Media professionals issue statement of solidarity amid anti-CAA protests, ask govt to 'refrain from attacking students'; full text

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Media professionals issue statement of solidarity amid anti-CAA protests, ask govt to 'refrain from attacking students'; full text

Media professionals issue statement of solidarity amid anti-CAA protests, ask govt to 'refrain from attacking students'; full text

FP Staff • January 14, 2020, 13:23:09 IST

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As simultaneous protests raged in multiple cities on Thursday with thousands-strong crowds of students, activists and others defying prohibitory orders to voice their dissent against the newly amended citizenship law, 164 media professionals and communicators issued a statement in firm solidarity with students and protesters across the country.

Media professionals issue statement of solidarity amid anti-CAA protests, ask govt to 'refrain from attacking students'; full text

The media professionals and communicators, in their joint statement, called the CAA and NRC “an attack on the very soul of India and the legacy of the freedom movement”. They added that students and others have a right to resist and “rise in defence of constitutional principles”. The statement goes on to “explicitly condemn the violence unleashed on protesters” as well as “the hate and abuse unleashed by troll armies”. The joint statement called upon the government to “immediately refrain from attacking students and other protesters peacefully resisting the CAA and NRC” and to review its decision and work for a strong, pluralistic and secular India.

Here is this full text of the statement:

STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY AND PROTEST

We, the undersigned group of media professionals and communicators, jointly issue this statement in firm solidarity with students and protestors across the country — especially of Jamia Milia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University — who were subjected to police excesses and brutality when they rose to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) and the imminent nation-wide National Register of Citizens, and register our protest at the CAA-NRC move of the Government of India.

We believe that the CAA-NRC violate the fundamental principles of our Constitution, indeed the very foundation of India which chose to be a secular state in 1947, and overturn the basis of citizenship in the country. Religion and ethnicity were consciously discarded as determinants of citizenship or rights of Indians while adopting the Constitution; it expressly disallows discrimination on these — and other — grounds. When the CAA-NRC is in full force, Muslims, several tribal communities and Indians without government-determined documents may not qualify as citizens. Indians would become non-Indians, made refugees in their own nation and forced into an uncertain future.

The CAA-NRC is an attack on the very soul of India, on the legacy of the freedom movement which was multi-religious and multi-cultural (today is the 92nd commemoration of the hanging of Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and Roshan Singh for their anti-British activities), and on the inclusive and pluralistic ethos of post-independence years. The NRC exercise in Assam has revealed the terrible human cost, besides logistical nightmares and expenses, of dividing people by religion or ethnicity and linking citizenship to documents.

Students and others have a right to resist CAA-NRC and rise in defence of Constitutional principles. Those who protested and resisted did so — and continue to do so — on the basis of rights and responsibilities given to us in the Constitution. The right to dissent is an inalienable aspect of our rights as citizens. This is best encouraged among the young in our campuses. Instead, the police in Delhi and Aligarh brutally beat students, fired tear-gas shells, lathi-charged them and shot at them; the police in other places have clamped down on citizens’ right to assemble and protest by invoking Section 144 of the CrPC.

We explicitly condemn the violence unleashed on protestors during the course of these protests as well as the hate-abuse unleashed online by troll armies on social media platforms. We unequivocally condemn the few instances of violence that occurred during the protests which, prima facie, were not traced by the Delhi Police to the protesting students.

We call upon the Government to immediately refrain from attacking students and other protestors peacefully resisting the CAA-NRC across the country. We call upon the Government to desist from invoking Section 144 and allow Indians to exercise their constitutional right of assembly, freedom of expression and dissent. We call upon the Government to review its decision on CAA-NRC, focus on providing education-jobs-healthcare for all, and work for a strong, pluralistic, secular India.

Signed on December 19, 2019: