As many as 273 concerned citizens and organisations have demanded strict action against recent instances of hate speech against Muslims during the recently held Dharma Sansad. They have demanded that the perpetrators of hate be charged under various sections of the IPC including sedition.

Disconcerted by the hate speeches and call for genocide by various right-wing leaders at the event that was held in Haridwar between December 17 and 19, 2021, citizens said such behaviour violates the Indian Constitution. The Constitutional Conduct Group decried such an open proliferation of hate in a letter that was also endorsed by eminent personalities and human rights groups such as Admiral (Retd.) L.Ramdas, Dr. Ganesh Devy, Indian Cultural Forum and Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan.

“Instead of taking immediate and exemplary action against the perpetrators, public authorities have reacted in a tepid manner and are seeking to whitewash these events,” said signatories in a joint letter.

Further, 76 Supreme Court lawyers wrote to the Chief Justice of India, asking him to take suo motu cognisance of the matter and requesting him to “issue directions for taking action against the guilty persons” under various IPC sections penalising hate crime against religious groups as well as the sedition law.

Uttarakhand police is still not taking case under proper sections even as Narsinghanand is now made accused. Since most of the speakers at the Haridwar Dharma Sansad were speaking in innuendos and in vague terms, case under 295A and 153A will not stand in court.

— Dr. N. C. Asthana, IPS (Retd) (@NcAsthana) January 2, 2022

While condemning the Haridwar event, the letter also denounced another event organised by the Hindu Yuva Vahini in Delhi on December 19. Similar to the former, this event also encouraged hate against minority communities.

“We request public authorities in Delhi and Uttarakhand to take action as per law,” they said in the letter showcasing how failing to do so will harm the idea of India as a constitutional democracy with fundamental rights and secularism as part of the basic structure of its Constitution. The letter compared the behaviour at these events with that of officers during Nazi Germany, saying, “The parallels with what happened in Nazi Germany are chilling: to remain silent or inactive in the face of such abominable speeches is to be complicit in crimes against humanity.”

Earlier, various naval staff, air marshalls, senior officers and people’s collectives also wrote an open letter on December 31, 2021 to raise concern about such calls for communal genocide.

Related:

Dharma Sansad an attack on India’s Constitution: Open letter
Is hatemonger Pinky Chaudhary hoping for a political debut?
Hate Speech: The worst words of 2021, we hope do not spill over into 2022
Poisoning people’s minds to ensure polarisation in the coming polls

The post Citizens compare Dharma Sansad to Nazi Germany appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Undeterred by the Allahabad High Court’s sharp reprimand on its politics of intimidation, naming and shaming, today’s reports indicate that now an ‘Ordinance’ will be brought in to legalise the UP state’s unlawful acts! Two days back, on March 12, in the matter of the hoardings put up by the Uttar Pradesh government of the alleged anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protestors demanding compensation for damage to property, the Supreme Court said there was no law to support that the government could put up such hoardings with the names, photographs and addresses of such persons. Instead of then dismissing the matter or endorsing the stay by the Allahabad HC, the SC referred the matter to a larger bench!

What transpired under Hitler and Goebells with the Jews in Germany

Anti-Jewish riots had convulse the German Reich (Kristallnacht) in 1938. In an organised act of nationwide violence, Nazis and collaborators burned synagogues, looted Jewish businesses, and killed dozens of Jewish people.

On November 9-10, 1938, violence against Jews broke out across the Reich. It appeared to be unplanned, set off by Germans’ anger over the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a German embassy official in Paris at the hands of Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager. In fact, German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and other Nazis carefully organized the pogroms. Regional Party leaders issued instructions to their local offices, and during the following two days, Nazis and their collaborators burned over 250 synagogues, trashed and looted over 7,000 Jewish businesses, killed dozens of Jewish people, and looted Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes while police and fire brigades stood by.

As the violence spread, units of the SS and Gestapo arrested 30,000 German Jewish men and transferred most of them from local prisons to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and other concentration camps, where hundreds died from the brutal treatment they endured.

The German government pronounced that “the Jews” themselves were to blame for the pogrom and on November 12, 1938, imposed a punitive fine of one billion Reichsmark (some 400 million US dollars at 1938 rates) on the German Jewish community. The Reich government confiscated all insurance payouts to Jews whose businesses and homes were looted or destroyed, leaving the Jewish owners personally responsible for the cost of all repairs.

In the weeks that followed, the German government promulgated dozens of laws and decrees designed to deprive Jews of their property and of their means of livelihood even as the intensification of government persecution sought to force Jews from public life and out of the country. Indeed, the effects of Kristallnacht spurred mass emigration of Jews from Germany in the months that followed.

The pogroms became known as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” for the shattered glass from store windows that littered the streets.

UP 2020

Fast forward to Uttar Pradesh, India to 2020. In a bizarre twist of law and the Constitution, while appearing for the UP government, Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta actually said that the hoardings bearing the names of 57 people who were alleged rioters were put up after following processes of law and especially put up as a deterrent. He also argued that once a person had been videographed to be indulging in violent activities in public places, he cannot claim protection of right to privacy! This turns on its head established and settled jurisprudence of due process, law of evidence etc.

Appearing for former IPS officer SR Darapuri whose name was published on the hoardings said that the action of the government amounted to an “appeal for lynching”, pointing out that the names of rapists or serious criminals were never published publicly by the government. “We don’t have an anarchy in the state that the government will start doing this,” he said.

Allahabad HC

The Allahabad HC had then taken suo motu cognizance of the matter on March 9 while ordering the government to take them down and calling the government’s action a “shameless and unwarranted interference in privacy.” The HC had also said that the government’s move was in violation of Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

The HC judgement read, “In the present case, the cause is not about personal injury caused to the persons whose personal details are given in the banner but the injury caused to the precious constitutional value and its shameless depiction by the administration. The cause as such is undemocratic functioning of government agencies which are supposed to treat all members of public with respect and courtesy and at all times should behave in manner that upholds constitutional and democratic values.”

In response to the arbitrary and undemocratic actions of UP state government, the Allahabad High Court was compelled to take suo moto cognizance and hold hearings on Sunday, March 8. The Lucknow administration put up banners with photographs and personal details of more than 50 persons who were accused vandalism during the anti-CAA protests of December 2019. The poster is seeking compensation from the accused persons and further to confiscate their property, if they failed to pay compensation.

Noticing injury to the right of privacy, the Chief Justice of this Court directed the Registry to register a petition for writ in public interest. The Commissioner of Police, Lucknow and District Magistrate, Lucknow were called upon to explain the provisions under which the banners were placed on road side that also causes interference in movement of traffic in crowded areas.

While defending the state of UP, Advocate General even challenged the territorial jurisdiction of the court and termed the state’s action to be bona fide. The Court said that this PIL resulting from its suo moto cognizance is justified given that the law is disobeyed and the public is put to suffering and where the precious values of the constitution are subjected to injuries. The Bench, led by the Chief Justice held that this incident amounted to gross negligence on part of public authorities and government and as a constitutional court it can take notice of it on its own.

The Court further held thus, “The Court in such matters is not required to wait necessarily for a person to come before it to ring the bell of justice. The Courts are meant to impart justice and no court can shut its eyes if a public unjust is happening just before it.”

The Court while emphasizing on right to privacy, stated, “In the case in hand, a valid apprehension of causing serious injury to the rights protected under Article 21 of the Constitution of India exists which demands adequate treatment by the Court at its own. The economic status of the persons directly affected in such matters is not material. The prime consideration before the Court is to prevent the assault on fundamental rights, especially the rights protected under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.”

The Court, while establishing its jurisdiction, deemed the “cause” in this case to be, “not about personal injury caused to the persons whose personal details are given in the banner but the injury caused to the precious constitutional value and its shameless depiction by the administration. The cause as such is undemocratic functioning of government agencies which are supposed to treat all members of public with respect and courtesy and at all time should behave in manner that upholds constitutional and democratic values.”

Related Articles:

No law to back your actions: SC to UP govt. defending ‘name and shame’ posters

UP govt caused “unwarranted interference in privacy”, says HC

UP govt caused “unwarranted interference in privacy”, says HC

UP police go door-to-door; puts up hoardings of alleged anti-CAA protesters in town

UP police go door-to-door; puts up hoardings of alleged anti-CAA protesters in town

UP admin sends third recovery notice for damage to property in anti-CAA protest

The post History repeats itself, first time as evil, second time as evil: UP, Nazi Germany appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The other victims of Nazi racism, including Europe’s Sinti and Roma are now routinely named in commemoration, but not all survivors have had equal opportunities to have their story heard. One group of victims who have yet to be publicly memorialised is black Germans.

All those voices need to be heard, not only for the sake of the survivors, but because we need to see how varied the expressions of Nazi racism were if we are to understand the lessons of the Holocaust for today.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, there were understood to have been some thousands of black people living in Germany – they were never counted and estimates vary widely. At the heart of an emerging black community was a group of men from Germany’s own African colonies (which were lost under the peace treaty that ended World War I) and their German wives.

They were networked across Germany and abroad by ties of family and association and some were active in communist and anti-racist organisations. Among the first acts of the Nazi regime was the suppression of black political activism. There were also 600 to 800 children fathered by French colonial soldiers – many, though not all, African – when the French army occupied the Rhineland as part of the peace settlement after 1919. French troops were withdrawn in 1930 and the Rhineland was demilitarised until Hitler stationed German units there in 1936.

Denial of rights and work

The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with “people of German blood”.

A subsequent ruling confirmed that black people (like “gypsies”) were to be regarded as being “of alien blood” and subject to the Nuremberg principles. Very few people of African descent had German citizenship, even if they were born in Germany, but this became irreversible when they were given passports that designated them as “stateless negroes”.

In 1941, black children were officially excluded from public schools, but most of them had suffered racial abuse in their classrooms much earlier. Some were forced out of school and none were permitted to go on to university or professional training. Published interviews and memoirs by both men and women, unpublished testimony and post-war compensation claims testify to these and other shared experiences.

Employment prospects which were already poor before 1933 got worse afterwards. Unable to find regular work, some were drafted for forced labour as “foreign workers” during World War II. Films and stage shows making propaganda for the return of Germany’s African colonies became one of the few sources of income, especially after black people were banned from other kinds of public performance in 1939. (Carl Peters 1941 propaganda movie  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LOTJAwf4ys)

Incarceration

When SS leader Heinrich Himmler undertook a survey of all black people in Germany and occupied Europe in 1942, he was probably contemplating a round-up of some kind. But there was no mass internment.

Research in camp records and survivor testimony has so far thrown up around 20 black Germans who spent time in concentration camps and prisons – and at least one who was a euthanasia victim. The one case we have of a black person being sent to a concentration camp explicitly for being a Mischling (mulatto) – Gert Schramm, interned in Buchenwald aged 15 – comes from 1944.

It was the Nazi fear of “racial pollution” that led to the most common trauma suffered by black Germans: the break-up of families. “Mixed” couples were harassed into separating. When others applied for marriage licences, or when a woman was known to be pregnant or had a baby, the black partner became a target for involuntary sterilisation.

Instead, the process that ended with incarceration usually began with a charge of deviant or antisocial behaviour. Being black made people visible to the police, and it became a reason not to release them once they were in custody.

In this respect, we can see black people as victims not of a peculiarly Nazi racism, but of an intensified version of the kinds of everyday racism that persist today.

Sterilisation: an assault on families

It was the Nazi fear of “racial pollution” that led to the most common trauma suffered by black Germans: the break-up of families. “Mixed” couples were harassed into separating. When others applied for marriage licences, or when a woman was known to be pregnant or had a baby, the black partner became a target for involuntary sterilisation.

In a secret action in 1937, some 400 of the Rhineland children were forcibly sterilised. Other black Germans went into hiding or fled the country to escape sterilisation, while news of friends and relatives who had not escaped intensified the fear that dominated people’s lives.

The black German community was new in 1933; in most families the first generation born in Germany was just coming of age. In that respect it was similar to the communities in France and Britain that were forming around families founded by men from the colonies.

Nazi persecution broke those families and the ties of community. One legacy of that was a long silence about the human face of Germany’s colonial history: the possibility that black and white Germans could share a social and cultural space.

That silence helps to explain Germans’ mixed responses to today’s refugee crisis. The welcome offered by German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and many ordinary Germans has given voice to the liberal humanitarianism that was always present in German society and was reinforced by the lessons of the Holocaust.

The reaction against refugees reveals the other side of the coin: Germans who fear immigration are not alone in Europe. But their anxieties draw on a vision that has remained very powerful in German society since 1945: the idea that however deserving they are, people who are not white cannot be German.

(This article was corrected on January 27 to clarify the situation in the Rhineland between the two world wars and was first published in The Conversation)
 
 

The post What happened to black Germans under the Nazis? appeared first on SabrangIndia.