While India was readying to sign a G7 statement committing to “guarding the freedom, independence and diversity of civil society actors” and “protecting the freedom of expression and opinion online and offline”, a whole new paradigm of criminality was being created by the Delhi police in a basement of a magistrate's home in the northern Delhi suburb of Burari.
The police were interrogating Mohammed Zubair who had flown in from Bangalore earlier that day. One of India's best-known fact-checkers had been summoned for a 2020 case in which the police couldn't find any cause for arrest, but within hours, a new case was filed against him. Zubair was finally under arrest.
The Delhi Police arrested Zubair for a 2018 tweet where he shared a still from a 1983 film by a director who was once Hindi cinema's best-known ‘comedy king'. In the First Information Report, the sub-inspector on duty openly said the four-year-old tweet was brought to his notice that same day by an anonymous Twitter user with one follower.
A new playbook for arrests that violates procedures set down in our criminal code had been formalised.
View this post on InstagramMultiple criminal cases and death threats have failed to deter Zubair from calling out hate and laying bare its networks. Recently, he brought unwanted global attention to the Bharatiya Janata Party after he highlighted derogatory remarks about Prophet Mohammed made by its spokesperson Nupur Sharma. Eventually, Hindi movie humour was weaponised to arrest Zubair.
The day before, prominent activist Teesta Setalvad, best known for fighting for justice for the victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots, was arrested after a similarly questionable sequence of events. “Working with human rights organisations, her group Citizen for Justice and Peace has secured 120 convictions in 68 cases involving nine major riot incidents—a record for convictions for any religious riot in India,” the BBC said about Setalvad, quoting a ‘top lawyer' in 2015.
Gujarat | After taking activist Teesta Setalvad into custody, in connection with a case on her NGO, the Gujarat ATS team is en route to Ahmedabad from Mumbai. Visuals from Vapi. pic.twitter.com/d6gkTJsQ6T
Whether it's in Kashmir where editor Fahad Shah, essentially in jail for reporting both sides of the story, and arrested for the third time hours after a judge ruled, “In a barbaric society you can hardly ask for bail, in a civilised society you can hardly refuse it” or in Uttar Pradesh, where at least 138 cases of journalists being arrested, assaulted or charged/booked have been reported since Yogi Adityanath became chief minister in 2017, the space for speaking up is shrinking rapidly. Picture the Millennium Falcon escaping from the second Death Star explosion in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
These days writers, activists and human rights defenders who continue to speak truth to power despite the above actions—clearly targeted at chilling free speech—often discuss who among them will be the next to be persecuted. When his wife points out he's gained weight, one writer I know tells her he will lose the extra kilos when he goes to jail.
Meanwhile, hate speech against Indian Muslims by political party office bearers, saffron-clad godmen and elected representatives continues unchecked (see here and here).
But that's not all the bad news. As a respected annual civil society monitor pointed out in December: “9 out of 10 people live in countries where civic freedoms are severely restricted”.“Nearly two billion people live in countries with the worst rating, ‘closed', where the authorities are routinely allowed to imprison, injure and kill people for attempting to exercise their fundamental freedoms. China, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and 21 other countries fall under this category—Nicaragua and Belarus joined their ranks this year,” the 2021 report by CIVICUS Monitor said.
Countries were classified on a declining spectrum: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed. Even Europe, the continent with the greatest number of ‘open' countries, keeps deteriorating every year, the research found.
In the ‘latest updates' section of the website, the ticker shows that what we are experiencing in India is only a reflection of what is unfolding across the world:
Bolivia: Intimidation of environmental defenders and journalists.
Canada: Use of emergency powers to disperse protests under scrutiny.
Panama: 19 people detained in protests.
Tunisia: Violations of civic freedoms continue.
Fiji: Media restrictions and vilifications of activists intensify climate of fear.
Although only one country improved its rating in 2021 (Mongolia, in case you're wondering), CIVICUS said it was important to acknowledge the resilience of civil society: “Governments have not been successful in silencing alternative voices or limiting their activism. Despite increasing restrictions, civil society has found ways to continue to speak up and claim their rights.”
Of the countries that signed the G7 ‘Resilient Democracies Statement', most were classified in the above report as ‘open', ‘narrowed' or ‘obstructed'. Only one country was in the more severe ‘repressed' category: India.
Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.
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