CWU warns against use of State of Emergency to restrict protest

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) is cau­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment against us­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SOE) to re­strict cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to peace­ful protest.

In a state­ment is­sued this morn­ing, the CWU said it notes “with grave con­cern” the im­pli­ca­tions of the re­cent­ly de­clared SOE, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to re­stric­tions on move­ment and the pos­si­ble im­pact on de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ex­pres­sion.

While the CWU made it clear that it sup­ports firm ac­tion to com­bat crime, it warned that emer­gency pow­ers must not be mis­used.

“While the Union un­equiv­o­cal­ly sup­ports de­ci­sive and law­ful mea­sures to com­bat crime and pro­tect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, we cau­tion that emer­gency pow­ers must not be used—in­ten­tion­al­ly or in­ad­ver­tent­ly—to cur­tail le­git­i­mate de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ex­pres­sion, in­clud­ing protest against the Gov­ern­ment of the day,” the state­ment said.

The CWU em­pha­sised that free­dom of ex­pres­sion, free­dom of move­ment and free­dom of as­sem­bly and as­so­ci­a­tion are pro­tect­ed un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion and re­main vi­tal even in times of cri­sis.

“These rights form the cor­ner­stone of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy and are es­pe­cial­ly crit­i­cal dur­ing pe­ri­ods of na­tion­al un­cer­tain­ty,” the CWU stat­ed.

It stressed that a State of Emer­gency is an ex­tra­or­di­nary in­ter­ven­tion that must be treat­ed as such.

“A State of Emer­gency is an ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sure de­signed to ad­dress ex­tra­or­di­nary threats. It is not, and must nev­er be­come, a sub­sti­tute for com­pre­hen­sive crime pol­i­cy or a mech­a­nism that in­su­lates pub­lic au­thor­i­ties from scruti­ny and ac­count­abil­i­ty,” the Union said.

The CWU al­so un­der­scored the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing in­dus­tri­al democ­ra­cy, warn­ing against re­stric­tions that could pre­vent work­ers from or­gan­is­ing in de­fence of their eco­nom­ic and so­cial in­ter­ests.

“Any blan­ket re­stric­tion that pre­vents work­ers from or­ga­niz­ing or as­sem­bling in de­fence of their eco­nom­ic and so­cial in­ter­ests un­der­mines in­dus­tri­al democ­ra­cy. Work­ers must not be made col­lat­er­al ca­su­al­ties of emer­gency gov­er­nance,” it said.

The Union is now call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to clear­ly ar­tic­u­late “the spe­cif­ic ob­jec­tives of the SoE, mea­sur­able bench­marks for suc­cess, the du­ra­tion and sun­set pro­vi­sions, safe­guards against mis­use of ex­pand­ed pow­ers, and the com­pre­hen­sive long-term crime strat­e­gy that will fol­low.”

It added that emer­gency mea­sures must sat­is­fy the prin­ci­ples of “ne­ces­si­ty, pro­por­tion­al­i­ty, and tem­po­rari­ness.”

“Se­cu­ri­ty and democ­ra­cy are not op­pos­ing forces. A safe so­ci­ety must al­so be a free so­ci­ety,” the CWU stat­ed, while reaf­firm­ing its sup­port for ef­fec­tive and law­ful mea­sures to en­sure pub­lic safe­ty.