Arrest of Activists during Clinton Visit FlayedNithin Belle

22 July 2009MUMBAI –
Citizen groups and activists on Monday slammed Mumbai police for ‘illegally’ detaining three anti-US and anti-Israel activists, coinciding with the visit of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Saturday.
The Citizens’ Initiative for Peace (CIP) said “the grossly undemocratic arrest and detention” of the three activists was apparently linked to the visit of Clinton and was an apparent bid to prevent any possible protests.
Feroze Mithiborwala and Kishor Jagtap of Awami Bharat, an NGO, and Aslam Ghazi of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, were the three activists who were detained at two different police stations for over 20 hours from Friday night.
“They did not file any charges against us,” Jagtap told this correspondent on Monday. “The police detained us illegally, without giving any reasons,” he added. Mithiborwala and Jagtap were detained at an Andheri police station, while Ghazi was detained at a Kurla police station.
“I was told that there was a threat to my life and was asked to cooperate with the police,” said Ghazi. “But if there was a threat to my life, why should I be detained?”
All three suspect that they were detained because the authorities felt they might stage protest demonstrations during Clinton’s two-day visit to the city. Police sources said the three activists were detained as a preventive measure, apparently to ensure that the Clinton visit went off smoothly. All three have in the past organised demonstrations against “US imperialism” and also against Mossad, the Israeli secret service.
A month after the 26/11 terror attacks, Awami Bharat had organised protests in Mumbai, demanding a high-level probe into the deaths of three top police officers in an encounter with terrorists; they claimed the attacks had been staged by some political organisations in India, along with the Mossad and the CIA.
The activists had also staged demonstrations in the past against the Indo-US civil nuclear deal and growing Indo-Israeli security ties.
According to Mithiborwala, the police suspected they would once again organise demonstrations during Clinton’s visit and decided to detain them. “But we had no such plans,” he claimed. Jagtap said there was growing Israeli influence on the state security apparatus here, and cited the recent visit of Mumbai police chief, D. Sivanandan, to Israel, as a pointer to this.
Meanwhile, about 20 eminent lawyers, journalists and human rights and social activists have denounced the ‘undemocratic’ act of Mumbai police in detaining the three. “The right to dissent, and dissent in public, is what sets a ‘democracy’ apart from an authoritarian regime,” they noted. “We never tire of claiming, and not too unjustifiably, that India is the ‘largest democracy’ in the world. It is precisely in this context that the action of the Mumbai Police is extremely unfortunate and utterly condemnable.”
The activists have demanded an apology from the Maharashtra government and action against erring officials.
nithin@khaleejtimes.com