KOLKATA: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday lent her voice to the protests by environmentalists, young activists, students against the arrest of the 21-year-old Bangalore-based climate activist, Disha Ravi.
Banerjee said she felt "very sorry" after reading media reports on the climate activist's arrest and questioned the "discrimination" in arresting the 21-year-old and sparing those who are "actually guilty" of misusing social media.
"Arresting anybody, who is protesting against government policies, is unacceptable. The BJP should first take action against its own IT cell members who are spreading fake news. Why two sets of rules ?" Banerjee said.
Ravi was also one of the founding members of the India chapter of Fridays for Future (FFF) - an international movement of school students initiated by Greta Thunberg - who skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations, demanding action from political leaders to protect the environment. FFF has active local groups in 7,500 cities, including Kolkata, across all the continents with more than 1.4 crore members.
Brishti Chanda, the founding member of FFF-Bengal, termed Ravi's arrest as "blatant use of state terror" as she posted an official statement on the organisation's social media pages, criticizing the arrest. "We condemn the arrest of Ravi by Delhi police. She has been charged with sedition for disseminating the toolkit related to farmers' protests to various people via social media originally shared by the Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg. The right to organize and protest is enshrined in the constitution of India and cannot be taken away without rhyme and reason. The toolkit in question is a way to plan and schedule protests by like-minded people, not an international conspiracy. Human rights violations and crackdown on protests and freedom of speech cannot be considered an internal matter as they have far reaching consequences in our global society," the statement read.
"We have initiated a large scale online protest against the arrest since Sunday evening and are awaiting further instruction from the senior activists of the FFF-India chapter to carry forward the demonstration in Kolkata," said Brishti, a second-year law student and a resident of Sodepur.