whether over the opaque appointment procedures that enabled the saffronisation in the FTII, Pune, the protest over the scrapping of, and subsequent changes in eligibility criteria of the non-NET research fellowships, the ban on the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle in IIT-Madras or the curbs on the beef festival in Osmania University, the sexual harassment in Jadavpur University, suicides of dalit students in the IITs, discrimination against dalit students in other premier institutes, And, if the media follows suit, what does one make of its agenda?
 
 (This writer is a senior and independent journalist. She spoke to some of the protestors at the Parliament Street Police station where the students had been detained after the march)

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