Hi Praveenp,
First of all, thanks for your courage to bring this incident openly in the mailing list. This was one of the most disturbing news from last year. The overall incident of how Siddique was arrested and charged for sedition while trying to report a gang rape case, how he was treated in the prison and in the hospital was extremely distressing.
I personally always felt that individual Wikimedia volunteers are always in an extremely vulnerable position. There is no legal support system present in the Indian Wikimedia ecosystem to safeguard or prevent Wikimedia volunteers from being harrassed by state or charged or arrested for any controversial content present on Wikipedia. Although Sidheeq was not charged for anything related to his Wikimedia work and to some people, maybe his arrest has nothing to do with the Wikimedia community, but it gives us a chance to think, what happens if this kind of incident happens to any one of us with respect to any controversial content present on any Wikimedia sites. I strongly feel that we need to build a good legal support system sustainable enough to help volunteers in distress anytime anywhere in India; the scope of such a support system can be defined or discussed, but something should be there.
At present, as volunteers, we are so helpless that we can only pray that everything will be fine someday automagically, but that is just to console ourselves. The fact is we are too powerless to condemn the incident or issue a statement or even bring this topic to the mailing list. Personally, I feel helpless like everyone else. I just hope that someday this discussion will help build a legal support system whom we can approach while in distress.
Regards, Bodhisattwa
On Sun, May 9, 2021, 08:56 Abhinav srivastava abhinav619@gmail.com wrote:
I pray for User:Sidheeq speedy recovery. Having known and worked with him. This is deeply concerning.
On Sun, 9 May 2021, 01:36 praveenp, me.praveen@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Indian Wikimedians,
As many of you may have known, one of our fellow Wikimedian was arrested by Uttar Pradesh Police in October 2020. His name is Siddique Kappan (His wikimedia username is User:Sidheeq). He is from Kerala, and he was active in Wikimedia projects (mainly in Malayalam Wikipedia) until his arrest.
Incidently he is a journalist and he was arrested from the home of Hathras rape and murder victim while reporting the victim Dalit girl's family members. UP Police has slapped Sedition, Terrorism as well as UAPA charges against him.
Kappen is diabetic and now COVID positive. He was admitted to hospital only after he collapsed in the jail cell. With his deteriorating health, it was accused that Kappan was chained to hospital bed like an animal. Today's news reports say that he is in critical condition. (You could always google "Siddique Kappan")
As a tone deaf people I don't expect anything from this mail, I just wish to share the information.
Stay Inside, Stay Complementary (non-critical), Stay safe, Stay healthy.
User:Praveenp
Siddique's en.wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sidheeq _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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