 My name is Naftej Puriwal and I'm the Deputy Director of the South Asia Institute here at SOAS and it is a real pleasure to be able to welcome you all here tonight to the first Noor Inayat Khan annual lecture. The South Asia Institute at SOAS was launched two years ago and has approximately 65 academic members all working on a wide range of areas which pertain to the region of South Asia. We host, including tonight, a dynamic schedule events throughout the year, foster students engagement with the region through teaching and research, liaison with universities and partners in South Asia and act as a significant gateway between the region of South Asia and SOAS here in London. Tonight's lecture comes out of a partnership between SOAS and the Noor Inayat Khan Trust. This is a very organic partnership in that we have mutual interests and critical thinking, promoting progressive approaches to gender and responding to cutting-edge issues and developments on South Asia and its global dimensions. Tonight's speaker, Rinda Grover, is an excellent example of this in not only reflecting the ethos of Noor but also the ethos of SOAS for the ways in which she has spoken up and defended civil liberties in India at the most critical of times over the past few decades when others were often silent through her knowledge, integrity, professionalism and commitment to social and legal justice. So we are absolutely delighted to have her speaking here tonight at our first Noor Inayat Khan annual lecture. I will now pass on the stage to Shravani Basu who is not only the author of the widely claimed biography of Noor's spy princess but is also a trustee of the Noor Inayat Khan Trust and one of the main drivers of this event tonight. So she'll be introducing our speaker and chair moderator. Thank you, Navtej. It's been a real pleasure for the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust to work with Michael Anu from SOAS from the South Asia Institute. We've had a good time discussing the problems of the world of a lots of good green tea made by Michael. Michael, where are you sitting there? Oh, there you are. So thank you for that. And a very, very warm welcome to all of you. Thank you for making it here today. I know you're going to have a very, very exciting evening. It's great to see many familiar faces and some new ones. And for those of you who don't know much about Noor Inayat Khan or the trust, I'll just take a few minutes just to tell you a little bit about her. You can see her picture there, a very tiny image. But who was Noor Inayat Khan? She was a secret agent in the Second World War. She was the first woman radio operator to be dropped behind enemy lines in France. She was just 28 at the time. She went in there with a false passport, couple of francs and a pistol. And well, her previous life, she was a, she was a writer, a musician. So this was a sea change for her. But she worked fiercely and fearlessly in one of the most dangerous areas of the field in Germany. But she was, she was working as a radio operator. She was working single-handed, but she was betrayed. She was captured, tortured and killed in Dhakao concentration camp. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross, which is the highest civilian honor that Britain gives. And France honored her with the Croix de Guerre. But over the years, we felt her story had been lost. So my personal journey with Noor began when I started researching her life. And I wrote the biography. And then, I mean, that was, I thought that was it. I'd done the book. But I started receiving so many letters from people. And they were all saying, thank you for the book. Thank you for bringing her story alive. And what do we do? How do we keep her memory alive? So I felt this responsibility. There was a man who said she should be on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. And I said, oh, well, that's a nice thought. There was another man who offered to write every day to the Prime Minister. Bless him. And, you know, campaign for something for her. So I felt, you know, I've got to do something. And so I called on my friends, as one does. You've seen them all around today. We call them Team Noor, Noor's Angels. And we decided to campaign for a memorial for Noor, because Noor lived not far away from here. She lived on Tabeton Street, just down the road. As a child, she lived on Gordon Square, number 29, where they'd have music evenings. And we decided there should be a memorial in Gordon Square, where she played as a child. So after a two-year campaign, to cut a long story short, the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial was unveiled in Gordon Square. Give me a minute. It all goes well. Yes, so this is the memorial. Some of you may have seen it. If you haven't seen it, do go and have a look. It's visited by people from around the world. There's always lovely messages, lovely flowers. And it was unveiled by Princess Anne, as you can see. So that was a lovely, you know, a really precious moment for all of us. And this had set the ball rolling. We got a lot of responses. And then there was a letter one day from the Royal Mail. And they said, we want to honor Noor for her centenary with the first last stamp. And we said, yes. So I think the campaign and the awareness was spreading, which was wonderful. But then, as you can see, this team Noor is a very restless team. And we said, we've got to do something more, something more tangible for the young generation. Because this is what it's all about, isn't it? We thought we'd partner with SOAS. And we awarded a Noor prize for a dissertation for a postgraduate student. And last year, we gave our first award. So this year, we are, I'm very proud to announce that the recipient of the Noorinaith Khan Dissertation Award is Natasha Pagarani. She isn't here, but she sent us a little clip. So have a look. I wrote my dissertation about the new mental health bill that will shortly be enacted into law in India. In my research, I focused on the ways in which mental health laws have been used to remove the personal liberties of women who are deemed by others to not conform to feminine behaviour and not to be fulfilling their gender roles in society. I wanted to emphasise that this does not only happen to some other woman and is not limited to the spaces within health institutions. Rather, it permeates throughout every woman's interactions in public and private spaces and affects how a woman thinks by herself within her own mind. So I really think that the struggle to secure the rights of women and men who may be affected at some point in their lives by mental health laws is integral to the wider goal of making society a more accepting place where everyone can have the freedom to flourish in their own ways. I have now been in India for the past couple of months working for a foundation that gives grants to NGOs that specifically work with people on the margins of society. And I really thank the Noorinaith Khan Trust for having established this award because I can't emphasise enough how encouraging is to receive this prize at this critical stage as I put into practice some of the perspectives and ideas I've gained through my time at SARS. So thank you so much and I hope everyone has a lovely evening. Thank you. It's wonderful to see students, you know, benefiting from this and Noor's legacy sort of carrying on. And so to come to today's main event, the first of the Liberté series of talks. Now why Liberté? Because this is what Noorinaith Khan shouted when the SS officer, a very sadistic man, pointed his gun at her forehead and executed her. She went down screaming Liberté so he could not defeat her spirit. Today we live in troubled times. Religious fundamentalism is on the rise. Walls are being built against refugees. And let's not forget Noor was a refugee when she came from France. She joined all the refugees and came to Britain and volunteered for the war effort. Well, communities are being divided. Free speech is taking a bantering. Now more than ever, the principles that Noorinaith Khan stood for, peace, religious harmony and freedom are becoming more relevant. As far right groups, as neo-Nazi groups rise across Europe, it's time to remember that Noor made the ultimate sacrifice of her life fighting against fascism. And who today can capture Noor's spirit of seeking freedom and justice? Then our speaker this evening, Vrinda Grover. Vrinda has been in the forefront of the struggle for human rights in India. She's fought for women's rights, for the voiceless and the underprivileged. In her position as an advocate of the Supreme Court of India, she has helped write law, was active in the change of law following the Delhi rape case, and has been listed by Time magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world. Vrinda lives in Delhi and it's a rare privilege and an honour to be able to welcome her today to deliver the first Noorinaith Khan Memorial Talk, the Liberté series in this august surrounding. Charing this event will be another fiery woman. Yes, we are very partial to our women. Journalist Razia Iqbal. Razia, where are you? Razia needs no introduction in the UK. You have all seen her on BBC television. You've heard her on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service tackling all the important issues of the day. So ladies and gentlemen, let's put our hand together for a very warm London so-as welcome for Vrinda Grover and Razia Iqbal. Welcome. The way this is going to go this evening, well first of all, thank you everyone for coming. It's fantastic to see such a full lecture hall. Vrinda is going to speak for about 45 minutes and then I'm going to ask her some questions and then you're going to get the chance to ask some questions. So I know it's a big lecture hall but we're going to try and make this as intimate as possible. Vrinda, thank you. While she's making her way to the podium, you can turn your phones off, that would be amazing. Good evening everyone. It is indeed an honour and privilege to be here to address all of you on the occasion of the Noor in Ayat Khan first memorial lecture. I congratulate the Noor trust and so-as on this very important collaboration and a special thank you to Shrabanee for introducing me, as I'm sure many of you, to Noor through her book, A Spy Princess. So why would we be talking of Noor today and how would I see the lecture today in the context of who Noor was, what she stood for and what was the spirit of Noor. I would see Noor as somebody who in a very strategic and determined way resisted fascism and eventually was killed for the principles that she stood for and what I'm going to try and do today is to actually map a few cases and detail them for you. These cases are cases that I've personally or campaigns that I've personally been involved in, either as a litigator or as an activist and I would also see these women actually in many ways as carrying forward the legacy of Noor and as being those who carry the spirit and the courage and the conviction that Noor has embodied. As Shrabanee mentioned, yes, these are difficult times, they are troubled times, perhaps across the globe, definitely in India. My talk will obviously be located only in India but I think it has resonance across the world today and I think we also need in order to keep our own work moving forward, we need role models, we need icons, we need women role models and I think Noor provides us that hope and that courage with which we can look forward. There is a lot of discussion, reportage today on what is happening in the US and what are the new policies that are coming out, what are the executive orders that are coming out, there is a source of much debate and discussion. So as would probably not be the correct place to say this because there is an avid interest in South Asia here but I think it would be important and it would be necessary for a greater curiosity from the global North towards the global South, both because there are many things that are happening across continents where governments and states are working together and perhaps we need to also be forming different kinds of alliances to be together in this and therefore I will today talk of some of the cases that I think have reason to be discussed in terms of what are the, where are women at the forefront of human rights struggles in India. I also say this because I think very often when we look from the outside we see women only as victims and we see them as those upon whom violence has been inflicted. In my own capacity as a lawyer I have found that whenever a woman has stepped forward even if it is to take a case to court I have never and cannot think of it as a passive act of a victim. I think it is a moment where that woman has taken a step to challenge many hurdles as well as to stake her claim to rights and justice and I think we therefore need to view those women very differently. So I'm going to through this also try to see what is the tension that exists between democracy and different kinds of issues that are emerging. Impunity of course is a running theme but impunity also changes its its contours it's not the same and I think we need to recognize the difference in order to be able to have an appropriate response to it. India claims itself to be the largest democracy while the US claims itself to be the greatest democracy and you know those are those are claims that are made at least by the government of India every time it has anything to answer in the Human Rights Council or any in any such international fora. I think being largest is more a descriptive phrase rather than any particular attribute that we can attach to it. We're also living in a time where and in I speak this definitely from our experience of many many years in India where hate works. Hate wins and I think there is a challenge today to the form of electoral democracy and I'm not for a moment suggesting that we abandon it but I am suggesting that we question it where polarization and engineering and mobilization of hate between communities in India for certain will win elections hands down and it's not something new that has happened with this government. In 1984 with the anti-seek massacre the congress government at that time under Rajiv Gandhi won a majority in the Indian parliament that has never ever been won by a single party. In Gujarat post the 2002 anti-Muslim program the Narendra Modi government who was then the chief minister of Gujarat won two successive elections. I'm now going to come to a case of seven women from the state of Uttar Pradesh which is a state in the north of India close to Delhi where I live. As India was going to the 2014 general elections once again the tried and tested method of polarization, mobilization of hate and communal writing and communal violence was adopted and it did yield the desired results and therefore I think we need to think very carefully that what is the relationship between electoral democracy and communal communalism and communal violence. September 2013 in western Uttar Pradesh which is two districts majorly a district called Muzaffar Nagar a largely rural district where large-scale writing began in early September 2013. It was the dominant Jat Hindu community which attacked the Muslim community in the rural areas. It resulted in perhaps the largest conflict driven rural displacement where about 500,000 people were overnight rendered homeless and a very large ghetto of only Muslims today exists in certain parts of western Uttar Pradesh and only Hindus in the villages where which were the ancestral homes of these Muslim families also. As has now been seen and documented as part of this kind of communal violence we see a targeting of the bodies of women both in a sexualized way as well as the humiliation of the of the entire community to whom they belong or from where they come. This has been seen across communal riots and has now even led to convictions to establish that yes it is for that there is a feature of communal violence where women's bodies are targeted. What we did see in September 2013 is that at least seven of these women and many many more were gang raped and the article whose the picture we see here actually documents these gang rapes but seven of them came forward and said they wanted to go to court against the men who had raped them. When these women came to my office it was a very different experience and I would like to believe that there were echoes of what happened in December 2012 and I mean the protests that took over and the large-scale protests by women and young people and others seeking a change and the cry for justice which followed the brutal gang rape of a young woman in Delhi. When those women came these are uneducated women from rural backgrounds they all came with their husbands. When they sat and told me what had happened the husband sat beside her which was very unusual I had not seen this happen. The husband said he was going to support her. When we talk about breaking silence removing stigma one could see that turn taking place and perhaps the echoes of what was happening in Delhi had reached even in rural areas and I say this because I think somewhere in the global imagination we have you know there's talk about rape and sexual violence but it's confined only in certain kinds of contours when people look at India and people look at Delhi. These women filed FIRs in which they named the men. These men were not faceless namelabs mobs who come during a communal riot. They knew the men the men belong to their village these were men with whom they had had economic and social relations. Six of the women were from the same village not that women from other villages were not gang raped they were all cases of gang rape but even here it's because they knew each other they gave confidence to each other to come forward and report it's very difficult to be in a refugee status as an internally displaced person and then to go out and go to the go to the police station and lodge a complaint. The fact that they were in a group which knew each other helped them move forward. I filed a writ in the Supreme Court of India and we did find the Supreme Court being attentive. I would not say that they were sensitive I think the Supreme Court like many other courts needs to work much more on understanding what feminist jurisprudence is but it was attentive. It was attentive because post December 2012 the issue of sexual violence on women had dominated the public discourse. The court gave some relief the court gave ask for statements to be recorded before a magistrate as per law. One of the women's FIR the first information report had not been recorded the court directed that for the first time in India without even the chart sheet having been filed compensation was given monetary compensation which is a not a substitute for reparation but it was a very small step forward because usually women when they make a claim an accusation of rape they're seen as liars and therefore compensation is not given till the end of a trial and security was given. No arrests were made. A very peculiar statement was made on behalf of the state that every time the police went to the village to arrest the accused the women and children of the village stood in front and wouldn't let the police arrest them. I don't remember I can show you many many visuals of the Indian police. I don't remember them being helpless. It was only after the directions of the Supreme Court that the first few arrests were made almost a year passed and no chart sheet was filed. I went back to the Supreme Court and filed a contempt petition in September of 2014. The law incidentally in India when it was changed in 2013 said that once a chart sheet is filed a rape trial will be over in two months. We didn't have a chart sheet again as soon as the contempt petition was filed the state moved and the chart sheets were filed. A provision that was brought in through the Criminal Law Amendment Act 2013 about which we don't talk enough a new provision was added of rape during communal or sectarian violence recognizing that this is a kind of sexual violence that is perpetrated in India. It's a powerful section which creates a rebuttable presumption against the accused if a woman can show that there was sexual intercourse and that she was raped during a communal violence then the question of consent would not emerge in those circumstances. So if the woman would step into the witness box and testify the chances of the man being convicted for rape during communal violence are fairly good and then began the whole process of intimidation threats coercion pressure on the women. Elders of the community were in conversation with each other in which of course the women had no part to play. I went to court I remember this is a trial court in Muzaffar Nagar it's about a three and a half hour run by road from Delhi. It's a very quaint old building which is turned into a district court and although three and a half hours away from Delhi you would imagine that the law is different where very basic premises like having an in-camera proceeding that the there are other people are not present in the courtroom when the woman testifies or that her identity is not disclosed was not at all the legal process in fact they put the photograph of the woman on the file just in case you don't you can't guess and it's a it's a penal offence in India to disclose the identity of the woman unless she wishes to. For the first time perhaps in all over almost 28 years of my practice as a lawyer I asked for police protection when I went there because if you were to visit Muzaffar Nagar it would not take you very long to imagine that just somebody will stroll in and if they don't like what the witness is saying they will just use a gun and get rid of you and this is not an imagination I'm not given to be fearful or alarmist these are things that are reported in the paper about what happens there and particularly when you are up against a very powerful dominant community I went to court with the woman who was ready to testify her case had reached the stage of evidence and on a very flimsy ground an adjournment was sought by the accused I pleaded with the court and said these are delaying tactics there is pressure on the woman please do not allow an adjournment we filed an affidavit of hers where she stated that I'm under pressure there are threats being brought on my family I want to testify at the earliest the court adjourned the matter we went back the next month and the same excuse was used by the accused and we again pleaded and she herself said please record my evidence the law says you must record her evidence if she has come to court the court again adjourned the matter when it came up in October of 2015 she did not contact me she went to court and she said yes I was gang raped during the communal riot but I can't recognize the men who did it it is not a case of constant of institutional apathy that we are watching here these are cases of institutional complicity and I think that is where the legal system will now have to give answers these women state everything including the lives of their children and themselves in order to go to court and it was extremely unusual for women from there to step forward and demand justice there is one case which still survives one woman died in childbirth before she could testify out of the six cases two cases have resulted in acquittals one woman is still fighting her case in order to ensure that she's not threatened and she's not coerced into resiling from her statement we have relocated her outside the state of Uttar Pradesh I have filed a transfer petition for her case to be transferred to some other district so that she can go there and depose and I think it's important to understand that it's not easy for these people to approach the court where do you get the resources to go to the supreme court of India for a to file a petition and then to file a contemplation it seems as though the law seems to assume that they will be able to fight their case and I know that in India at least the UNDP spends a lot of money on what has been called millions of rupees have been spent on what is called access to justice which I think is a complete misnomer what we're talking about is access to courts justice is another matter here but even that access to courts is not available a special public prosecutor was appointed in this case in all riot related cases acquittals have taken place including in murder cases the special public prosecutor is now being examined on charges of corruption a designated fast track court was set up these are demands that we make a special investigation cell was constituted the designated fast track court did not have a judge for more than six months if this is the manner in which the system is going to respond then we will not see women coming forward it is not a burden for women to carry to go to a system that is inaccessible that is hostile to them and why I'm talking about these cases is also because everybody is only obsessed and talks about that one gang rape case of December 2012 I am not in any way saying that that's not an important case to talk about but I we should make it the benchmark of what should be made available to women and not treat it as the exception and the media does that all the time including global media I don't remember any politician talking about these women and their right to justice even as everybody uses the issue of sexual violence against women in India as a point in a speech or as a slogan but until we are going to be able to break the very false dichotomy that exists between what we call ordinary times rape and extraordinary times rape I don't think we are going to get justice in either of them because the system does not change when in an extraordinary time the the FIR is not lodged or the medical evidence is not collected the same policeman does not acquire a different sensibility or skill when we talk of the ordinary times of rape I'm now going to move to a very different part of India which holds a very special place which holds a very special place for me and that is Chhattisgarh because I learned a lot of my political lawyering at Chhattisgarh it's been the the birthplace of very very significant movements but today in Chhattisgarh what we see is a very targeted attack on Adivasis who are the indigenous populations who are resisting the acquisition of their natural resources there are very many women and women defenders and women activists academics lawyers journalists as well as women from the indigenous population who are leading these protests the picture you see here is of a woman called Soni Sori who first had to suffer I remember when I met her for the first time I was told she has been arrested she was she had rushed to Delhi escaped to Delhi to file a case before the supreme court saying she's going to be implicated in false cases before she could move the court she was arrested by the police and produced when I went to represent her she said to me don't let them take me to Chhattisgarh I am willing to go to jail in Delhi don't allow them to take me the law doesn't allow you that she was taken she was sexually tortured stones were inserted into her private parts which was confirmed by a government hospital her petition saying that this was done under a very senior police officer has yet to be disposed of by the supreme court of India the senior police officer in who she accused was in the meanwhile given the president's gallantry award she then became a leader in her own right implicated in seven cases has been acquitted in six of them and is today in Bastar exposing all manner of human rights violations from extrajudicial killings to rapes women activists have gone into the interiors of the villages and what is happening here today is that because there is a resistance one resistance which is of the population and one resistance which is an armed Maoist resistance therefore in order to have a counterinsurgency operation you have a very very large force security forces being present there in search and cordon operations rapes killings are normal courts are silent because courts perhaps think they should be pragmatic and national security concerns concerns of growth economic growth must overwhelm them and they should allow the state and security forces to do their work in january this year there was a small breakthrough when the national human rights commission finally responded to complaints filed for over a year by saying yes women have been raped by security forces confirmed by their investigation that there are civil vigilante mobs which are working in tandem with the administration particularly the police and these these people were targeting all the women whose names are here one is an academic another is a lawyer and manish kunjab is again an adivasi leader all of whom except for sony sori and manish kunjab who belong to the area were forced forced to leave and threatened that they would be harm would be brought to them and it was only after a lot of protest as the as the poster says on 30th of january this year that finally the police officer the inspector general of police of the area was asked to proceed on long leave because all the accusations made by the activists were against him i for one as a lawyer failed to understand that how can proceed on long leave be any form of penalty to anybody we are talking about the inspector general of police of an area who has been accused of murder of rape extrajudicial killings and all that he's asked to do is to proceed on long leave because the morale of the security forces must be upheld while the morale of the citizens is totally ruined. Bela Bhatia has gone back to Bastar and she has said she will not leave she's an academic she did her phd from Cambridge she says she will stay there she will document the violations and she will not leave this is a press conference that was held there's professor Nandini Sundar again a very very renowned academic whose works extensively against whom murder charges have been lodged by the same police officer i'm going to move to extrajudicial killings don't take place only in Bastar they take place in many parts of India and they were not invented by the Modi government the congress earlier every state government and central government has used them it was used against the nuxals in the state of Andhra Pradesh against the nuxals in the state of West Bengal and against the Sikh militants in the state of Punjab in the 80s but i'm going to refer to one case because i think we need to talk about it this is the case of a young woman whose picture we see there ishrat jahan murdered in June of 2004 the details are all available i have a very long interview given to a web magazine called the wire i'm short of time so i'm not going to go into the details suffice it to say that there were a series of encounters this is a term that we love it it has no meaning in law but we use it all the time a series of encounters in India particularly in the state of Gujarat where Muslims were targeted and killed investigations monitored by the court showed that this too was a fake encounter which means it was a murder four people killed by the Gujarat very senior Gujarat police officers the investigation records statements of police officers who can be the only eyewitness to this saying that yes these people were taken into illegal detention held for two days and then killed in cold blood i represent the mother of ishrat jahan shamima kosser shamima kosser is a very poor woman she has seven children to bring up her husband died when her the day her daughter was killed she was so poor she did not have a television in her house and when journalists arrived she couldn't understand what they were talking about this daughter had stepped up to earn she would usually take tuitions it was summer vacation time so she had taken a job outside in june 2004 the daughter was killed and in august 2004 shamima kosser filed a rich petition saying i know my daughter is not a terrorist and i want to know who killed her and why and who ever has killed her must be punished i have never understood and i believe that there is no you there's no it's not rationality that can explain the courage of someone like shamima kosser knowing fully well that she was taking on very powerful policemen and police officers in gujarat the investigation then led and of course at that time then the trail has gone cold further investigation has not happened and the timing of it explains it all it showed that the intelligence bureau officers were involved they have also been charge sheeted but the trail also hinted very clearly and this is evidence on record i speak from the charge sheet that the then chief minister of gujarat and the home minister of gujarat who are now the prime minister and the president of the ruling party gave the final nod for this killing this happened in 2004 the trial has not begun yet all the police officers who were arrested have been enlarged on bail i arrived here on fourth and third february i'd moved a petition in the supreme court one of the accused has now been made the director general of police of gujarat all the witnesses in this case are subordinate police officers i wouldn't hold my breath to figure out where this case would go but if you speak to shamima kosser she says i'm waiting for justice i want to know who killed my daughter how does the state respond to this there is not even an attempt being made anymore to say this is not a staged encounter or a fake encounter we are told she was a terrorist and so she was eliminated and that's not something that is peculiar to india i think that's happening in many many parts of the world now and we are allowing fear anxiety to actually allow us to agree to these arguments so we are to ask that and and all kinds of very very dubious evidence which i don't have time and if if during the the conversation i can read out some of that as to how do we know that she's a terrorist all investigation has exonerated her from having any terror links whatsoever and if that doesn't sway the public mood we are told what was this unmarried young woman doing with three men in a car if an unmarried young woman is seen in a car with three men i think she should be shot dead that comes from a party that gives the slogan and i was asked this on the radio by a caller two days ago yesterday gives the slogan beti bachao beti palhao which means save the daughter educate the daughter as a matter of fact she was not in a car with three men she was in a car with one man with whom she was working and that's what working women do they go out i don't think i have time so maybe when during the conversation i would have only wanted to mention one more woman who's also called the iron lady of kashmir in kashmir not only do we have laws of colonial origin which perpetuate the power and privilege of the armed forces but also the immunity and the impunity that it it engenders parvina hangar's young son was disappeared in 1991 by security forces a judicial inquiry names three army officers she filed a writ in the kashmir high court and the court said yes these men must be prosecuted the government of india with the power that it has under a law called the armed forces special powers act and other laws which actually give the same immunity said that they were not giving sanction to prosecute uh those army officers and since then she turned her grief into a movement and in 1994 since 1994 she has got together all parents wives children of those who have been disappeared and they have formed an organization called the association of parents of disappeared persons and they're seeking that their children be returned the convention against enforced disappearances be ratified and enforced disappearances be made a crime so that it can be probed into at the moment all the complaints are lodged either as missing or abduction or kidnapping and in the official archive there is gradual erasure of the crime of enforced disappearances i will end here by only adding that in india the threat to fundamental freedoms and civil liberties is very very severe it's not just those who are targeted but lawyers activists are being targeted either through laws like the fcr a or through implicating them in false criminal cases and there is a determined effort to silence those who will dissent and to silence those who will oppose and who will uphold civil liberties there's much talk across the globe today of the executive ban order of trump and it is being opposed and the courts have said that they will not allow for this ban at least for the moment let's see what happens in the appeals courts in the Lok Sabha the indian government has just introduced an amendment to the citizenship act it says that if hindus christians jans seeks buddhists from any of the three neighboring countries which is pakistan bangladesh uh of gallistan were to want to come to india and stay there and be naturalized as citizens they will not be called illegal migrants the time period for their naturalization will be halved because india should be the home where people who originally were hindus should all be allowed to come back in the indian subcontinent in south asia there are other persecuted very severely persecuted minorities like the rohingya muslims the amadiyas this will not be available to them the conceptualization of the nation as belonging to one religion to one race which is pure and this is the motherland the the the idea of india as opposed to the hindu rastra is being slipped in and somewhere the story of india's economic growth which as the adivasis of chattis kar would tell you is on there is being built on their corpses is not evoking the kind of critique and criticism that it should and at this juncture we need to have alliances globally to go back to noor noor was opposing fascism because it was wrong and she said that after that she may well go back to seeking the liberty for india and i think this is a juncture when globally we will have to decide what are the alliances against this form of and fascism may not come back in the same uniform but it will come in very different ways and different uh incarnations and how do we stand up together and oppose them and carry forward like these brave women the legacy of noor thank you very much