By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi: The All India Catholic Union [AICU] on February 18 joined opposition parties and activists to decry what it says was the “hounding” of young climate change and environment activists in the country.
“Civil society is vital for healthy nation,” asserts the 101-year-old association of Catholic lay people in a statement from its president Lancy D’Souza and secretary general A Chinnappan.
The statement was released in the context of the February 14 arrest of Disha Ravi, a 22-year-old Bengaluru-based activist, by the Delhi police, alleging her involvement in a Google document that the young international climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted in support of farmer protests in India. The police also want to arrest Shantanu Muluk from Beed, Maharashtra, and lawyer Nikita Jacob from Mumbai.
Jacob is a volunteer with Extinction Rebellion India, a branch of a global climate advocacy youth group founded in the United Kingdom in 2018. The Bombay High Court has granted Muluk 10-day transit bail, while Jacob has been granted protection from arrest for the next three weeks.
On February 16, the Delhi police asserted that they arrested Ravi in accordance with the law.
They have now sought details from video conferencing platform Zoom about a January 11 meeting. According to the police, that meeting was attended by Ravi, Jacob, Muluk and a member of alleged pro-Khalistani outfit Poetic Justice Foundation.
Ravi was on February 14 sent to five days in police custody after being arrested for allegedly creating a toolkit in connection with the ongoing farmers’ strike in the country.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma asked the Delhi police to hand over to Ravi a copy of the First Information Report and other documents related to her arrest and permitted her access to warm clothes, masks, books and other materials.
Meanwhile opposition parties and activists have questioned the manner in which Ravi was arrested and brought to the national capital. The Delhi Commission for Women has sent a notice to the city police seeking a report by February 19 on issues like why she was allegedly not produced before a court for transit remand and not provided a lawyer of her choice.
The Catholic Union, says it is “deeply distressed and extremely worried at the hounding” of these young activists, the statement says.
“What makes it more critical is that this form of persecution comes from both State and non-state actors, and at a time when the nation is struggling to come out of the medical and economic catastrophe of Covid, natural calamities in the Himalayan region, and the crisis in agriculture as reflected in the strike by the country’s farmers,” says the AICU press release issued by its spokesperson John Dayal.
The Catholic union, a representative body of ordinary Catholic communities across India, says it considers itself a part of civil society in the country and believes that “a vibrant civil society is vital to the overall health of the nation, its plural heritage and its constitutional guarantees.”
The union stresses the importance of civil society in defending and projecting freedom of faith, expression and fraternity. “Any action by governments, and others, that erodes any of these freedoms seriously impacts every group, especially religious minorities,” says D’Cunha, AICU national president.
The statement quotes the AICU national spokesman as asserting that young people bear the burden of maintaining religious harmony, fostering national movements on education, health, environment protection and economic rejuvenation at the grassroots.
“Their drive, patriotism and concern for the future was unparalleled. Their knowledge of mass media, social media and advocacy had made them engines of change internationally. In India, irrespective of ideologies, the young were in the lead, giving courage to the rest,” Dayal points out.
The statement claims that the Catholic union has been a votary of democratic norms and secularism in the national political and social discourse. “It has stood for the nights not just of farmers or of the Christian community, but of the working class, fishermen, landless labor, Tribals and Dalits professing all faiths.
The union has advocated peaceful measures to resolve conflicts and encouraged people’s involvement against legislation and regulations that could adversely impact the common people and the environment whatever be the governments and ideologies in power.