Prisoners of memes, social media victims in India. Hell, this has Munich police/courts written all over it

What a coincidence and how small the world is. Stumbled today upon this article from India, a country usually associated with rampant corruption. But while reading I was more and more reminded of Munich police. It was eery. It is about social networks, memes with dissenting opinion, yeah, and how police and courts deal with this.

I am now in a limbo. Who advised here who?? Was it India advising Munich or vice versa? Going by the dates given in the article it must have been Munich advising Indian police.


Prisoners of memes, social media victims

India is increasingly jailing its young for online posts that ‘offend’ politicians. The impact on their lives and families is devastating

Initially, they all thought it was a joke when the police turned up. Once the prison gates opened, reality sunk in. Entering the dark, stinking cells, filled with dangerous looking strangers, they all felt a mix of emotions. There was of course incomprehension, fear, and an unexplainable feeling of guilt for an unknown crime. But the sheen of innocence held steady, at least in their mind. It was after all just a social media post, or comment, or argument. 

Trouble has a strange way of announcing its arrival that makes one sit up and take notice—a knock on the door at 3 am; men in jackboots rummaging through the house without permission; a couple of police jeeps waiting outside the house well past midnight. When policemen from another state chase you down on an otherwise ordinary day, that’s when you realise, in India, there is no such thing as “just a social media post”. 

In 2017 and 2018, based on reported incidents accessed by Mint, at least 50 people were arrested across India for posts on social media. Some spent half-a-year behind bars, a few were in jail for roughly a month, while others were let off within a week. The most recent ones to get added to the list were five men, all Muslim, who were arrested on 15 November and booked under the Information Technology Act for making “derogatory remarks” on Facebook against Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and the RSS. The arrests have been across geographies and the political spectrum. Defence analyst Abhijit Iyer Mitra, a vocal BJP supporter, has spent over a month in an Odisha jail after a ‘joke’ on social media. 

Among those arrested over the past year, almost all are very poor; most are illiterate; over half are Muslims; and many are recent Internet users (one of them had acquired his first smartphone less than a fortnight before his arrest). “What is common in a lot of these cases is that they concern a comment on social media, either about a political personality or an issue of public interest. These are not direct threats that are being made against any person,” says Apar Gupta, executive director of Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.

How they wear you down. In India and in Munich.

‘Each court hearing involves changing six buses and ₹550’

₹550 just for a bus fare is a lot of money for an ordinary Indian. Here is the story of one Indian youngster. In Munich they have government agencies like the Jobcenter and the Labor Agency Munich for this purpose and they cooperate wonderful with police and courts.

Mohammad Shaqib | 18 (Saharanpur, UP)

Shaqib is the only son in his family of seven. His father is an agricultural labourer, who earns ₹5,000 per month. Apart from Shaqib’s on-and-off earnings, his father is the only earning member of the family. He is shy and barely speaks, but he is the ghar ka laadla (the beloved son). So, all the members come together to do whatever it takes to give him what he wants. Last year, in late September, after taking tailoring lessons in his hometown of Saharanpur, his father Mohammad Saleem decided to send him to Aaduwala village in the outskirts of Dehradun. The salary wasn’t much, but there were many boys from his village working there. Fifteen days later, Shaqib came back home for four days—this time, with a mission. He wanted something no one in his family had. He wanted a smartphone. “Everyone around me had smartphones. Everyone was on social media. The phone I had was barely a phone...(It was a basic feature phone),” says Shaqib.

Unlike his father, Shaqib didn’t want a device that could just give a missed call and send texts. He wanted to be one of the country’s 400 million smartphone users. After a lot of tantrum throwing, as his mother puts it, his father gave in. He took a microfinance loan and got him a Redmi phone that cost ₹8,000. Shaqib went back happy and started experimenting with his new toy. And like many in his age bracket, he downloaded WhatsApp. Despite its no frills interface, it took Shaqib a while to understand how it worked. On 18 November, when it had been just 12 days after he acquired the phone, six men barged into his shop. They demanded to know his name and walked away with his phone. He followed them and saw a police jeep waiting outside. The team led by Pradeep Kumar, an inspector with the Haryana Police, had come all the way to Vikaspur after a Tohana resident filed a complaint claiming Shaqib had shared an offensive photograph on WhatsApp.

The cops told Shaqib not to worry, and that he would be let off. The forward was a photograph of a dark complexioned woman being touched inappropriately by a man, whose face had been morphed to resemble Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The text roughly read: Modi has brought back all the black money (in effect, mocking the anti-black money drive). Shaqib spent eight days in a bacha jail (juvenile home). He was booked under Section 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form), 67 A of the IT Act (transmission or publishing of sexually explicit material), and Section 292A (putting into circulation a grossly indecent or scurrilous picture) of the IPC (Indian Penal Code). It has been almost a year since Shaqib’s arrest. There have been four hearings in court—each deciding the date of the next hearing, and each court appearance involving a change of six buses from Saharanpur to Tohana, along with an expense of ₹550 per person. The family has reconciled with the fact that the case will go on for a while. But his father has decided not to give his son a smartphone again, and not to let Shaqib step out of Saharanpur—even if that means keeping his only son more or less unemployed.

Here is another poor soul's story.

‘My family is now called ghaddar’

(Ghaddar means rebel, insurrect)

Aleem Ahmad | 16 (Meerut, UP)

Aleem’s family in Meerut had, for long, commanded respect in their village, Nagla Salempur. His father was almost like a mukhya in the village. On 16August, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee died, Aleem wrote a Facebook post expressing anger against Vajpayee and implicitly pointing to his role in the demolition of Babri Masjid. Three days later, at 3 am, the family was woken up by a bang on the door. A group of policemen entered the house asking for Aleem. He was in Delhi then. On being told he wasn’t there, they went around looking for him “as if he was some big, wanted criminal,” his brother Azeem Ahmad recalls.

They went to the first floor, despite being told that women of the family were sleeping there. There were two police jeeps and some 15 policemen, Azeem claims. Their father was taken in “for questioning” and was told he may lose his government job. On 20 August, Aleem surrendered and was taken to a bacha jail in Noida. In the bacha jail, he was locked in with murderers and drug addicts and Aleem ended up spending 39 days there, after his bail was rejected thrice. The villagers, the family claims, have changed their behavior towards them. The family is now called “ghaddar” and “desh drohi”.

...administration has successfully had a chilling effect on free speech, not only of that individual but an entire...community- Sanjay Hegde, Senior Supreme Court Advocate 

Aleem was booked under Section 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups) 153 B (assertions prejudicial to national integration), 295 (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings) of the IPC and Section 67 of the IT Act (punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form). Aleem’s wasn’t an isolated case. Several other arrests were made for social media posts after Vajpayee’s death. Naushad Khan, 24, from Varanasi, spent three months in jail for his post on Vajpayee. Another person, Arif Malik (23), a resident of Saharanpur, faced similar charges when he wrote a Facebook post without naming Vajpayee. He was sent to the district jail and an FIR was lodged against his friends – Arif, Rihan, Hasnain, Ali, Anees, who commented on Naushad’s status and agreed with the post.

Confiscation of phone without court order? No difference in India or Munich. Prosecutors Ken Heidenreich and lately General Prosecutor Osthoff handle that easily. The latter lady with a blatant lie.

Debajit's phone also confiscated.

On October 19, when he was in his house, the police came and arrested him. The charges slapped on him include obstruction of a public servant discharging his functions, assault or criminal force to deter a civil servant, and making statements conducive to public mischief. He was remanded for two days in Balurghat, and his mobile phone was seized.

Police... have got into habit of presupposing illegality in the act of morphing itself. At best morphing can be an act of defamation...- Apar Gupta, Delhi-based lawyer

There is but one difference how Munich/Germany handles such infringements. Here police and courts have under-cover-of-the-night Nazi-style informers such as Jurgen Sonneck, a public employee (Beamter), using a false name.

Jürgen Sonneck alias "C. Paucher"

Or lately some idiots going by the imposing name 'Center for Political Beauty'. Hold your pants, here is the 'About' of them beauticians:

The Center for Political Beauty is an assault team that establishes moral beauty, political poetry and human greatness while aiming to preserve humanitarianism.

Come again.

It is, however, the German version that gives them away. They are looking for secret informers to put people of opinions they do not condone out of work, at least shame them publicly. In all seriousness these fucktards are looking for "Komplizen" (accomplice, partner in crime). You can't make that up.

UPDATE: They have pulled their website meanwhile.

Back to the Livemint article here in full.