CAA Protests : Democracy took over by Police forces and Army!

We live in a time where a Chief Minister warns the protesting public that there shall be ‘revenge’ taken on them. We live in a time where peacefully protesting people are attacked by the state machinery, maiming and killing many of the people. 

On 21st December, The Quint published a report online, showing the kind of vandalism the UP police had caused in Khalapur area of Muzaffarnagar, after protests took place near a mosque against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 and NRC. The video clips show police personnel entering the mosque at 1:00 a.m. with their laathis and vandalising the properties of the building even breaking some of the CCTV cameras. Police and paramilitary forces have targeted and vandalised Muslim properties and tortured children. There are many such videos taken by protesters showing the police unleashing violence not only against protestors but against the minority community as a whole, and openly speaking the language of communal mobs. News reports suggest that the Delhi Police has been filming the student protests to run them in face-recognition programs. This is to identify the ‘habitual’ protesters in the crowd. This is a direct attack on the activists and curtails the Right to Privacy of the people involved.

The number of deaths by the armed forces in Assam reached 5 as of 12 December, including 2 minors, while 19 people have been killed by the police in Uttar Pradesh. In UP alone, more than 1110 people have been arrested and more than 5560 people have been put into preventive detention, following the orders of the shameless Chief Minister. 5,558 people have been put into preventive detentions showing symptoms of turning into a police state. Left and democratic activists including AISA activists have been arrested and jailed under draconian laws for peaceful protest. In Delhi, activists like Chandrashekhar ‘Raavan’ have been arrested by the Delhi Police, amidst brutal violence inflicted on the people of Delhi Gate. The injured people, when taken to the hospital, were refused to be given any written record of the cause of their injuries, as AISA activists found out at Lok Nayak Hospital.

Amidst this police brutality, Chief of Army Staff, Bipin Rawat chose to disregard the rulebook of the Armed Forces, openly making political comments targeting young protestors and siding with the ruling government. The General said on 27th December that the leaders of the protests are taking students into ‘inappropriate directions’. These comments and the actions of the police and security forces show how the BJP is trying to subvert democracy, principles of dissent, and manipulate the state machinery in a communal, anti-democratic direction.

This is a real danger for India – built on democracy, secularism and sovereignty. It should be reiterated time and again that the ongoing movement is not an anti-police movement – it is a pro-democracy, pro-Constitution movement. The protesting students and citizens are not in antagonism with the police, but are against the divisive and anti-Constitution policies of the government. And it is the government which refuses to follow democratic means and uses police to lathi charge, tear gas, barricade, shoot and even kill its dissenting citizens. This struggle to save the Constitution is also a struggle to save the integrity of the institutions of the State from being twisted to suit a dictatorship rather than a democracy. We appeal to all the Constitutional institutions to be loyal to and protect the Constitution of India, and not the narrow authoritarian sectarian interests of the RSS-BJP.

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