Anna Hazare: anti-corruption activist’s arrest sparks protests across India

Thousands take to the streets after police detain Anna Hazare, who was due to begin hunger strike against graft Thousands of people have taken to the streets after police detained India’s most prominent anti-corruption campaigner, hours before he was due to begin an indefinite hunger strike to demand tough new laws against graft. More than 1,300 people had been arrested in Delhi by mid-afternoon on Tuesday, local media said. The detention of 74-year-old Anna Hazare and many of his followers prompted an outcry, with opposition politicians accusing the beleaguered administration of the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, of repeating draconian crackdowns of the 1970s or the actions of British former imperial rulers. “This is murder of democracy,” said Arun Jaitley, a senior leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata party. As news of Hazare’s detention spread, hundreds of impromptu demonstrations broke out across India as protesters, some wearing masks of Hazare or carrying banners bearing anti-corruption slogans, poured on to the streets. Some carried placards calling for a “revolution against corruption”; others waved signs reading “please arrest me”. Hazare was reported to have started his hunger strike in police custody. There were reports of protest in western Punjab, in eastern Orissa, in the far south, in northern Himachal Pradesh and in Ralegan Siddhi, Hazare’s home village in central Maharashtra state, where cattle were used to block traffic. Many senior activists were being held on Monday night. Kiran Bedi, one of India’s first female police officers who is widely respected for her anti-corruption campaigns, tweeted from detention that she had refused an offer of bail. Singh’s government has been on the defensive in recent months following a series of huge corruption scandals which, combined with rampant food inflation, have sparked deep public anger and sent poll ratings plummeting. The prime minister, 78, has been accused of being out of touch with public opinion. Certainly, Hazare appears to have tapped deep popular anger. Negotiations had been continuing over the activist’s planned public “fast unto death” for several weeks. Thousands of demonstrators were expected to converge on the capital to join the former army soldier and activist on Tuesday. “When you have a crowd of 10,000 people, can anyone guarantee there will be no disruption? The police is doing its duty. We should allow them to do it,” said the information and broadcasting minister, Ambika Soni, in an interview with CNN-IBN television. Dressed in his trademark plain white shirt, white cap and spectacles in the style of the independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, Hazare waved to hundreds of supporters as he was driven away on Tuesday morning in a white car by plainclothes police. He had earlier recorded a video to be released if he was arrested in which he called for a “second freedom struggle” in India , which threw off British rule in 1947. “The second freedom struggle has started … This is a fight for change. Unless there is change, there is no freedom, there is no actual democracy, there is no true republic, there is no true people’s rule. The protests should not stop. The time has come for no jail in the country to have a free space,” he said. Both houses of parliament were adjourned after the opposition protested against the arrests. Though politicians from all political parties have been implicated in corruption, many figures associated with the biggest and most high-profile cases of graft are from the ruling Congress party. The biggest, which investigators believed involved senior figures from a main coalition ally of Congress, may have cost the country up to £25bn. Other charges focus on the high-profile Commonwealth Games in Delhi last year. Opposition figures likened the crackdown on the campaigners to the 1975 “Emergency” when the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, arrested thousands of opposition members to stay in power. Manish Tewari, a Congress party spokesman, said Hazare was surrounded by “armchair fascists, overground Maoists, closet anarchists”. A crackdown this year successfully broke up demonstrations by tens of thousands of followers of a fasting yoga guru protesting against graft. However, Hazare’s first hunger strike in April successfully won concessions from the government, which promised a parliamentary bill creating a special ombudsman with power to investigate and punish corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and judges. But the changes proposed by the legislation presented in early August were criticised by activists as insufficient. They accused the government of backtracking. An old-school social activist Anna Hazare, whose real name is Kisan Baburao, is a former soldier with a long history of campaigning. He is an old-style Indian social activist – evidenced by his spotless white clothes, the white cap, or topi, popularised by activists including Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, and the pen in his top pocket as a marker of literacy. Hazare’s vision of India is both deeply conservative and reforming. A strictly teetotal Hindu, he has banned tobacco, meat and cable TV from the village where he lives and has campaigned against caste prejudice. Hazare also played a part in setting up India’s revolutionary right to information laws. He does not have a mobile phone. Earlier this year, his topi briefly became a sartorial icon with supporters wearing similar caps bearing the slogan “I am Anna Hazare” in English and Hindi. He is popular among the middle classes, the liberal elite and in the bigger cities. India Protest Jason Burke guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.