Campaigns

Covid 19 pandemic created a lot of issues for the poor and marginalised communities, especially the Dalits. The extent of discrimination and violence on the Dalits and other marginalised communities increased exponentially during the lockdown. Accessing justice has become even more difficult: during the atrocities, the police and administration did not take any action or were negligent to their duties right from registration of FIR, arresting the accused, investigation in the case. There was also no possibility of the Police providing protection to the complainant and the affected Dalits. On the other side, there were incidents where the Dalits faced police brutality leading to serious injuries and also deaths. There were dominant castes and representatives of political parties who also framed false cases against Dalits. Sexual violence against Dalit women and girls continued even during the pandemic. There are cases where young Dalit women and girls were not even provided proper medical treatment. We, Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network are trying to bring light on these very cases through our report of 60 cases of atrocity that happened during the pandemic lockdown. To aid the report and bring awareness around the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989; we are launching a social media campaign called #LockdownCasteAtrocities presenting 30 atrocity cases from the report in 30 days with 30 different artists. The mainstream media is not inclusive in nature; it did not give importance to issues related to marginalised communities in India. But social media provides a great platform to marginalised communities to express the community’s concerns, issues, and reach more people. And this is an attempt from our end to educate, agitate and organise!