Mirza Saaib Bég speaks about the Indian intelligence agency RAW spying on Kashmiris & Sikhs living outside Kashmir.
In the backdrop of what is happening in #Kashmir this is an additional assault, on privacy and freedom of speech, that seeks to enforce oblivion on the legacy of genocide in India, to inhibit non-violent, democratic discourse on freedom from any kind of political space. Yesterday, an Indian-origin couple in Germany was convicted on charges of spying on Kashmiri and Sikh diaspora for a sum of around ~7000 Euros. This is the 3rd case from Germany since 2014. In the past also, due to similar instances of spying on diaspora communities, Canada had to ask the Indian General Counsul, Surinder Malik, to leave the country. Subsequently, diplomats and two vice consuls were also asked to be transferred. For anyone interested- Maloy Krishna Dhar, a former joint director of the Indian Intelligence bureau has written about this period in his book “Open Secrets”. The three cases since 2014 indicate a clear pattern of well-coordinated efforts to spy on diaspora communities, in contravention of local law. India is turning into a surveillance police state. Just last month, we came to know of how lawyers, journalists and activists in India were being spied on by Israeli surveillance technology that is only leased to governments. In this conversation, we discuss the tightening of OCI rules, the use of #NRC and #CAB to depoliticise and disenfranchise Muslims and the increasing lack of space for any kind of dissent in India. India must be cautioned about the dangers of secret surveillance regimes, the inevitable abuse of this power which necessarily must be exercised in secret, and the inhibition of ideas caused by the existence of such surveillance. You can not be the world’s largest democracy and at the same time repress dissent on a political question.
Posted by Mirza Saaib Bég on Sunday, December 15, 2019