Civil society from across the country condemns state brutality on farmers
Babushahi Bureau
Chandigarh, February 25, 2024:
More than 100 organizations and individuals, from across the social movement spaces of the country have condemned the ongoing armed violence and brutality by state forces and the Haryana government on unarmed farmers at the Punjab-Haryana border. The attacks on farmers violate their fundamental rights to life, expression, association, and movement. It is also an attack on food security and federalism.
Both the BJP government at the center and the Haryana government have consistently displayed a violent, repressive, and hostile attitude towards the farmers. However, the scale and speed of the violent attempts to stop the farmers from going to Delhi have been unprecedented since February 14th. The extra-judicial killing of a young farmer from Punjab, Shubhkaran Singh, and the extensive use of pellets shows the increasing use of lethal violence on minorities, the disadvantaged, and the poor. This has caused alarm, concern, and outrage in different sections of civil society.
Despite the fact that the farmers come from diverse caste, regional, and religious backgrounds, the movement is being ethnicized in the media. There is widespread denial of access to information about the protest through wrongful internet shutdowns and bans on social media accounts reporting on the movement. Vilification, hate messages, and threats against Sikhs on social media have repeatedly surfaced with no action against the perpetrators. The ethnic and religious characteristics of the movement are being weaponised by the BJP to deflect from agrarian distress and broken promises to farmers, and justify the government’s use of illegal and lethal violence on ordinary citizens.