Image: Twitter/ @REhsan2021
New Delhi: After being detained by police in Delhi for around seven hours on Thursday, October 6, around 100 members of central Afghanistan’s Hazara community who reportedly gathered at Jantar Mantar to protest the recent suicide bombing in the Afghan capital, Kabul, have been released.
On the last day of September, September 30, a suicide attack at the Kaj Educational Institute in Daste Barchi, associated with the Hazara-dominated community in Kabul, had shocked the world. A number of students were present at the Institute to take an entrance exam that Friday. While initial reports had put the number killed at 19 and those injured at 27, subsequent reports by the BBC have put the death toll at a staggering 53.
On Thursday, October 6, around 100 Hazaras living in Delhi had resolved to hold a protest at Jantar Mantar to condemn the Kaj bombing as well as the targeting of the Shi’a majority Hazara community in Afghanistan. Initially the Delhi police reportedly granted permission for the gathering, this permission was allegedly revoked early Thursday morning.
As often, social media platforms told the story. A member of this protest gathering, scholar and activist Reza Ehsan, posted on Twitter claiming that after the crowd was told that the permission had been cancelled, and as the members made their way to their buses to leave, they were detained by the Delhi police without any explanation.
They had first detained around 300, have released women and children but others are still in detention.
Ehsan questioned the police’s decision, asking why the decision to cancel the permission wasn’t shared earlier and why the demonstrators were not allowed even to eat lunch.
“While, millions are joining #StopHazaraGenocide around the world, why would Delhi police try to silence the voice of those who share sympathy and remember the victims of #Kaaj Kabul attack?” Ehsan tweeted.
Within an hour of Ehsan’s initial tweets, rights group Amnesty International posted a series of tweets in which it detailed that the Delhi police had, indeed, arrested the demonstrators for gathering despite the denial of permission, which was denied citing “security/law and order arrangements” according to the rights group.
Amnesty International stated that the “failure to meet administrative requirements should not render an assembly unlawful” and held that it cannot be a basis to arrest people. Noting that the right to protest is a right and not a privilege, the rights group said that any restriction to this right should be necessary and proportionate.
Ehsan, who wrote on Twitter that he was posting from “Madanmarg” police station, ostensibly referring to the Mandir Marg station in the area, noted that while women and children were allowed to leave at around 3:30 pm, 45 others remained in custody until evening.
Then, in the evening, at 7:01 pm, Ehsan tweeted that he and the 45 other detainees were released from custody. He also stated that the demonstrators were allowed to continue their protests and chant slogans against the killing of Hazaras from within the station.
Thereafter, the Association for Hazara Voice for Justice (AHVJ) published a statement on Twitter describing the detention as a “small halt” but lauding the support and media coverage the demonstration received.
“We shared our message loudly and clearly with the Indian audience and the world about the ‘genocide of Hazaras’ in Afghanistan. Today(‘s) gathering and protest was up to satisfaction,” the AHVJ statement read.
The statement also proceeded to thank not just the Indian media but also the government and the Delhi police for allowing the programme to continue from within the police station.