SFS condemns the arrest of student activist of JNU by the fascist reactionary State. The incident is one of the many in the series of incidents where anyone raising voice against injustice is intolerable to the State. Such events unmasks the real face of democracy in India. This phenomenon is taking the path to totalitarian fascist regime. We appeal to the masses to stand and raise voice against the barbaric act of State.
Below is the statement issued by DSU of which Hem Mishra is a member:
Resist the ongoing witch-hunt of students, intellectuals
and activists who dare to stand up against systemic injustice, oppression and
state repression!
Immediately & Unconditionally release Hem who
was on his way for medical treatment!
The Maharashtra police has arrested Hem Mishra reportedly
from around Gadchiroli and having framed him as a “prominent naxal courier”.
Canards and lies are already making the rounds in the corporate media about his
alleged “links” and so on. Hem is a member of Democratic Students Union; a
cultural activist since his days in Uttarakhand till he also joined the
Revolutionary Cultural Front in JNU; an Executive Committee member of the
Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners; and till recently he has been
a student of Jawaharlal Nehru University doing his BA in Chinese from
SLL&CS. Hem has been struggling over the years with certain physical
challenges in his left hand. He has undergone repeated surgery and the ensuing
complications left him in agonizing pain. He has had to undergo two rounds of
expensive operations in the recent past from Vellore. He had on several
occasions shared his wish to pay a visit to Prakash Amte’s People’s hospital in
Gadchiroli to enquire about the possibility of free treatment therein. Early
this week he had left from Delhi with the same purpose and was picked up by the
notorious Maharashtra police somewhere in Maharashtra on his way to the
hospital. Hem is a prominent student and cultural activist. He is well
known among the political circles in Delhi and Uttarakhand. Yet the police are
trying to frame him with bogus charges like, he is a ‘prominent Naxal
courier!!’
Hem has a played a prominent role in exposing as well as
countering the anti-people designs of the state through songs, poetry, plays
and street theatres in the capacity of a cultural activist lending his voice to
that of the oppressed. He, as part of an organized politics, shares the vision
for a radical social transformation of the society towards a new democratic
society and a new democratic culture – free of oppression, injustice and
inequality. His arrest therefore doesn’t come as a shock. The state right now
is in a spree to clamp down on students and democratic rights activists and
trying to stifle voices of dissent. We strongly condemn this witch-hunt of
activists. We must unitedly and resolutely fight the fascist designs of the
state and its targeting of political activists.