BENGALURU: The arrest of 21-year-old Bengaluru-based climate activist Disha Ravi by Delhi Police has sparked off a countrywide outburst by members of the Coalition for Environmental Justice in India. Disha had allegedly shared an advocacy toolkit, inviting solidarity with farmers’ protests outside Delhi, which was shared by noted teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg. They have demanded Disha’s immediate release.
At least 79 members of the group, including Leo F Saldanha, Environment Support Group in Bengaluru, have endorsed their staunch opposition to Disha’s arrest and her being shifted to Delhi, saying, “It is is highly disturbing, both for what appears to be its illegal nature and for the over-reaction of the State that it represents.” In a letter put out on Sunday, they said, “Young environmental activists, that the country should be proud of, are the latest victims of the Centre’s continuing efforts to deligitimise the ongoing farmers’ protest and nationwide solidarity it has generated.”
They alleged that the Delhi Police’s actions “are all the more sinister because the 21-year old was taken to Delhi from Bengaluru with no disclosure about her whereabouts, not even to her parents, an action that can be termed extra-judicial abduction”. The government’s heavy-handedness, they said, is clearly focused on “terrorising and traumatising these brave young people for speaking truth to power, and amounts to teaching them a lesson.
“A confident government must appreciate this resilience of our youth and hold open dialogues with them across the country. The current actions of the Indian Government, instead, amount to gagging democracy itself,” they have said. “From the controversial Draft Environmental Impact Assessment Notification 2020 and in advancing laws that have drawn farmers across India to protest, the wider public is becoming increasingly aware of the Union Government’s tendency to put corporate interests over the well-being and future of the nation.
It is also becoming increasingly clear that the current actions of the Central Government are diversionary tactics to distract people from real issues like the ever-rising cost of fuel and essential items, the widespread unemployment and distress caused due to the lockdown without a plan, and the alarming state of the environment,” they said. “We demand that Disha Ravi be immediately released and assisted to get back home to resume her life,” they added.