The protests against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) have entered the second month. Groups of women, people from Muslim communities, students from well known universities have all joined these protests at some point or the other and the protests are relentless. In the initial stages of these protests BJP ruled states saw unprecedented police brutality. Every day news would be rife with reports of a new method of police excess. One of these reports was of Mangaluru where not only did the police fired bullets at protestors but also entered Highland Hospital and hit people with batons and tried to bash down doors of intensive care unit. The police even resorted to tear gas shelling.
The protest was taking place at some distance from the hospital and the protestors injured in the police firing were brought to Highland Hospital with bullet injuries. The police arrived at the hospital sometime later, and then went on their rampage. All of this was captured on the hospital’s CCTV cameras, and played widely across news media.
The police had done the same in a confined space of a library of Aligarh Muslim University which was also widely condemned. The use of tear gas in a hospital, where no one was protesting is something that India has not witnessed, not on civilians at least.
The Mangaluru Police seems to have taken inspiration from Hong Kong police who resorted to a similar kind of brutality on its protestors, about a month before the Mangaluru incident. At least the HK police used tear gas outside the hospital where protestors had gathered and the smoke had entered the hospital premises. Mangaluru went a step further and did shelling within the premises.
This incident is only one of the many such shocking incidents of police action where students have been attacked, activists and locals beaten up and detained, medical care denied to those injured, many a times ambulances were also attacked and medical professionals were injured in this fight of masses versus the State.
A source at Highland Hospital confirmed that the police used tear gas in the hospital four times and that patients had to be shifted to the ICU (Intensive care Unit) because of breathing difficulty. The source said on the condition of anonymity, “The way the police handled the situation, it was unacceptable”. The management of the hospital even sent a written complaint to the police to investigate the matter and to conduct proper investigation in this regard. A month has passed since the terrifying incident and yet no inquiry has begun neither has any final report been filed by the police.
The support of the medical community has been commendable in all this mayhem. The Hippocratic oath asks that doctors treat all people to the best of their abilities. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights demands that, even in conflict, people have access to a good standard of health care.
Doctors in Delhi have even gone to site of protests to give medical aid to injured protestors and have demanded the police to allow them to treat the injured detainees. All this is being done while the medical professionals, the support staff put themselves in danger as there have been incidents of ambulances being attacked and vandalised thus injuring the medical staff.
Ambulances have also not been let to pass by rallies in support of the contentious and discriminative law. One such incident took place when BJP’s West Bengal State President, Dilip Ghosh, who is also notorious for making controversial statements and hate speech, refused to let an ambulance on duty to pass through the rally that he was addressing. By contrast, when ambulances wanted to get through thousands of protestors in Delhi, Karnataka, and Kerala, the crowds parted swiftly to let the vehicles through.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has also condemned police action in its press statements. These statements say that the violence on doctors and nurses is a “barometer of anarchy”, that hospitals should remain “safe zones”, and that the Indian Government has “no right to deny anyone their right of access” to health care.
The lethal combination of CAA-NRC seeks to ultimately disenfranchise the poor and marginalised and also the Muslim community. Those who are not able to prove their citizenship will be put in detention camps, as is being predicted seeing Assam as a case study. Assam has 6 detention centres where about 970 people have been detained and live a miserable life.
The processes of National Register of Citizens and detention have unsurprisingly led to enormous mental trauma resulting in suicides and deaths. A member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) team who visited those in detention spoke of the “environment of intense, permanent sadness…. It was as though everyone was in mourning”.
The British Medical Journal’s (BMJ) Indian community has appealed the government to “repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 and stop the nationwide implementation of the National Population Register and National Register of Citizens immediately”; and has also called upon the nation-wide medical fraternity to be alert to the danger of a public health emergency as a consequence of this (NRC) exercise.
Related:
Sikh-Muslim friendships started with Guru Nanak Dev Ji
After Kerala, Punjab Assembly passes resolution against CAA
Women gather at Agripada in thousands; show way against CAA-NPR-NRC
CAA-NPR-NRC protests cut across all religious and communal divides
Kolkata Muslim resident threatened with Hindutva rant at home