Jail
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Police officers stand outside the house of Peru’s former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski after a judge ordered Kuczynski to ten days in jail in connection with a money-laundering investigation, in Lima, Peru April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Guadalupe Pardo
April 10, 2019
LIMA (Reuters) – A judge ordered Peru’s former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to 10 days in jail in connection with a money-laundering investigation, according to a judicial resolution.
Police officers were standing by outside Kuczynski’s home in Lima’s financial district, a Reuters witness said.
Kuczynski could not immediately be reached for comment. He has previously denied any wrongdoing in a case related to Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which has admitted to bribing politicians across Latin America.
(Reporting By Mitra Taj and Guadalupe Pardo; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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An inmate is seen in the central penitentiary in Porto Alegre, Brazil August 28, 2018. Picture taken August 28, 2018. REUTERS/Diego Vara
April 10, 2019
By Gabriel Stargardter
PORTO ALEGRE (Reuters) – Before Brazilian prosecutors could conduct an inspection last year of the prison considered the country’s worst, its warden had to clear their visit with the jail’s de facto authorities: in-house prison gangs.
As Brazil’s incarcerated population has surged eight-fold in three decades to around 750,000 inmates, the world’s third-highest tally, its prison gangs have come to wield vast power that reaches far beyond the jailhouse walls.
New President Jair Bolsonaro’s vow to crack down on spiraling crime has put him on a collision course with the jail gangs. In a strategy detailed to Reuters for the first time, top security officials said they plan to isolate gang bosses, ramp up surveillance, build more lockups and deploy federal forces to beleaguered state prison systems.
Originally formed to protect inmates and advocate for better conditions, Brazil’s prison gangs are now involved in bank heists, drug trafficking and gun-running, with jailed kingpins presiding over their empires via smuggled cellphones.
Their spread has kindled a violent crime wave, turning Brazil into the world’s murder capital. With a record 64,000 people killed in 2017, the prison gangs, or “facções,” have become the country’s most pressing security concern, and a daunting foe for Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain.
“The solution to public security in Brazil depends on lots of things, and one of those is the prison system,” said Fabiano Bordignon, Bolsonaro’s appointment as head of the National Penitentiary Department.
Bordignon, in an interview, said Brazil’s roughly 1,500 jails need about 350,000 more spaces to house prisoners. He plans to use a 1.5 billion reais ($396 million) federal prison fund to help state governments build between 10,000 and 20,000 spaces this year.
By the end of Bolsonaro’s term in 2022, Bordignon hopes to lower the deficit by up to 140,000 spaces. But with each new space costing an average of 50,000 reais, he knows he needs more money: “We’re not going to be able to solve everything in four years,” he said.
Still, authorities must “retake control” of Brazil’s jails, he added, since “in a good number of them, the state has no control.”
BRAZIL’S WORST
Nowhere is that reality starker than the Central Prison in the southern city of Porto Alegre. Inaugurated in 1959, it is Brazil’s largest lockup, and, according to a 2015 congressional report, also its worst.
When investigators from the National Council of the Public Ministry came to inspect the prison last year, its warden told them he had to first okay it with gang leaders, according to the investigators’ report.
The prison has a capacity of 1,824 people, but when Reuters visited, officials said there were nearly 5,000 inmates from at least eight different gangs stuffed into its moldy galleys – more than the entire prison population of Norway.
Internally, the prison is controlled by the facções, whose members live in rancid, densely packed cellblocks that armed guards only enter in riot gear. In one gang-controlled wing, some 300 inmates lived in a space designed for 200, with many sleeping in the corridor.
Roughly 30 percent of the jail’s population is more-or-less illiterate, and dozens of prisoners suffer from tuberculosis and syphilis, officials in the jail’s educational and medical wings said. In the exercise yard, which inmates share with rats and cockroaches, raw sewage gurgles out of broken pipes.
The gangs offer protection from rape and rival crews, but it comes at a steep price. Inmates here must buy their food from their bosses, who even control inmates’ intimate visits.
During Reuters’ tour, a gang boss smoked impassively as inmates filed in and out of a foul corridor, where they snuggled with girlfriends, wives or prostitutes on stained mattresses. Every so often, the boss called out a prisoner’s name to indicate his time was up.
Herique Junior Da Rocha Machado cast his lot with the prison’s 780 working inmates, who cook, clean and wash. The orange-clad workers are housed apart from the facções, but are reviled for collaborating with their jailers.
“If you don’t go into the workers wing, you go in with the facções. Then, when you return to the street, you end up falling back into crime,” said Machado, who was jailed for his role in a kidnapping. “The situation only deteriorates.”
FRESH LEGISLATION
Elected in October on a law-and-order platform to end years of graft and rising violence, Bolsonaro and his government must now pit their tough talk against the gangs.
To restore order, Bolsonaro has tapped Justice Minister Sergio Moro, a former judge who made his name jailing scores of Brazil’s political and business elite in the sweeping “Car Wash” corruption investigation.
In February, Moro unveiled his signature crime-fighting bill, which includes proposals to toughen prison sentences and isolate gang leaders in maximum-security lockups.
Moro’s proposal faces an uncertain future in Congress, where Bolsonaro is struggling to marshal a stable coalition.
Even if Moro’s bill flounders, Bordignon said the government plans to make it harder for cell phones to enter prisons, toughen recruitment of guards and launch a ranking system to help the federal government focus resources on failing jails.
He also expressed willingness during the interview to dispatch federal forces to states losing control of their prisons.
In January, Bolsonaro’s government sent federal agents to calm the northeastern state of Ceará, which suffered a wave of coordinated gang attacks after state authorities announced plans to toughen prison conditions.
The following month, the government struck another blow against the gangs by moving several leaders of Sao Paulo’s powerful First Capital Command (PCC), including top kingpin Marcos Willians Camacho, or “Marcola,” into federal jails.
Reuters visited the federal jail in Brasilia where Marcola and several other PCC leaders are being held.
Opened late last year at a cost of 45 million reais ($12 million) and modeled after a famous U.S. supermax prison in Colorado, the Brasilia jail has 208 individual cells, with 12 extra-secure ones for inmates such as Marcola.
High-risk prisoners are locked up for 22 hours each day, exercising for two hours in a small yard adjacent to their cell. Intimate visits are prohibited, and authorities recently put a stop to physical contact between inmates and their relatives or lawyers. Conversations now occur via telephone, with inmates separated from visitors by a hard plastic window.
“The federal penitentiaries are the most effective tool today to combat organized crime in Brazil,” said Marcelo Stona, director of operations for the National Penitentiary Department.
NEW JAILS, SAME PROBLEMS
Nonetheless, Brazil has just five federal jails, all built since 2006, with capacity for just over 1,000 inmates – about 0.1 percent of the current prison population.
Like Porto Alegre’s Central prison, the vast majority of Brazil’s jails are run by financially stretched state governments, often with patchy results. Overcrowded cell blocks are policed by underpaid guards and deadly riots are common.
At least 56 inmates were killed in the northern city of Manaus in 2017, when members of rival prison gangs began slaughtering each other. Many were decapitated and dismembered.
Brazil’s states have made efforts to build modern, “gang-free” jails, but they, too, are proving vulnerable.
Unveiled in 2016, the Canoas jail is just over 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Porto Alegre’s Central Prison, but feels a world away. The Rio Grande do Sul state government hand-picks inmates to preserve the jail’s integrity. Signal-blockers prevent cellphone use. Eight-man cells, opened remotely from the floor above, minimize the risks of guards being corrupted.
Yet despite those efforts, two prisoners died here in suspicious circumstances in the second half of 2018, and local officials have become alarmed as other overcrowded state prisons send their gang-affiliated inmates to fill up Canoas’ vacancies.
“If we keep doing more of the same … we’re going to lose everything,” said state prosecutor Alexander Guterres Thomé, who regularly inspects the Canoas jail. “You see that (the gangs) are starting to organize themselves in there. They want to enter, create chaos and take control.”
($1 = 3.87 reais)
(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Brad Haynes and Paul Thomasch)
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FILE PHOTO – Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison reacts during the APEC CEO Summit 2018 at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 17 November 2018. Fazry Ismail/Pool via REUTERS
April 10, 2019
By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s government proposed on Wednesday to criminalise some actions of animal rights protesters after activists blocked traffic in Melbourne and stormed farms and abattoirs this week to protest factory farming.
The new law proposed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison is unusual, legal experts say, because it appears to be a specific response to the actions of a vegan activist group, AussieFarms.
The group has posted an interactive map online of animal businesses, including farms, zoos and horse racing tracks, to promote a documentary film that calls for a ban on slaughterhouses.
Under the new law, people who encourage trespassers by posting the location of an agricultural business on the Internet could face up to a year in prison if found guilty, the government said.
“When they are using people’s personal information, details about their homes, it’s not just their farm, it’s their home, it’s where their kids live and grow up,” Morrison told reporters in the rural state of Tasmania.
“They are being targeted in the most mercenary way by an organisation that can only think of itself and not think to the real damage that is being done to the livelihoods of these hard-working Australians,” he added.
Australia is due to hold an election in May and most polls predict Morrison will lose, partly due to a drift of rural voters to other conservative parties.
Traffic stopped for an hour in central Melbourne on Monday when about 100 protesters waved signs to promote the AussieFarms documentary, Dominion, which used drones and undercover footage to film feedlots and saleyards. [nL3N21Q1B8]
It was part of a wave of action in three states, where activists targeted abattoirs in the middle of the night and at some farms chained themselves to equipment.
Hugh de Kretser, executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, said there were laws in place that limited the actions of environmental campaigners, including a ban on trespassing.
“There’s a suite of powers available to police and law enforcement agencies to deal with trespass and obstruction of traffic and the like,” de Kretser told Reuters.
“Any attempts to further limit protest rights need to be very carefully scrutinised to make sure any penalty is not crushing, and the scope of any offence is not disproportionate to the conduct they’re trying to prevent,” he added.
Chris Delforce, the director of Dominion, said he would rather go to jail than take down the group’s website.
“All we’re trying to do is enforce transparency on these industries,” he told Reuters by telephone. “Whatever happens to me cannot compare to what’s happening to animals.”
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; editing by Darren Schuettler)
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FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump closes his eyes in prayer along with Pastor Andrew Brunson, after his release from two years of Turkish detention, in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, U.S., October 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Theiler/File Photo
April 9, 2019
By Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two U.S. senators on Tuesday introduced a bipartisan bill requiring the imposition of sanctions on Turkish officials responsible for the detentions of U.S. citizens and local consulate staff in Turkey, a statement on the legislation said.
The bill, introduced by Republican Senator Roger Wicker and Democrat Ben Cardin, also calls on President Donald Trump to urge Turkey to respect for the fundamental freedoms, saying thousands were victims of politically-motivated prosecution.
“The Turkish government’s false imprisonment of Americans and Turkish citizens employed by the United States in Turkey is a gross violation of their human rights,” Senator Cardin said in the statement. “Our bill makes clear that the United States will not tolerate years of Turkish recalcitrance on these cases.”
The detention of U.S. consulate workers and American citizens is one of many issues dividing NATO allies Ankara and Washington, also at loggerheads over Syria policy and Turkey’s planned purchase of Russian missile defenses.
Their detentions prompted Washington in October 2017 to suspend all non-immigrant visa applications from the country, triggering a reciprocal move from Ankara that contributed to a deep crisis in bilateral ties.
The bill introduced Tuesday would require the U.S. administration to impose sanctions on all senior Turkish officials responsible for the “wrongful” detentions of U.S. citizens and staff, including barring the officials from travel to the United States and freezing any U.S. assets.
Turkey has detained tens of thousands of people following a failed coup in July 2016, saying they were linked with the network of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Islamic cleric blamed by Ankara for orchestrating the putsch.
U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson was among those jailed in the aftermath of the coup. He was released last October.
“While the Turkish government made a step in the right direction with the release of Pastor Andrew Brunson last October, more needs to be done for Turkey to show good faith and act like a NATO ally,” said Republican Senator Thom Tillis, one of six original sponsors of Tuesday’s bill.
Serkan Golge, a dual Turkish-U.S. citizen, was found guilty of being a member of an armed terrorist organization earlier this year and sentenced to seven years, six months in prison.
Three other Turkish citizens who were working at the U.S. consulates in Turkey have been under investigation or jailed over similar charges.
A Turkish court last month ruled that one of the consular workers, Metin Topuz, a translator and fixer in Istanbul, should remain in jail until his trial resumes in June.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Tom Brown)
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Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz has been writing love letters from jail to a woman overseas, with the twisted mass murder proposing marriage, pondering having children, writing about dying and discussing naming his children after guns.
One thing Cruz does not write about: the 17 people he killed after opening fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The 20-year-old said it “would be a bad idea,” to bring up the Feb. 14 Parkland shootings in his letters, but he was prepared to talk about every other topic with the young woman from the United Kingdom identified as Miley, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which obtained 46 pages of Cruz’s handwritten letters from the Broward State Attorney’s Office.
In his letters, Cruz reveals how the “really wants kids” and constantly thinks about it and “the joy they bring.” If he had sons, they would be named Kalashnikov, Makarov, and Remington, all of which are references to guns.
Cruz, who is facing the death penalty or life in prison, according to CNN, also speaks about dying in his letters.
“I wish life for me could have been different but it’s not. And a part of me is wishing it ends,” he wrote, according to the Sun-Sentinel. “End with the death [penalty], letting someone inject me with longlast sleep. It’s kind of what I want, but I’m unsure of myself, so I’m just letting people save me from myself, saving me from something that I can never return from.”
However, his letters also contain an element of hope as he ponders his freedom and settling down.
“I also was wondering if you’d be interested in marriage when the time comes,” he writes in a letter to Miley. “It won’t be for a long time, but would you be interested? I feel like we make a great family together. With lots of kids. I imagine it every day. That’s what’s keeping me strong.”
In his letters, Cruz appears to grapple with the underlying issues that might have prompted the Parkland shooting.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, maybe I should get the death penalty. IDK [I don’t know], I just want love . . .” he wrote. “I hope you can understand it’s because of my mother. I feel like I’ll never be loved, and I’ll die alone.”
Cruz also appeared to harbor hope he could still walk out of prison alive.
“I wish I could leave and move to the mountains and live alone with some equipment that allow me to live off the land,” he wrote. “I hope one day I’ll be able to do that, but time will tell.”
Source: NewsMax America
A police officer leads an Iraqi suspect who was arrested for drug-related crimes at a police station in Basra, Iraq February 25, 2019. Picture taken February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Essam al-Sudani
April 9, 2019
By Ahmed Aboulenein
BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) – The southern Iraqi city of Basra is struggling to cope with a growing drug problem that has overcrowded prisons and strained police resources, only months after violent protests over poor municipal services.
Basra’s prison system is clogged up and creaking. On a recent day in one police station, Reuters reporters saw about 150 men, their heads shaved, squatting in two small, cramped holding cells.
Arrests of drug users and dealers have shot up in the past year, further stretching prison services and police in a sign that the problems with municipal resources that prompted protests in Basra last summer have not gone away.
“Drugs spread because the youth are lost, they have no money, they are sick of life. It’s escapism,” Major Shaker Aziz, a senior member of Basra police narcotics unit, told Reuters.
“Prison authorities tell us: ‘Ninety percent of inmates are convicted on drug charges, stop sending them.’ So we keep them here,” Aziz said of the holding cells.
The situation in prisons, worsened by a lack of treatment centers for recovering addicts, highlights the contrast between the wealth Basra province produces – its oil contributes over 90 percent of state revenues – and its poor living conditions.
Once known as the Venice of the East, Basra city, which has a population of 4 million, lacks clean water and does not have enough electricity to power air conditioners in the scorching summer heat. Unemployment is widespread, especially among youth.
Thousands protested against the conditions, unemployment and corruption last summer, when searing heat made matters worse and hundreds were treated in hospital after drinking unclean water. Protesters set ablaze government buildings and political groups’ headquarters, and clashed with police.
Officials fear a repeat of the violence this year, and while the drug problem is a concern in several areas of Iraq, Basra suffers from it the most.
STEADY RISE
Basra is struggling even though Iraq declared victory in the four-year war against Islamic State in 2017, and the city never fell to the militant Sunni Islamist group.
The number of drug arrests has risen year-on-year since 2015, Aziz said. By March, police had picked up 15 kilograms (33 lb) of illegal drugs this year, half of 2018’s entire haul. Some 50 to 60 people are arrested each week on drugs-related offences, compared to more than 1,000 all last year, he said.
Methamphetamine, known popularly as crystal meth, is the most widespread drug, said a police spokesman, Colonel Bassem Ghanem. Opium, cannabis and pill abuse are also common.
Basra’s police department says 97 percent of drug users arrested in 2018 were unemployed, and more than two thirds were 25 or younger.
All the drugs come from abroad, said Colonel Ismail al-Maliki, who heads the Basra police narcotics unit.
Basra Police Chief Rashid Fleih said in November that 80 percent of drugs entering the city come from Iran. Tehran denied this but officials still point the finger indirectly at Iran, using euphemisms such as “neighboring countries”.
Preventing drug trafficking is a serious challenge for Iran which borders Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, and Pakistan, a major transit country for drugs.
Iraq once had the death penalty for users and dealers but passed new legislation in 2017 under which judges can order rehabilitation for users or sentence them to jail for up to three years. In the absence of rehab centers, they are jailed. Under the new law, the health ministry was given two years to provide rehab centers.
Local health officials pledged to reopen and upgrade a 44-bed rehabilitation center this month but the police say 44 beds is not enough.
“All of Basra’s oil and we can’t afford rehab?” said Aziz.
Asked about the situation, the state-owned Basra Oil Company said it has pledged $5 million for a rehab center.
‘SMOKING FOR FREE’
Inside a training complex on the edge of Basra province, police have re-purposed a building as a makeshift rehab center for users nearing release.
About 40 men live in comparatively comfortable conditions, sleeping six per room with access to television, a gym and books. Clerics, officers and teachers lecture on the sinfulness and dangers of drug use.
Experts say recovering users need treatment and rehabilitation when they first stop using, not towards the end of sentences. Prisoners say they suffer the worst withdrawal symptoms during the first 20 days, unable to eat or sleep.
“This is just a model, to get the health ministry to build real centers,” said Ghanem, the spokesman.
Prisoners interviewed by Reuters were chosen by police, who sat in on interviews. Some were handcuffed.
One user-turned-dealer said he was recruited a year after he started buying, wooed by the idea of free crystal meth.
“I paid 50,000 dinars ($40) per gram as a user. I only paid 20,000 ($16) as a dealer. I would sell some and smoke some. I was smoking for free,” he said.
He described a network of dealers that went up to a “big boss” whom he would not identify to police out of fear for his life. He faces a minimum of five years in jail.
Some said they were falsely arrested. Asked if the police offered suspects lighter sentences if the provided them with information, one police officer said they rarely needed to.
“They always cooperate,” he said, asking not to be named as he was not authorized to discuss the matter.
(Additional reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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(L-R) Pro-democracy activists Cheung Sau-yin, Chung Yiu-wa, Tanya Chan, Chu Yiu-ming, Chan Kin-man, Benny Tai, Raphael Wong, Lee Wing-tat and Shiu Ka-chun arrive at the court before a verdict on their involvement in the Occupy Central, also known as “Umbrella Movement”, in Hong Kong, China April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
April 9, 2019
By James Pomfret and Jessie Pang
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hundreds crowded a Hong Kong court on Tuesday to hear a landmark verdict in the trial of several leaders of the 2014 pro-democracy “Occupy” civil disobedience movement that called for greater democracy for the Chinese-ruled city.
Three of the defendants accused of playing a leading role in planning and mobilizing supporters during the 79-day street occupations in 2014 – Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man, and retired pastor Chu Yiu-ming – face three charges; conspiracy to commit public nuisance, incitement to commit public nuisance, and incitement to incite public nuisance.
The trio has pleaded not guilty to all charges, which each carry a maximum seven years jail.
Tai, speaking to Reuters before the verdict, said: “We will still continue our struggle for democracy … technically we have breached the law and we will have to face legal responsibility.
“The reason that we committed civil disobedience is because we want justice for Hong Kong people.”
There are a total of nine defendants from the 2014 pro-democracy “Occupy” civil disobedience movement.
More than 100 supporters rallied outside the court, holding up yellow umbrellas and placards with the words: “I want universal suffrage”, while others chanted “The Occupy nine are not guilty.”
The protests blocked major roads in the financial center for 79 days in late 2014, presenting Beijing with one of its biggest challenges in decades. They were finally cleared by police, having won no democratic concessions from the government.
Since the city returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997, however, critics say China has broken this promise and reneged on its commitment to maintain Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and freedoms under a co-called “one country, two systems” arrangement.
All nine defendants were defiant outside the court, vowing to continue their fight for democracy and saying they weren’t afraid of any outcome as they’d been engaged in a peaceful civil disobedience movement pushing for a fundamental right; to vote freely for the city’s leader and lawmakers as promised in the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.
The six other defendants include pro-democracy legislators Tanya Chan and Shiu Ka-chun, two former student leaders Eason Chung and Tommy Cheung, activist Raphael Wong, and veteran democrat Lee Wing-tat.
David Leung, the director of public prosecutions, had earlier argued that Tai, Chan and Chu were the main conspirators who had begun planning the protests a year in advance. He also said the protests were “unlawful” and had caused “unreasonable” public disruptions over nearly three months.
The trial is the latest in a series against Hong Kong’s democratic opposition that have seen scores of activists jailed.
(Reporting by James Pomfret and Jessie Pang; Editing by Michael Perry)
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More states should allow people with felony records to vote while they are in prison, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders said over the weekend, the Des Moines Register reported.
“I think that is absolutely the direction we should go,” Sanders said during a town hall in Muscatine, Iowa, when he was asked if there should be a right to vote from prison. “You’re paying a price, you committed a crime, you’re in jail. That’s bad. But you’re still living in American society and you have a right to vote.”
Currently, only Sanders’ home state of Vermont and Maine allow felons to vote behind bars.
Most states do not allow people to vote while they are in prison, on parole, or on probation, according to Vox.
Two states ban those with felony convictions from voting even after they have finished their prison, parole or probation sentences.
Date from 2016 shows that 6.1 million people were prevented from voting due to a felony conviction, according to The Sentencing Project.
Black Americans are disproportionately impacted, since there are a higher percentage of blacks in prison. Punishments can follow people for the remainder of their lives, making it much more difficult for those with criminal records to regain rights that would give them a better chance to secure a job.
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FILE PHOTO – Romain Franck, an employee of the French consulate-general in Jerusalem, appears with co-defendants in the district court in Beersheba, Israel, March 19, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
April 8, 2019
BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) – An Israeli court sentenced a French citizen on Monday to seven years’ imprisonment under a plea bargain in which he confessed to using a diplomatic car to help Palestinian gun smugglers.
Romain Franck, a former employee of the French consulate in Jerusalem, was arrested last year and accused by Israeli prosecutors of receiving $7,600 for transporting the contraband between the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank.
He was not charged with complicity in terrorism, sparing him a potentially harsher sentence. Also arrested in the case was Palestinian from East Jerusalem.
Beesheba District Court said that Franck, who was 23 when indicted, would spend seven years in jail, including time already served. He also received an 18-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay a 30,000 shekel (7,420 euro) fine.
A French embassy spokesman declined comment on the sentencing.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Alison Williams)
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FILE PHOTO: People walk past the Election Commission of India office building in New Delhi, India March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo
April 8, 2019
By Krishna N. Das and Aftab Ahmed
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi break election rules by addressing the nation on an anti-satellite test recently? Is it right to have a channel dedicated to the leader? Can the country’s armed forces be called “Modi’s soldiers”?
Ahead of a general election that starts next week, the Election Commission of India (ECI) says it is swamped with hundreds of thousands of such questions and complaints of alleged violation of election rules, known as the model code of conduct. Many are coming via ever expanding social media.
Opposition parties have accused the ECI of being biased towards the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which they say is giving Modi an unfair advantage in the election. There is even a threat to jail commission officials if Modi is ousted.
The BJP denies getting any special treatment from the ECI.
The ECI – an autonomous constitutional body tasked with the smooth conduct of the world’s biggest democratic exercise with as many as 900 million eligible voters – said it was impartial and taking action against the guilty irrespective of party affiliation.
But Tarun Kumar, a secretary for the main opposition Congress party, said the model code of conduct had became a joke because the recently launched NaMO TV that carries Modi’s rallies live and runs other promotional material for the ruling party was still on air despite several complaints against it.
“Everyday I think that the Election Commission has sunk to its lowest, only to be proved wrong next day!” said Yogendra Yadav, a political activist and former pollster.
“MODI”S SOLDIERS”
Among the top complaints the ECI has ruled on or is examining are a speech by the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, Yogi Adityanath of the BJP, in which he associated the armed forces with Modi by calling them “Modi’s soldiers”, according to the ECI’s website.
Adityanath has been warned against making such statements in future.
The Commission is also examining a representation against the planned release of a biopic titled “PM Narendra Modi” this month.
The ECI late last month said Modi did not violate the code of conduct when he addressed the nation to announce that an Indian anti-satellite missile had shot down an Indian satellite in space in a major breakthrough. Opposition parties had accused Modi of trying to gain political benefits through the televised address. [nL3N21E3KN]
To be sure, there are complaints against Congress President Rahul Gandhi too, mainly over his allegations of corruption over a warplane deal signed by the Modi government.
“In the world of social media and mobile phones, people get to know things immediately, which we take time to get to know and react on,” Sandeep Saxena, a deputy election commissioner, told Reuters.
“The Commission will only move when there is sufficient material. We normally ask our own field functionaries. It takes 12 hours or so to establish, only then we go for action on it.”
Saxena said since the code of conduct came into place on March 10, the ECI has received more than 40,000 references and complaints on its mobile app, 99 percent of which have been dealt with. He said 68 percent of the cases were found to be correct and action initiated.
Another commission official, requesting anonymity, said that in the past three weeks they would have received more than 1 million complaints from regional parties, national parties, through social media and on the app.
“The volume of work is huge. The world has drastically changed because of social media and things like that, the policies sometimes are lagging behind and procedures, which have to be followed, make us slow,” said the official at the ECI, which has 300 people in its headquarters and others in states.
“People have the right to criticize. We are doing the best we can to conduct a fair election in the country. Some of our officers are working 16 to 17 hours a day.”
(Reporting by Krishna N. Das and Aftab Ahmed; Editing by Martin Howell and Michael Perry)
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