For Immediate Release: Revoke the Barring of Professor Richard Shapiro

For Immediate Release
November 5th, 2010

WHAT: Protest at the Indian Consulate: Revoke the Barring of Professor Richard
Shapiro, End the Isolation of Kashmiris
WHERE: 540 Arguello Boulevard, San Francisco, CA,
WHEN: November 8th, 11am-12pm
Organized by Students and Friends of the International People's Tribunal on Human
Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK)
Press contact: Amanda McBride, ciisstudentsolidarity@gmail.com, 415.627.7675

On Monday, November 8th, at 11 am, a group of students and community members will be
protesting IndiaÕs banning of Richard Shapiro, a US scholar, without any reported
legal basis. The protest will take place at the San Francisco Consulate General of
India, at 540 Arguello Boulevard.

On November 1st, 2010, Professor Shapiro was denied entry by the Immigration
Authorities in New Delhi.  Professor Shapiro is a US Citizen and Chair, Anthropology
Department, at California Institute of Integral Studies. Professor Shapiro traveled
to India with his life partner, Professor Angana Chatterji, a citizen of India and a
permanent resident of the US. Professor Chatterji, a prominent and frequent visitor
to the region, was granted entry to India while Professor Shapiro was prevented from
entering the country. Reports indicate that no legal basis was given for the
decision to deny his entry. Professor Shapiro was in possession of a valid passport
and visa. Given that Professor ShapiroÕs work focuses neither on South Asia nor
India, it appears that his right to travel has been restricted in an attempt to
further intimidate Professor Chatterji, and to discourage her from continuing her
work as Co-Convener of the International People's Tribunal for Human Rights and
Justice in Kashmir (IPTK).

Since 2006, Shapiro has regularly traveled to Kashmir, and interacted with various
human rights defenders, scholars, and youth to bear witness and to learn from their
experiences. He helped form a Jewish-Muslim Friendship Circle. The focus of his
scholarship and academic work is not India or Kashmir, but issues of race, class,
gender, and alliance building in the United States, and discourses on power and
subjectivity. Richard Shapiro had written an op-ed on Kashmir in 2009 and another in
September 2010. These were analytical pieces based on articles and newspaper
reports, and not on primary research that had been conducted by him. Any scholar can
do that. This is a matter of academic freedom, and beyond the control of states and
their desire to regulate thinking on the injustices they perpetrate.

On November 1, when Professor Shapiro first presented his passport to the
Immigration Authorities, he was stamped an entry permit. Then, they started
processing Professor Chatterji's passport. She has been stopped regularly since the
inception of IPTK in April 2008. As they paused over her passport, the Immigration
Officer again asked Richard Shapiro for his passport. Then, he was informed that he
may not enter India, and that the ban was indefinite. The Immigration Authorities
refused to pay for his return airfare. He was made to leave at 11.50 am that same
morning. The Immigration Authorities refused to give any reason, while stating that
Professor Shapiro had not been charged with anything.

This arbitrary and undemocratic act by the Indian government is an affront to
academic freedom, the right of families to be together, and further isolates
Kashmiris from international solidarity in their struggle for peace and justice. The
barring of an international scholar to Kashmir raises serious questions into the
functioning of democratic rights and human rights conditions of Kashmiris. Denying
Shapiro entry without due cause impinges upon academic freedom, freedom of movement,
and the right to travel with his legal partner and to visit his family in Kolkata.

The Indian state has regularly targeted those that have been outspoken on injustices
and military governance in Kashmir. The Indian state has targetted Professor Angana
Chatterji and her colleagues in Kashmir, Parvez Imroz and Khurram Parvez, for their
work defending human rights. Recently, writer Arundhati Roy was a target. When
academics, writers, and journalists are banned, such actions speak to the intent of
the Indian State in maintaining impunity, and in deliberately isolating Kashmiris
from the world and the world from Kashmiris.

We call upon the Government of India to:

*   Revoke the entry ban of Richard Shapiro from India.
*   Stop obstruction of the IPTK's work.
*   End barring without due cause.
*   Support democratic processes, the exchange of ideas.

For more information on the IPTK, see www.kashmirprocess.org.

For a press note by Scholars at Risk regarding Professor Shapiro, please visit:
http://scholarsatrisk.nyu.edu/Events-News/Article-Detail.php?art_uid=2454

The op-eds by Richard Shapiro:
Governing Kashmir (August 2010):
http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2010/Aug/29/governing-kashmir-17.asp

A Just Peace in Kashmir? (August 2009):
http://www.zcommunications.org/a-just-peace-in-kashmir-by-richard-shapiro