Civil rights ac­tivists -Jamia Mil­lia Is­lamia Re­search Scholar, Safoora Jar­gar, stu­dent ac­tivist Asif Iqbal Tanha, hu­man rights ac­tivist Nadeem Khan and other ground ac­tivists and lawyers of the As­so­ci­a­tion for Pro­tec­tion of Civil Rights have com­pre­hen­sively chron­i­cled the un­de­mo­c­ra­tic crack­down on a com­mu­nity in the af­ter­math of the CAA ag­i­ta­tion in 2019 in the In­dian state of Ut­tar Pradesh in a re­port en­ti­tled, “The Strug­gle for Equal Cit­i­zen­ship in Ut­tar Pradesh and its Costs: A saga of om­nibus FIRs, Loot, Ar­rests and Ha­rass­ment of Mus­lim mi­nor­ity” which was re­cently re­leased by For­mer In­spec­tor Gen­eral, Ut­tar Pradesh Po­lice S. R. Dara­puri. WSN in­vites you to read this sum­mary ded­i­cated to 23 in­no­cent Mus­lims killed be­tween 19-21 De­cem­ber 2019, as well as the full re­port to un­der­stand the di­men­sion of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in the state of Ut­tar Pradesh which is in the midst of state as­sem­bly elec­tions.

DEMAND­ING THE UNION GOV­ERN­MENT OF IN­DIA TO RE­THINK AND RE­VISIT its stance on the Cit­i­zen­ship Amend­ment Act (CAA), 2019 which vi­o­lates Ar­ti­cles 14 and 21 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia, the As­so­ci­a­tion for Pro­tec­tion of Civil Rights (APCR), ob­served the se­vere harm that this leg­is­la­tion has al­ready done to the cit­i­zenry and the rep­u­ta­tion of the coun­try.

The ac­tivists seek of­fi­cial data re­gard­ing FIRs reg­is­tered, Mus­lims de­tained, re­cov­ery no­tices given and com­pen­sa­tion dis­bursed and have de­manded that “more than 1,00,000 peace­ful anti-CAA pro­test­ers should im­me­di­ately and un­con­di­tion­ally be with­drawn by the state gov­ern­ment.” 

   The APCR re­port has called for “re­spect hu­man rights, cel­e­brate di­ver­sity and pro­mote unity while pro­vid­ing a con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for the peace­ful ex­er­cise of every­one’s rights that takes our coun­try to­wards achiev­ing new mile­stones of progress and pros­per­ity.” 

Seek­ing an ur­gent di­a­logue at the na­tional level, with cit­i­zens, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, le­gal ex­perts and ac­tivists to­wards re­peal of dra­con­ian, un­con­sti­tu­tional, and un­de­mo­c­ra­tic leg­is­la­tion such as Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties Pre­ven­tion Act, (UAPA), AF­SPA, Na­tional Se­cu­rity Act (NSA), sedi­tion that is be­ing grossly mis­used to quell fun­da­men­tal rights of cit­i­zens in the coun­try in­clud­ing the no­to­ri­ous Ut­tar Pradesh Pro­hi­bi­tion of Un­law­ful Re­li­gious Con­ver­sion Or­di­nance, 2020 that has be­come an easy tool to in­car­cer­ate youths in the bo­gey re­li­gious con­ver­sions, APCR says that all of these go against in­ter­na­tional con­ven­tions on hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions that In­dia has rat­i­fied and there­fore must be re­scinded at the ear­li­est.

The anti-CAA dis­senters “be­lieve that a peo­ple’s gov­ern­ment must re­spect the peo­ple’s man­date and re­peal this un­war­ranted and un­con­sti­tu­tional leg­is­la­tion.”

“The ho­n­ourable Supreme court must also pay heed to the hun­dreds of pe­ti­tions in­clud­ing ours (As­so­ci­a­tion for Pro­tec­tion of Civil Rights vs Union of In­dia), that chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tional va­lid­ity of sev­eral pro­vi­sions of the Cit­i­zen­ship Act and prays for re­stric­tions on the na­tion­wide NRC ex­er­cise. The Supreme Court must ex­pe­di­tiously hear these pe­ti­tions and dis­pose of the mat­ter at the ear­li­est.”

The anti-CAA dis­senters “be­lieve that a peo­ple’s gov­ern­ment must re­spect the peo­ple’s man­date and re­peal this un­war­ranted and un­con­sti­tu­tional leg­is­la­tion.”

As the mas­sive protests erupted af­ter the CAA was passed in 2019, “a vi­o­lent crack­down to quell the protests was re­ported in many parts of the coun­try. The heart of this crack­down was the state of Ut­tar Pradesh where the BJP-led gov­ern­ment ini­ti­ated un­prece­dented po­lice bru­tal­ity against the pro­tes­tors re­sult­ing in the death of 23 in­no­cent peo­ple.” The de­tailed re­port gives graphic de­tails of all those killed dur­ing the protests. 

The hu­man rights ad­vo­cacy group cau­tions that to­day in In­dia, “fun­da­men­tal rights of the peo­ple are be­ing un­der­mined by un­fore­seen might of the state ap­pa­ra­tus.”

“The re­port also sheds light on the sheer brazen­ness of the state ma­chin­ery in its vi­o­la­tion of al­most all con­sti­tu­tional man­dates of the state gov­ern­ment while deal­ing with peace­ful dis­sent. No ac­count­abil­ity and penalty on the state gov­ern­ment is fixed even to­day. Af­ter two years of the ghastly re­pres­sion of the civil protest, there has been no at­tempt to ei­ther com­pen­sate the fam­i­lies of the dead or to the sur­vivors who suf­fered the loss of limbs and prop­erty. There has not been any sig­nif­i­cant at­tempt to ini­ti­ate im­par­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tions into po­lice atroc­i­ties against the pro­test­ers. While the ha­rass­ment of the pro­tes­tors con­tin­ues.”

The com­pre­hen­sive re­port con­tains ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing an es­ti­mated 350 First In­for­ma­tion Re­ports (FIRs) reg­is­tered re­gard­ing these protests against around 5000 named in­di­vid­u­als and over 100,000 un­known per­sons which give a free li­cense to the state po­lice to im­pli­cate any per­son in these cases and sub­ject him/​her to un­nec­es­sary ha­rass­ment with­out any fault.”

The com­pre­hen­sive re­port con­tains ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing an es­ti­mated 350 First In­for­ma­tion Re­ports (FIRs) reg­is­tered re­gard­ing these protests against around 5000 named in­di­vid­u­als and over 100,000 un­known per­sons.

The re­port con­cluded that nearly 3,000 peo­ple (dom­i­nantly Mus­lim) were il­le­gally ar­rested with­out any due process of law un­der fab­ri­cated charges. Out of them, many are still lan­guish­ing in the jails even af­ter more than two years since the anti-CAA protests be­gan.”

In De­cem­ber 19 in the year 2019, the state ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tim­i­dated around 3000 peo­ple with ‘cau­tion’ no­tices to stop them from ex­er­cis­ing their fun­da­men­tal right to protest. On the same day, around 3305 peo­ple were de­tained which rose to 5400 within two days and many were later im­pli­cated in the same FIRs as men­tioned above. Over 500 re­cov­ery no­tices for the dam­ages to the pub­lic prop­erty have been ar­bi­trar­ily is­sued, with­out due le­gal process, across ten dis­tricts for dam­ages worth an es­ti­mated Rs.3.55 crores which the Supreme Court re­cently termed as il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tional.”

The As­so­ci­a­tion for De­mo­c­ra­tic Rights re­port de­mands “an ex­pe­dited, fair and trans­par­ent court-mon­i­tored in­quiry into the state re­pres­sion that has re­sulted in ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings, tor­ture, and sev­eral other forms of state vi­o­lence. The pub­lic of­fi­cials and other in­di­vid­u­als found guilty of in­dulging in ex­cesses must be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions as per law. Any en­quiry into the vi­o­lence that took place dur­ing the anti-CAA protests must in­clude in its purview al­le­ga­tions of in­volve­ment by mem­bers of the rul­ing party in fo­ment­ing vi­o­lence.”

The ac­tivists have also urged “the state gov­ern­ment for a com­pre­hen­sive com­pen­sa­tion pack­age for the kith and kin of those who were killed in po­lice ac­tion in­clud­ing those who have suf­fered tem­po­rary or per­ma­nent dis­abil­i­ties due to un­jus­ti­fied po­lice ac­tion.”

If af­ter read­ing this re­port, your con­science is not shaken, noth­ing will.