Indian hunger striker Anna Hazare arrested

Anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare held by police after announcing plans to go on indefinite hunger strike Indian police have detained the country’s most prominent anti-corruption campaigner, hours before he was due to begin an indefinite hunger strike to demand tough new laws against graft. The arrest of 74-year-old Anna Hazare prompted outrage, with opposition politicians accusing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s beleaguered administration, currently in the middle of its second term, of repeating draconian crackdowns of the 1970s. A series of impromptu demonstrations were organised across the country in support of Hazare. More than 250 campaigners associated with him, including other well-known anti-corruption activists, were also detained by police. There were reports of protests in western Punjab, in eastern Orissa, in the far south, in northern Himachel Pradesh and in Ralegan Siddhi, Hazare’s home village in central Maharashtra state. Singh’s government has been on the defensive in recent months after a series of corruption scams which, combined with rampant food inflation, have sparked public anger and sent poll ratings plummeting. The campaign of Hazare, a controversial but respected figure , has rattled officials and politicians. Negotiations had been continuing over his 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. “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,” argued 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 independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, Hazare was driven away in a white car by plainclothes police, waving to hundreds of supporters. A police spokesman said the veteran campaigner and four others had been placed under “preventive arrest”. No charges have yet been filed. Hazare recently called for a “second freedom struggle” in India, which threw off British imperial rule in 1947. “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 in a message broadcast on YouTube . Both houses of parliament were adjourned after the opposition protested at the arrests. Though politicians from all political parties have been implicated in corruption scams, many figures associated with the biggest and most high-profile cases of graft are from the ruling Congress party. Opposition figures likened the crackdown to the 1975 “Emergency”, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi arrested thousands of opposition members in order to stay in power. Manish Tewari, a Congress party spokesman, said Hazare was surrounded by “armchair fascists, overground Maoists, closet anarchists”. A crackdown earlier this year on a fasting yoga guru who had rallied tens of thousands of people in the capital managed to break up his anti-corruption protests successfully. Hazare’s first hunger strike in April won concessions from the government that 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. India 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.