Poor workers in India faced with police brutalities

FMT:

Poor workers trying to feed families jailed, abused during virus lockdown

Thomson Reuters Foundation

In India

KUALA LUMPUR: Poor workers have been arrested and beaten by police for trying to put food on the table during coronavirus lockdowns, prompting warnings on Tuesday of social upheaval if aid is not delivered.

* kaytee note: Thompson Reuters was talking about Indian police, not Malaysian police

In Malaysia, two men who usually earn about RM100 ringgit a day fixing roofs have been jailed for three months after they were caught fishing for food in violation of an official stay-home order, sparking a public outcry.

“Police told them to leave. They said they have to fish to feed their family – they don’t have a job now, they have no money,” said their lawyer Balakrishna Balaravi Pillai, adding the men were jailed because they could not afford to pay a fine.

“They have been hit hard not only due to the economic factor, but now also got trapped and entangled in such a legal quagmire,” Balakrishna, who is giving the men free legal assistance, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Labour rights activists across Asia have criticised strict lockdowns to contain the flu-like virus – which has infected about 1.3 million people and caused more than 70,000 deaths globally – for their impact on vulnerable workers.

Social media has been flooded with videos of baton-wielding police in India beating people, including migrant workers and rickshaw pullers, for breaking a three-week lockdown, as well as making them do squats and deflating their tyres.
New Delhi’s police spokesman has denied that officers used excessive force and said they were trying to ensure people followed rules.

Raju, a vegetable vendor in New Delhi, said a policeman struck him on his back and calves repeatedly – despite his attempts to explain that selling food was an essential service exempted from lockdown rules.

“He would not listen. He just kept beating me. So, I quickly turned around and limped back home,” said the vendor who declined to give his full name. “My bruises are still visible.”

kaytee note: I saw a FB video where an Indian police officer (not an Other Rank or common mata-mata but an officer) kept caning quite a pretty lady holding a baby in her arms. The persistence with which the police officer not only caned her but kept on chasing/following her to inflict further caning was horrendous. He was really brutal and wicked.

I suspect the very fair-skinned lady must be from the north-east where the people there looks like Chinese - she's not likely to be a Muslim as some Malaysians who viewed the FB video had averred, because she was bare-headed (no hijab) with long tresses and in Western-style dress.

NE Indians

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An extract from Quora:


Gopal Kalita, From North-East India, so have a fair amount of knowledge about the region.

Answered Aug 4, 2018

"Some doctors don’t consider north-east Indians to be Indians."

"When I was in Bangalore, I and my room-mates contracted dengue fever. We recovered after a few weeks."

"However, one of roommates platelets count has not increased to the minimum threshold level even though there were no physical symptoms. He consulted a doctor from Manipal Hospital. The doctor said to him:

“Your blood is not like people from India. Some people from north-east India and East Asia tend to have low platelets count in their blood. To compensate it, the size of the platelets are bigger. The phenomenon is called pseudothrombocytopenia.”
Sometimes, it is good to consider north-east Indians as Chinese/East Asian

😞😞😞

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Indian opposition lawmaker Shashi Tharoor has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging the government to rein in police brutality, saying it showed the country’s law enforcement “in a very poor light”.

Modi asked the nation’s poor for forgiveness for the hardship caused by the lockdown after it began on March 25, when the government also announced a US$22.6 billion economic stimulus plan to provide cash and food handouts to the poor.