Recently, the campus of Jamia University became a warzone as police officers allegedly barged into the campus and hostels, shot teargas and detained students (those who were protesting and others).
Even as various accounts of violence by police officers surfaced online, Delhi Police PRO stated that police officers also suffered injuries during the protests. As of today, ten people were arrested, but none were students.
However, this post by Humans of Bombay, showcases a side of the protests that bring to light a shocking reality – one steeped in fear and misuse of power by authority figures.
As per the post, the students of Jamia decided to protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act because they believed that the ‘Citizenship Amendment Bill and the NRC is unconstitutional.’
The protest was initiated by the Jamia Teachers Association, and was then handed over to us to take forward. On the very first day, 49 students, including me, were detained by the Police. I was literally dragged by 5 Policemen into the van, and then kicked inside it. All the other students began demanding our release, so the cops had no choice but to let us go, 5 hours later. Even then, they blackmailed us saying that if the protest didn’t stop, they’d file cases against all of us. But we didn’t let that stop us.
As the students continued to protest, people from ‘neighbouring communities’ got involved, including ‘local leaders’. At this point, the disorganization began. But, as per the post, the media reports of students clashing with the Police were false.
We were protesting from inside the campus, and the local communities were outside our campus walls. We only wanted a peaceful protest, but yesterday, the local communities stopped listening to us, and moved ahead. That’s when the Police attacked them — the cops themselves burned the cars outside and blamed it on us.
A peaceful protest by students was allegedly overtaken by other people and turned violent. And yet, the Police targeted the students and attacked them, at their hostels and campus.
There was no protest happening in the reading room, the toilet, the mess, the canteen. Yet, the Police dragged the students out, who were just trying to study. People have literally jumped out from the first floor windows in order to escape. A friend of mine broke both his hands.
And in a violent frenzy of dragging students, a few people in ‘plain clothes‘ took unfair advantage of the situation and unleashed a brutal attack on the students.
Some people in plain clothes, wearing Police helmets, beating students — they were definitely not the Police, and were very violent. It was as if they didn’t have any shred of humanity left in them.
Despite such obvious instances of brutality against them, the students are not willing to back down. Because, with support from their teacher, their belief resides in one thing and one thing alone.
We’re not going to give up — we’re not just doing this for Muslims, we’re doing this for every single minority community in our country; we’re doing this for India. For 1.3 billion citizens, whose religion is… Indian.”
You can read the complete post here:
All images from the post by Humans of Bombay, unless specified otherwise.