Protests in Mumbai University against crackdown on JNU campus

The members of JAC Mumbai said that they strongly condemned the arrest of the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) president and the police crackdown on students’ dissent and voices on JNU campus. “Students who have questioned capital punishment and the hanging of Afzal Guru by the Indian government have become the new targets of pseudo-nationalist forces. In a repeat of history, so close on the heels of the Hyderabad Central University administration’s clampdown on dissenting Dalit students, JNU students expressing their dissent through democratic means have been branded as anti-national. JNUSU president and 12 other students have been booked under Sections 124 A (Sedition), 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and Unlawful Assembly and Kanhaiya Kumar has been already sent to police custody.

There is a state of emergency on JNU campus with heavy police presence all over the campus. Under the clause of ‘unknown persons’, the police are searching each student’s room (except those who support RSS) with a list given by the university administration themselves,” said a protesting student.

Saying that the JNU police crackdown was sponsored by “pseudo-nationalist and fascist forces” in the country, the student protestors have called all democratic, progressive, Ambedkarite and leftist forces to unite and join them to fight back “repression”.

Another student said, “This was not the first time that the students of JNU were holding a protest against the hanging of Afzal Guru. It has happened several times earlier and students had opposed the death penalty and raised their voices against the capital punishment. But the state of emergency declared on campuses at present is an attempt to divert the attention from the demands of ‘Justice for Rohith Vemula’ movement and to crush the mounting opposition by students.”

The protesting students have demanded that Kanhaiya Kumar be released immediately and unconditionally. They have also demanded that the cases against students be immediately withdrawn. University spaces should be free from direct political interventions by the government and there should be freedom of expression for the students on various issues, they added.