Hyderabad: In a new development, members of the Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) are screening director Vivek Agnihotri’s movie – The Kashmir Files – at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) campus here on Thursday evening.
Speaking to Siasat.com, ABVP HCU president Namrutha said that The Kashmir Files is a movie that everyone should watch.
When asked if it was a retaliation move against the recent screening of the banned BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi which showcases his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots when he was the state’s chief minister, Namrutha deflected the question.
“It is a good movie. Moreover, students were asking us to screen some movie and since it is Republic Day, an important day in Indian history, we thought why not. TheKashmir Files is an important movie and we think everyone should watch it,” she said.
When asked if the university granted permission for the screening, she declined to comment. Instead, she said, “The movie screening was planned for 6 pm today evening. However, the university is not allowing us to screen and that is why we are protesting.”
Earlier, a video emerged on Twitter where ABVP members are seen conducting a sit-in and shouting slogans to ban BBC.
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New Delhi: Delhi Police has detained over 70 students who were gathered at Jamia Millia Islamia to protest against the detention of four activists over the proposed screening of a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Students’ Federation of India said.
There was no immediate response from the police.
Heavy deployment of police personnel was seen outside the campus where the students were gathered. Personnel from the Rapid Action Force were deployed at the gate.
Pritish Menon, secretary of the Students’ Federation of India’s (SFI) Delhi state committee, said the police detained the protestors who had gathered there.
“We were about to begin the demonstration but they were detained before that. They were taken to the police station,” Menon told PTI.
The Left-backed SFI’s Jamia unit has released a poster informing that the documentary would be screened at the MCRC lawn gate 8 at 6 pm.
Delhi Police on Wednesday said they detained four students after the SFI announced its plan to screen the controversial documentary on the campus.
The university administration said the screening would not be allowed and that they were taking all measures to prevent people and organisations with a “vested interest to destroy the peaceful academic atmosphere of the university”.
The varsity administration also issued a statement, saying no permission had been sought for the screening of the documentary and it would not be allowed.
“It has come to the knowledge of the university administration that some students belonging to a political organisation have circulated a poster about screening of a controversial documentary film on the university campus today,” it said in the statement.
The university had earlier issued a memorandum/circular reiterating that no meeting/gathering of students or screening of any film shall be allowed on the campus without permission from the competent authority.
It said strict disciplinary action shall be taken against organisers in case of any violation.
“The university is taking all possible measures to prevent people/organisations having a vested interest to destroy the peaceful academic atmosphere of the university,” it said.
The SFI’s attempt to screen the documentary at the Jamia campus comes a day after a similar event was organised at Jawaharlal Nehru University during which students claimed that power and Internet were suspended and stones hurled at them.
Kolkata: A 35-year-old man was lynched in West Bengal’s Howrah district by two local youths after he made an attempt to prevent his minor daughter’s molestation.
While the police have arrested one of the two youths, the other is absconding. The two are learnt to be brothers.
According to Howrah (rural) police superintendent, Swati Bhangalia, cases have been registered with charges of murder as well as under various sections of the Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
“The two accused are brothers. We have already arrested one of them. The other accused person is absconding,” Bhangalia informed.
On Sunday evening, the minor girl, a student of Class 10, was returning home from her tuition class. The two accused stopped her and molested her. On being informed, her father rushed to the spot.
The father protested and tried to prevent the accused from their nefarious attempts. On being resisted, the two accused severely assaulted him. He fell down on the ground, bleeding profusely, as the accused persons fled from the scene.
The victim was first taken to a local hospital. As his condition deteriorated, he was shifted to the Uluberia Sub-Divisional Hospital on Monday wjere he brathed his last on Tuesday morning.
The members of the victim’s family lodged a complaint at the local police station.
Meanwhile, the local people have alleged that molestation of young girls has become a regular feature in the area. They also complained that lack of police patrolling in the area has made the miscreants desperate.
Teachers take to Pragati Bhavan as GO 317 troubles continue (Screengrab: Twitter)
Hyderabad: Several government school teachers were detained on Sunday after they protested at Pragathi Bhavan demanding the scrapping of or amendment to government order (GO) 317. The teachers were shifted to various police stations while they were protesting.
In a video which went viral on Twitter, a protestor can be seen bemoaning the plight of teachers.
“Don’t teachers who come under the non-spouse category have husbands and wives? Are we supposed to life long work away from our families? How is this fair? If we take our children with us as well, our children lose the chance to be bought up in their home towns. It is only right that we are sent back to our zilla constituencies,” she remarked.
Teachers have been opposing GO 317 for the past few months, saying that it has caused them to lose their local connections and alienate their families as a result of transfers. According to the demonstrators, the GO has wreaked havoc on married couples when both the husband and wife are educators.
In 2021, the Telangana government issued the GO establishing a zonal system for job allocation, allowing the District Collector and the Head of the Concerned Department to form the allocation committee, make choices regarding jobs, and propose transfers for the District Cadre Posts.
Belkis Terán spoke with her son, Manuel, nearly every day by WhatsApp from her home in Panama City, Panama. She also had names and numbers for some of Manuel’s friends, in case she didn’t hear from the 26-year-old who was protesting “Cop City”, a planned gigantic training facility being built in a wooded area near Atlanta, Georgia.
So by midweek, when she hadn’t received a message from Atlanta since Monday, she began to worry. Thursday around noon, a friend of Manuel’s messaged her with condolences. “I’m so sorry,” they wrote. “For what?” she asked.
Terán wound up discovering that on Wednesday around 9.04am, an as-yet unnamed officer or officers had shot and killed her son. The shooting occurred in an operation involving dozens of officers from Atlanta police, Dekalb county police, Georgia state patrol, the Georgia bureau of investigation and the FBI.
The killing has stunned and shocked not only Manuel’s family and friends, but also the environmental and social justice movement in Georgia and across the United States. Circumstances surrounding the incident are still unclear and there are demands for a thorough investigation into the killing and how it could have happened.
The police apparently found Manuel in a tent in the South River forest south-east of Atlanta, taking part in a protest now in its second year, against plans to build a $90m police and fire department training facility on the land and, separately, a film studio.
Officials say Manuel shot first at a state trooper “without warning” and an officer or officers returned fire, but they have produced no evidence for the claim. The trooper was described as stable and in hospital Thursday.
The shooting is “unprecedented” in the history of US environmental activism, according to experts.
The GBI, which operates under Republican governor Brian Kemp’s orders, has released scant information and on Thursday night told the Guardian no body-cam footage of the shooting exists. At least a half-dozen other protesters who were in the forest at the time have communicated to other activists that one, single series of shots could be heard. They believe the state trooper could have been shot by another officer, or by his own firearm.
Meanwhile, both Terán and local activists are looking into legal action, and Manuel’s mother told the Guardian: “I will go to the US to defend Manuel’s memory … I’m convinced that he was assassinated in cold blood.”
The incident was the latest in a ramping-up of law enforcement raids on the forest in recent months.
Protests had begun in late 2021, after the then Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, announced plans for the training center. The forest had been named in city plans four years earlier as a key part of efforts to maintain Atlanta’s renowned tree canopy as a buffer against global warming, and to create what would have been the metro area’s largest park.
Most of the residents in neighborhoods around the forest are Black and municipal planning has neglected the area for decades. The plans to preserve the forest and make it a historic public amenity were adopted in 2017 as part of Atlanta’s city charter, or constitution. But the Atlanta city council wound up approving the training center anyway, and a movement to “Stop Cop City” began in response.
A series of editorials and news stories lambasting the activists began in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the area’s largest daily paper. At least a dozen articles in the last year-plus failed to mention that Alex Taylor, CEO of the paper’s owner, Cox Enterprises, was also raising funds on behalf of the Atlanta police foundation, the main agency behind the training center.
At some point, Kemp and other civic leaders began referring to the protesters as “terrorists”, in response to acts of vandalism such as burning construction vehicles or spray-painting corporate offices linked to the project.
In an interview with this reporter last fall, Manuel was discussing how some Muscogee (Creek) people interested in protecting the forest as well felt that leaving a burnt vehicle at one of its entrances was not a good idea, and was an alienating presence in nature. The activist seemed understanding of both sides and critical of violence.
“Some of us [forest defenders] are rowdy gringos,” Manuel said. “They’re just against the state. Still, I don’t know how you can connect to anything if that’s your entire political analysis.”
Police raids on the forest intensified until 14 December, when a half-dozen “forest defenders” were arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism” under state law – another unprecedented development in US environmental activism, said Lauren Regan, founder of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, who has a quarter-century’s experience defending environmental protestors charged with federal terrorism sentencing enhancements and others.
Seven more activists were arrested and received the same charges the day Manuel was killed.
Regan and Keith Woodhouse, professor of history at Northwestern University and author of The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism, both said there has never been a case where law enforcement has shot and killed an environmental activist engaged in an attempt to protect a forest from being razed and developed.
“Killings of environmental activists by the state are depressingly common in other countries, like Brazil, Honduras, Nigeria,” said Woodhouse. “But this has never happened in the US.”
Manuel’s older brother, Daniel Esteban Paez, found himself in the middle of this unfortunate historical moment Thursday. “They killed my sibling,” he said on answering the phone. “I’m in a whole new world now.”
Paez, 31, was the only family member to speak extensively with GBI officials, after calling them Thursday in an attempt to get answers about what had happened. No one representing Georgia law enforcement had reached out to Belkis by Thursday afternoon. “I quickly found out, they’re not investigating the death of Manuel – they’re investigating Manuel,” Paez said.
A navy veteran, Paez said the GBI official asked him such questions as “Does Manuel often carry weapons?” and “Has Manuel done protesting in the past?”
The family is Venezuelan in origin, but now lives in the US and Panama, Paez said. Less than 24 hours into discovering the death of his sibling, Paez also said he “had no idea Manuel was so well-regarded and loved by so many”. He was referring to events and messages ranging from an Atlanta candlelight vigil Wednesday night to messages of solidarity being sent on social media from across the US and world.
Belkis Terán, meanwhile, is trying to get an emergency appointment at the US Embassy in Panama to renew her tourist visa, which expired in November. “I’m going to clear Manuel’s name. They killed him … like they tear down trees in the forest – a forest Manuel loved with passion.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
