Echoes of 1989 as foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan Thousands of activists

Echoes of 1989 as foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan Thousands of activists, political leaders, and Indian citizens have taken to social media to pay tributes to jailed tribal rights activist Stan Swamy who died at the age of 84. Many also expressed anger at the way he was jailed during Covid-19 and repeatedly denied bail. The Jesuit priest, who suffered from encephalopathy, was the oldest to be accused of terrorism in India. He was moved to a non-public hospital in May after he contracted Covid in jail. He died of pathology within the western city of Mumbai on Monday. Historian Ramachandra Guha called his death “a case of judicial murder”. Leader of the foremost opposition Congress party Rahul Gandhi tweeted that “he deserved justice and humaneness”: Father Stan Swamy was among 16 renowned activists, academics, and lawyers who were charged under a draconian anti-terror law in what came to be said because of the Bhima Koregaon case. Arrested in October 2020, he spent eight months in a Mumbai prison, awaiting trial. Now, his health deteriorated rapidly to the aim where he couldn’t eat or bathe by himself. Prison authorities were criticized for denying him access to basic amenities quite straw and sipper – a plastic drinking beaker with a spout or straw – which he needed to drink the water due to hand tremors caused by Parkinson’s. In his last bail hearing in May, Swamy had predicted his death. “I would rather suffer, possibly die here very shortly if this were to travel on,” he told the judges. On Tuesday, the Indian Express newspaper said Swamy’s death had “left the most effective possible institutions of India’s justice system diminished”. “In the nearly nine months of his incarceration, till his death, the ailing activist came up – again and again – against the heavy hand of the state, an unresponsive judiciary and a broken prison system,” the newspaper said in an exceedingly very very piece. Chief Minister Hemant Soren of the eastern state of Jharkhand – where Swamy lived and worked – said the federal “should be guilty of absolute apathy and non-provision of timely medical services, resulting in his death”. The accusations against Swamy were in relevancy caste violence at a rally in Bhima Koregaon village in Maharashtra in 2018. India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), which investigates terror crimes, accused Swamy et al. of getting links with Maoist rebels. Swamy had denied the charge, saying he was being targeted for his work associated with the caste and land struggles of tribespeople in Jharkhand. Vrinda Grover, a Supreme Court lawyer, said Swamy’s death was “designed to happen”. Jean Dreze, a Belgian-born Indian development economist who’s known Father Swamy for over a decade, said: “Even if you are a Maoist, which I do not believe for a second, even then you’ll not excuse what’s occurring today”.