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Schona Jolly QC Profile picture
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2 Feb, 11 tweets, 8 min read
#India Many have seen reports of the massive #FarmersProtests. As the right to dissent faces increasing challenge in India, press freedom is again threatened. 8 journalists face criminal charges, incl sedition, for reporting allegations of rights abuses during the protests.
If you are interested in the way dissent and free expression has become increasingly criminalised in Modi’s #India, since 2014, this excellent new database bears close examination.
Worth reading this @hrw piece on what’s happening on the official response to the #FarmersProtest. India’s govt has focused on discrediting peaceful protesters, harassing critics of the government, & prosecuting those reporting on the govt: @mg2411
hrw.org/news/2021/02/0…
Yesterday, severalTwitter accounts reporting on or challenging the govt’s response to the #FarmersProtests were strangely suspended by @TwitterIndia. No explanation. And the accounts remained visible outside India. The threat to #freeexpression, & to peaceful dissent, grows.
More on how India’s colonial-era sedition laws are being used to dismantle freedom of speech, protected by the Indian constitution, as part of a narrative to control opinion. A discourse of fundamental rights is now sharply pitted against a state ideology, through nationalism.
A legal perspective on the use of sedition laws + to hamper a free press.

“The more ridiculous the accusations become, the more severe the chilling effect, as journalists realise that even taking care from a legal standpoint is of no use.” @VakashaS

thequint.com/news/law/fir-j…
Well.

Not one Modi was expecting.
#FarmersProtests
“The erosion of democracy in India did not happen in a single moment, or because of a single man...Yet Modi is central to all this." An essential piece by @VidyaKrishnan on how the playbook of nationalism dampens and then crushes dissent. #FarmersProtests theatlantic.com/international/…
Meanwhile, @rihanna & @GretaThunberg really meant business, even as the Indian government told them today to mind their own business.

The world is noticing.
#FarmersProtest
This is from one of the Indian journalists arrested (now bailed) for reporting at the #FarmersProtest.

It’s an important message. Indian stars tweeting Indian govt hashtags might reflect that #IndiaTogether has a right to know, should know, what’s happening within its borders.
In a laughable wrong turn, there is now a criminal case filed against @GretaThunberg for expressing her solidarity with the #FarmersProtest.

Ironically, this hyper-sensitivity shows the online exposure is working. Attention is being focused on the real rights & wrongs in play.

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More from @WomaninHavana

Schona Jolly QC Profile picture
23 Jan
“It was pretty clear we had to be complicit in the fallacy that these things could just work, or risk losing any influence we might have.”

This line, from a CEO, sums up the last 4+ years of May & Johnson’s Brexit.

This brilliant #longread undoes it all. on.ft.com/3c0vhPX
Imagine any CEO or company board reaction to news that financial analysis had not been carried out for fear of what it might reveal.

Then transpose to a govt, acting against the economic interests of its own people to maintain the fiction that if we just believe hard enough...
Johnson led Brexit, he chose its parameters, he defined them by the obsessive ideology of sovereignty over all else, and he chose not to extend time to at least try to improve on the inevitable terms dictated by his choices.

The cries of freedom will ring very hollow.
Read 6 tweets
Schona Jolly QC Profile picture
20 Jan
💜 what a moment. 💜
Light years away from all we have witnessed, so many women, and women of colour, centre stage.

Representation matters. 💜

Something wonderful today. 💜

#justiciaparatodos.
It’s truly over. He’s gone.

Over to President Biden.

Change. Hope.
Read 7 tweets
Schona Jolly QC Profile picture
26 Dec 20
*That* Gove article shows exactly what has been wrong with the Brexit project since 2016.

It doesn’t offer truths or even perspective. It only offers dishonesty or misrepresentation. Coming as it does from the heart of this govt, the damage is more fatal than “ugly politics”.
For all the breathless reporting of the #BrexitDeal in Britain, as ever with this sorry saga, outside eyes are often the clearest.

This analysis in the @nytimes is a better starting point than so much of what passes for reporting here.
nytimes.com/2020/12/25/wor…
For example:

“Britain’s services sector — encompassing not only London’s powerful financial industry, but also lawyers, architects, consultants and others — was largely left out of the 1,246-page deal, despite the sector accounting for 80 percent of British economic activity.”
Read 4 tweets
Schona Jolly QC Profile picture
23 Dec 20
Dreadful, incomprehensible scenes at Dover. These poor lorry drivers left stranded, probably unable to get home for Xmas, without basics like enough loos, washing facilities & food, & insult to injury added by the lack of translators to explain what’s happening. It’s indecent.
Yes, this has occurred after a Covid emergency, but we are days from potentially a No Deal Brexit, so therefore similar border difficulties predictable. The govt has not only claimed it’s been preparing for months, but has had days to endure basic welfare for stranded drivers.
Meanwhile, here is the German Ambassador ensuring basic welfare of stranded drivers.

How is the British govt so unprepared, incapable or unwilling to engage with the human misery caused by the situation? Shouldn’t be put up to charity to fix or feed. But thank you @Khalsa_Aid.
Read 5 tweets
Schona Jolly QC Profile picture
15 Dec 20
#Uyghurs The implications of this new evidence, impacting 20% of the world’s cotton: Companies must consider all cotton produced in Xinjiang *may* be tainted with forced labor.

This has immediate implications for supply chains across the fashion industry.

#bizhumanrights
The this new evidence on forced labour in #Xinjiang to produce cotton should impact govts considering implemention of new human rights due diligence laws, to ensure companies can no longer turn a blind eye to abuses in their supply chains. #modernslavery bbc.co.uk/news/extra/nz0…
Today I am giving evidence to @CommonsForeign on accountability in international law for atrocities in Xinjiang against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.

This new evidence on #forcedlabour shows again why govts must take concrete steps to ensure corporate accountability too.
Read 6 tweets
Schona Jolly QC Profile picture
10 Dec 20
There might have been a Brexit without setting fire to everything. At each critical stage, May and Johnson have chosen to take the sharpest non-conciliatory red lines.

This govt *chose* not to extend the transition period in the middle of a global pandemic.

So here we are.
None of this charade is in the national interest - whether you voted Leave or Remain.

None of this uncertainty & disruption begins to represent the 2016 or 2019 promises of this Leave govt.

This is the hijacking of our collective future by a fanatical and incompetent minority.
So much wasted time & resource. To fix a problem created by internal dynamics of the Conservative party.

We could have faced the many real challenges - of climate, health or equality - confronting us.

But those leading created a new problem to distract & drain for a long time.
Read 5 tweets

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