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India holds hundreds in corruption protest crackdown
Agence France Presse - August 16, 2011
Veteran campaigner Anna Hazare, 74, was taken into custody by plain-clothes officers at an apartment in eastern New Delhi early Tuesday as he prepared to lead a parade to a public park where he was to begin a "fast unto death".
Hundreds of Hazare supporters gathered outside the building as he was driven away in an unmarked car, shouting slogans of support for him and his campaign to pressure the government into strengthening a new anti-corruption law.
In a pre-recorded message that predicted the day's drama and exhorted Indians to join his peaceful cause, he asked: "Will this movement be stopped by my arrest? No, not at all. Do not let it happen.
"This fight for change which has begun, we will take it forward on the path of non-violence as long as there is life in the body. Thank you. Victory to Mother India!" he concluded.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram said organisers had refused to guarantee to obey police orders that the rally would be limited to 5,000 people and that it could only last three days. He denied the government was quashing dissent and stressed that "this government is not against peaceful protest".
Many of the 1,400 detainees arrested in New Delhi were driven to a sports stadium in northern New Delhi where a large crowed gathered outside in a tense stand-off with police, an AFP reporter said.
The political opposition accused authorities of an "absolutely undemocratic" act and the arrests sparked furious protests in the national parliament, which was adjourned for the day.
Corruption has crept up the agenda in fast-developing India after a series of scandals, notably a telecom licence scam that is thought to have cost the country up to $39 billion in lost revenue.
The action against Hazare reflects concern that he could become a figurehead for a broad protest movement against the government, some observers say, even though his radical views are far from the political mainstream.
In June, police halted another anti-corruption hunger strike in Delhi when officers broke up a protest by yoga guru Swami Ramdev that had attracted national headlines.
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said last week that Washington counted on India "to exercise appropriate democratic restraint" when handling of anti-graft protests. India rejected the statement as "needless" and said its constitution guaranteed freedom of expression.
Zoya Hassan, a politics professor at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, told AFP that Hazare's detention was a "violation of basic liberties". "It's a bumpy road ahead," she predicted. "The civil society activists have significant middle-class support and they have ample media support. The detention will cause a lot of unrest."
In April, Hazare staged a 98-hour hunger strike that led to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government allowing him and his supporters to help draft a new anti-corruption law, called the "Lokpal" bill.
The bill, since introduced in parliament, would create a new ombudsman tasked with investigating and prosecuting politicians and bureaucrats, but Hazare wants the prime minister and higher judiciary to come under scrutiny.
Arguing that his recommendations had been ignored, Hazare had planned to begin a second hunger strike on Tuesday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist group that leads the political opposition in India, described Hazare's arrest as an "instigation to aggression". "It's a bizarre and thoughtless act on the part of the government. It is absolutely undemocratic," party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy told AFP.
Hazare, a life-long bachelor who wears simple, white home-spun cotton, is a social conservative who dreams of an India centred around self-sufficient villages – much like his hero Gandhi.
The strict traditionalist has also adopted the hunger strike, used to great effect by India's father of the nation against the British colonial leaders, as his weapon in campaigns to pressure officials.
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