Advertisement
WhatsApp to Bridgefy, what Hong Kong taught India’s leaderless protesters
- Indians protesting against New Delhi’s new religion-based citizenship law are learning from tactics used by the Hong Kong protesters
- After police tear-gassed a university library, one group turned to Bridgefy, an app that enables communication without an internet connection
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
It all started with a simple poster doing the rounds on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, asking people to show solidarity with students who had been assaulted while protesting against India’s new religion-based citizenship law.
Advertisement
As visuals of police forces entering the Indian capital’s Jamia Millia Islamia University firing tear gas into the college campus and library streamed onto their phones on Sunday night, a group of friends felt stirred.
“We felt we had to urgently send out a message of solidarity with the students and resist this, because if not, we could be next,” said a member of the group, Ruben Mascarenhas, a Mumbai-based activist.
So they made a poster asking people to attend a street protest to show solidarity with the students. The poster soon went viral on social media.
But, there was one crucial thing the protesters still had to do – learn lessons from other movements and anticipate the worst. Mascarenhas had been following the protests in Hong Kong closely and wanted to be prepared for pushback. He believed that Indian police could use force or weapons to disperse people, like authorities in the Chinese city had done with violent protesters. Pepper spray, beanbag rounds and rubber bullets are among the weapons that have been used during clashes between Hong Kong police and protesters.
Advertisement
Advertisement