Monday, January 6, 2014

political prisoners in India - Release Comrade Hem immediately & unconditionally! - Resist the threat of arrest, intimidation & attempts to silence GN Saibaba - 25 january International day ICSPWI

Release Comrade Hem immediately & unconditionally! Fight against the state’s attempts to silence those who dare to dissent! Resist the tightening noose of fascism in a state of undeclared emergency!


It has exactly been 135 days since Hem’s arrest by the Maharashtra police on the 23rd of August last year. As he languishes behind the bars in Nagpur Central Jail, we still don’t know for how long he would remain incarcerated and tortured based on trumped up charges, fabricated stories and zero evidence. He was booked under the draconian UAPA which provides the police with 6 months to manufacture a “crime” and file a charge-sheet. So, for all practical purposes, Hem has already spent more than four months in prison without the police having stated a single crime that he supposedly committed. The surreptitious way in which Hem was abducted, tortured in police custody and has now has been kept imprisoned without any evidence belie all the hoax claims of the police. It must be remembered that prior to his official arrest, Hem was already in the illegal custody of the police for 2 days in which time he was tortured and forced to confess. After his ‘arrest’ was officially declared, he was sent to 21 days of police custody and then booked under the draconian UAPA and sent to Nagpur Central Jail.  One of the draconian clauses of UAPA provides that no bail petition can be moved against an under trial till he is officially charge sheeted by the police for which the police has a long period of 6 months.  The police merely has to take the local magistrate’s permission at the end of 3 months by explaining why would they would require another 3 months. In practice, this is a mere formality with the police almost always given further time by the local courts. The same happened in Hem’s case as well. Hem was supposed to be produced in court on 26th November at the end of three months where his bail petition was to be moved by his lawyer. But, just a day before the court date, the police, using the provisions of the UAPA, extracted another three months of custody considering they could still not file the charge-sheet. Through this, the police has managed to lengthen the incarceration and harassment of Hem without even a charge sheet for the full term of six months under UAPA. 
This inordinately long period to file the charge-sheet that the draconian UAPA provides for also gives the police and the investigating agencies enough time to manufacture evidence and weave all kinds of cock and bull stories. In the cases of muslim youth booked under POTA or UAPA on false terror cases, we have witnessed repeatedly how the police has used this period to come with all kinds of absurd stories of ‘masterminds’ and ‘terror networks’. They would link someone picked up from one place to another person arrested from another spot, or even some non-existent person and the network would hence be proved. Even this is unfolding in front of our eyes’ in Hem’s case as well. A journalist from Uttarakhand, Prashant Rahi was picked up from Raipur a few days after Hem’s arrest, taken all the way to Gadchirolli and shown officially as arrested from there has also been linked up to Hem’s case. There have been attempts to implicate Prof. G.N. Saibaba of Delhi University as well in the entire story. But if the absurdity of this story against Hem is to believed, the Maoists chose a prominent activist known far and wide, who has been part of various struggles, is known is literary and cultural circles and is active on the internet and the social media to deliver underground messages for them and that too not once, but time and again! I In reality, much like all many other cases where people’s activists have been witch hunted and booked under UAPA with trumped up charges, there has never been any valid ground to obstruct their bail or even final release or acquittal. Jayeeta Das, a former student of Jadavpur University and an activist who had participated in people’s struggles in Singur, Nandigram and recently in Kamduni who was arrested six months back on bogus charges was released on bail two days back. However, these are old tactics of the state to force these activists and others into submission, silence their dissent and intimidate them.
For all that the police and the state agencies might say, we are aware of Hem’s real ‘crime’. As a voice against injustice, oppression and exploitation; against minority witch hunt, caste atrocities, occupation of oppressed nationalities, Hem dreamt of a society that was just, equitable and egalitarian and was striving to actualize it in practice. Similar were the ‘crimes’ of Dalit activist Sudhir Dhawale, adivasi cultural activist Jiten Marandi, Utpal Bhaske, or student activists like Debolina, Abhigyan, Joyeeta & Manuel all of whom have met similar fate. One needn’t be an armed guerrilla in today’s date to meet with all the wrath of the state. In the midst of an undeclared emergency at the time sharpening economic and political crisis for the ruling classes, the state is shedding even the minimum pretence of democracy. Intellectuals, journalists, activists who don’t toe the official state line vis-à-vis questions of ‘development’ and ‘progress’ are liable to be harassed, tortured and arrested. Since Hem’s arrest, there has been a concerted attempt on the part of the state forces to manufacture some or the other story to justify the arrest of GN Saibaba, one of the most vocal voices against Green Hunt. His house was raided and ransacked by a 50 member squad of the joint intelligence, special cell, NIA and police on 12th of September last year without even a search warrant solely to malign and intimidate him. After the raid, the Maharashtra police has repeatedly asked Saibaba to come ‘anywhere outside Delhi’ for enquiry till the NHRC sent a notice to the police reminding them that a physically challenged person need not present himself anywhere outside his residence. Once again, a threat looms large about his arrest by the Maharashtra police as they would come on 7th January supposedly for “interrogation”. The DUTA has given a fervent call to all progressive democratic voices to assemble at GN Saibaba’s residence on 7th January at 10am to resist his possible arrest.
But, contrary to the expectation of the state, such attempts at silencing the voices of activists like Hem only serve to galvanize the voices of protest against the unjust, anti-people and fascist character of the Indian state. Already, in the last four months more than 20,000 letters from all across the world has flooded the office of the Investigating Officer handling his case – all demanding his immediate and unconditional release! Letters have flown in - ranging from 50 to 300 per day - from the Netherlands, parts of Europe, China, Pakistan, USA, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and so on all standing by Hem and advocating his innocence. Progressive and democratic voices across India have condemned such witch hunt of cultural and political activists and have demanded the release of Hem along with all other political prisoners. Even in our campus, students, teachers, cultural, political and democratic right activists have in unison decried such fascist tactics of muffling dissenting voices. Far from ‘intimidating’ us, such attacks on our activists only serves to further cement the determination of DSU to work towards the realization of the people’s aspirations for a new democratic transformation with renewed vigour. 

Resist the threat of arrest, intimidation & attempts to silence a known professor, intellectual, democratic right activist GN Saibaba by the Maharashtra police!



GN Saibaba, a Professor of English in DU, a public intellectual and Joint Secretary of Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), has been in the receiving end of threats, intimidations and media-trials from the state forces for a long time. Once again he is being threatened with arrest by the Maharshtra police who would come to his residence on the 7th of January supposedly to “interrogate” him. Ever since the unjust and arbitrary arrest of Hem Mishra, cultural activist and member of DSU, there has been a concerted attempt on the part of the state forces to manufacture some or the other fabricated story to justify the prolonged incarceration of Hem and arrest  GN Saibaba. We are familiar with such fabricated stories used by the intelligence to wage its “war on terror’ on the Muslims or to silence democratic & revolutionary voices. His house was arbitrarily raided and ransacked by a 50 member squad comprising the joint Intelligence, the notorious NIA and the Delhi Special Cell, Gadchirolli police & Delhi police combine on the 12th of September last year with a ridiculous search warrant of looking for “stolen property”. This evoked widespread protest supported by DUTA and other teachers, students, intellectuals and democratic right activists like Arundhati Roy, Amit Bhaduri, Harish Dhawan, Manoranjan Mohanty, SAR Geelani, AK Ramakrishnan, Saroj Giri, Karen Gabriel, PK Vijayan, DUTA president Nandita Narain, and many others. After the raid, the Maharashtra police called Dr. Saibaba to come ‘anywhere outside Delhi’ for interrogation. This was followed by an intervention by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) sending a notice to the Maharashtra and Delhi police asking them to respond for asking a physically challenged person to present himself in this manner despite the law clearly stating that such a person need not present himself anywhere outside his residence. Despite repeated threats, G.N. Saibaba has been in the forefront in Delhi speaking up against the anti-people designs of the state and particularly against Operation Green Hunt. Hence this consorted attempt to target him. It is the responsibility of every democratic minded person to resist such fascist & McCarthyian means of silencing dissent in the urban avatar of Green Hunt.

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