BeyondHealines News Desk
New Delhi: In a joint press conference held today at press Club of India New Delhi, student bodies expressed solidarity with Aligarh Muslim University and called for the revocation of sedition cases against 14 students of AMU.
The joint press conference was called by Aligarh Muslim University Students Union, Students Islamic organisation of India and the students of Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia.
AMUSU office bearers were not allowed to attend press conference at Delhi. It was informed in the press conference that Hamza Sufyan, the Vice President of AMUSU and Ferdous Ahmed, cabinet member, on their way to the press conference in Delhi were stopped near Tappal and forcibly sent back. Further, former AMUSU President, Mashkoor Usmani was also detained separately at Lodha.
“We condemn this action of the UP government and demand that the false case of sedition against 14 AMU students should immediately be revoked. We also demand that strict action should be taken against the ABVP and BJP youth wing activists who had created a right like situation in the campus”, says the joint statement by student leaders.
Commenting on the law of sedition, it was said that it is unclear how the law of sedition was applied to a scuffle that happened with a University campus, and that too applied not against the culprits but against the victims. Students reminded the gathering that among the 14 students against whom sedition case was filed, some were not even present in Aligarh at the time.
It was discussed that the careless and casual manner in which sedition law was invoked shows the attitude of UP police, and leaves students to believe that it was involved only to create a controversy and malign the image of the university.
The student leaders discussed that it is disheartening to see the role played by a national media outlet in these events, which called AMU a University of terrorists and once again tried to provoke an unnecessary controversy around AMU.
The demanded, “we believe that such provocative and polarising coverage should be held to account and some semblance of journalistic responsibility and media ethics should be restored”.
“We firmly stand in solidarity with AMU in this challenging time and reject the fascist forces and their allied media’s repeated attempts to malign the university’s name and use it for communal polarization”, says the joint statement by student leaders of JNU, DU and JMI.
Syed Azharuddin, General Secretary of SIO, Meeran Haidar from Jamia Millia Islamia and JNUSU Councillor Aasif Idrees were present in the Conference. Nazeel from Delhi University addressed the press conference.
