Polis Project Conversation Series The Polis Project

Francesca Recchia in conversation with Francesca Mannocchi. Francesca Mannocchi is a freelance journalist who covers migration and conflicts and contributes to numerous Italian and international newspapers (L'Espresso, Stern, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, The Observer). She has produced reports in Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Egypt and Turkey. She received the Premiolino award for journalism in 2016. She won the Giustolisi Prize with the Mission Impossible (LA7) investigation on migrant smuggling and Libyan prisons. In 2018 her documentary directed with the photographer Alessio Romenzi was presented at the 75th edition of the Venice International Film Festival. She is the author of Io Khaled vendo uomini e sono innocente (2019, Einaudi).

On 12 December 2019, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 - rightly referred to as India’s Nuremberg Law - was passed, leading to widespread protests across the country. Millions of Indian citizens are protesting against this fundamentally discriminatory law and many, including students, have been met with severe repression and criminalization at the hands of the Police, particularly in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). 

The brutality of State violence is most visible in the abuse of 41 minors, who have been detained and subjected to custodial torture, criminalization and post custodial coercion in UP. The report Brutalizing Innocence jointly produced by Quill Foundation, Citizens Against Hate and HAQ: Centre for Child Rights documents the police action against minors, the methods and patterns of violence inflicted, the various violations of national and international laws and the inaction of human rights institutions. Based on fact finding missions conducted across various districts in UP between 10 and 24 January, along with verified media accounts, this report records the testimonies of minor victims, witnesses, police officials and photographic evidence of the abuses as well as cases police FIR. 



Joining us today to speak about the patterns of State violence, the nature of abuse suffered by the minors, the importance of documenting this evidence and holding the institutions and the State accountable are Bharti Ali and Nidhi Suresh, who were part of the team that put this report together. Bharti Ali is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights with nearly 28 years of work in the development sector, focusing on gender and child rights issues. Nidhi Suresh is a programme officer at Quill Foundation, a human rights research and advocacy organization in New Delhi. She also works as a freelance journalist, covering stories on human rights. She is a recent graduate from Utrecht University, Netherlands, with a Masters in Conflict Studies and Human Rights. Previously, for a year, she worked as a reporter in Kashmir based out of Srinagar.

Since December 2019 millions of Indians have protested the contentious “Citizenship Amendment Act” (CAA)-- rightly called the Nuremberg laws of India. 

Since the protest started there as been brutal police actions against those protesting especially students in Jamia Milia Islamia University in Delhi. An organic peoples protest is now blooming across India. 

Along with protests come poetry and art.  These protests are being chronicled by a new generation of artists. Joining us today are the USA-based artist Mayukh Goswami and writer and poet Meher Manda who started their “webcomic of dissent” that they call “Jamun Ka Ped” 

Jamun Ka Ped', written in the 1960s, is a satire on bureaucratic red tape by Krishna Chander told through the story of a well-known poet who gets trapped under a Jamun tree in the lawns of a secretariat building after a thunderstorm.