NEW DELHI: Police in India’s northern state of Punjab detained hundreds of farmers and used bulldozers to tear down their temporary camps in a border area where they had protested for more than a year to demand better crop prices.
The farmers had camped on the border with adjoining Haryana since last February, when security forces halted their march toward the capital, New Delhi, to press for legally-backed guarantees of more state support for crops.
“We did not need to use any force because there was no resistance,” Nanak Singh, a senior police officer, told the ANI news agency about Wednesday night’s clearance action. “The farmers cooperated well and they sat in buses themselves.”
The farmers had been given prior notice, he added.
Television images showed police using bulldozers to demolish tents and stages, while escorting farmers carrying personal items to vehicles.
Media said among the hundreds detained were farmers’ leaders Sarwan Singh Pandher and Jagjit Singh Dallewal, the latter carried away in an ambulance as he had been on an indefinite protest fast for months.
“On one hand the government is negotiating with the farmer organizations and on the other hand it is arresting them,” Rakesh Tikait, a spokesperson for farmer group Bhartiya Kisan Union said on X.
Punjab’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which authorized the eviction, said it stood by the farmers in their demands, but asked them to take up their grievances with the federal government.
“Let’s work together to safeguard Punjab’s interests,” said the party’s vice president in the state, Tarunpreet Singh Sond, adding that the blockage of key roads had hurt the state’s economy. “Closing highways is not the solution.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government was forced to repeal some farm laws in 2021 after a year-long protest by farmers when they camped outside Delhi for months.
Federal government officials met the farmers’ leaders on Wednesday, said Fatehjung Singh Bajwa, the vice president of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Punjab.
“It is clear that this arrest is a deliberate attempt to disrupt the ongoing dialogue between farmers and BJP leadership,” he added in a post on X.
India detains hundreds of farmers as police bulldoze protest sites
https://arab.news/6mv2b
India detains hundreds of farmers as police bulldoze protest sites
- The farmers had camped on the border with adjoining Haryana since last February
- Security forces have earlier halted their march toward the capital, New Delhi
Hundreds in London protest against Beijing ‘mega embassy’
- Protesters, their faces mostly covered with scarves or masks, chanted “No to Chinese embassy“
- The latest protest came ahead of an expected decision this week
LONDON: Hundreds of people on Saturday rallied in London against Beijing’s controversial new “mega” embassy, days ahead of a decision on the plan.
Protesters, their faces mostly covered with scarves or masks, chanted “No to Chinese embassy” and waved flags reading “Free Hong Kong. Revolution now.”
Others held up placards with slogans such as “MI5 warned. Labour kneeled,” referring to the UK’s domestic intelligence agency and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ruling party.
Others read: “CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is watching you. Stop the mega embassy.”
China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the shadow of the Tower of London.
The move has sparked fierce opposition from nearby residents, rights groups and critics of China’s ruling Communist Party.
The latest protest came ahead of an expected decision this week.
Benedict Rogers, head of the human rights group Hong Kong Watch said if it got the go-ahead it was “highly likely” that the site “will be used for espionage,” citing the sensitive underground communications cables close to the site.
He said China had already been “carrying out a campaign of transnational repression against different diaspora communities” and other critics and predicted that that would “increase and intensify.”
Beijing ‘operations base’ -
A protester who gave his name only as Brandon, for fear of reprisals, said the plans raised a “lot of concerns.”
The 23-year-old bank employee, originally from Hong Kong but now living near Manchester in northwestern England, said many Hong Kongers had moved to the UK “to avoid authoritarian rule in China.”
But they now found there could be an embassy in London serving as an “operations base” for Beijing.
“I don’t think it’s good for anyone except the Chinese government,” he said.
Another demonstrator, who did not to give her name, called on Starmer to “step back and stop it (the plan) because there is a high risk to the national security of the UK, not only Hong Kongers.”
The 60-year-old warehouse worker, also originally from Hong Kong and now living in Manchester, said the embassy would be a “spy center not only to watch the UK but the whole of Europe.”
Speakers at the rally throwing their weight behind the campaign to stop the embassy included Kemi Badenoch, leader of the main opposition Conservative Party.
British MPs voiced major security concerns earlier this week after a leading daily reported the site would house 208 secret rooms, including a “hidden chamber.”
The Daily Telegraph said it had obtained unredacted plans for the vast new building which would stand on the historical site of the former Royal Mint.
It showed that Beijing reportedly plans to construct a single “concealed chamber” among “secret rooms” underneath the embassy which would be placed alongside the underground communications cables.
