Women Rights Groups Felicitate Shaheen Bagh Protest's Icon Bilkis 'DaDi'

New Delhi: Felicitating Bilkis “dadi”, the icon of the Shaheen Bagh protest, women rights groups demanded on Tuesday that the Delhi Police stop “maliciously targeting” all equal citizenship protestors for the northeast Delhi riots of February. Bilkis “dadi” was felicitated at an event on Tuesday after she was listed among the 100 most influential people of 2020 by Time Magazine. The 82-year-old woman and the Equal Citizenship Movement that started at Shaheen Bagh have become powerful global symbols of peaceful resistance.

In a statement, the women rights groups demanded that the Delhi Police stop “maliciously targeting” all equal citizenship protestors for the northeast Delhi riots. “Even as we proudly acknowledge Bilkis Dadi, we are outraged at Delhi Police’s malicious investigation that has projected our peaceful movement for equal citizenship against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) as some sinister conspiracy to cause the terrible Delhi riots,” the statement said.

The women rights activists and groups who issued the statement included Syeda Hameed, Annie Raja, Vani Subramanian and Kavita Krishnan. “Today, innocent students and activists have been falsely charged and unjustly incarcerated under stringent anti-terror laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) because of these untruths. Many of them are young women, whose only crime was that they were fearless and feminist, and claimed their place as equal citizens,” the statement said.

“We stand with each equal citizenship protestor. We stand with all those falsely accused and unjustly incarcerated, and demand an end to this targeting. We stand with every Bilkis Bi of every Shaheen Bagh all across the country,” it added. Shaheen Bagh became the epicentre of the anti-CAA protests as women with young children staged a sit-in there for over three months. The protest was called off in view of the coronavirus outbreak.

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