Farmers Movement Archive

671 protesters lost lives, claims blog keeping count

Bathinda: One whole year and 671 lives have been lost during the ongoing protests against the soon-to-be-repealed farm laws, a blog keeping record of happenings at protest sites has claimed. The humancostoffarmersprotest.blogspot.com has compiled the data of protesters who died between November 24, 2020 and November 19, 2021. The blog is a collective effort, with major contribution by research scholar Anuroop Kaur Sandhu and activists Amar Mander, Harender Happy and Jai Singh Sandhu. “We have gathered the details from various sources, including stories in newspapers about the deaths of the farmers either at the protest sites, while returning from the protests or at their villages after having returned from the protests. We collect data and verify facts about the association of the deceased with the protest. It is ten added at to blog. We have taken extra care that only those farmers are included who had been associated with the protests in some either at Delhi borders or the protest sites in Punjab,” claims Sandhu, who is a comparative Indian literature in English research at the Delhi University. Sandhu comes from farmers’ family in Kaniawali village of Muktsar district. She said, “I started collecting data on December 9, 2020, and found the first casualty reported on November 24 when farmers had decided to head towards Delhi.” The farmers died for various reasons, including old age, cold, accidents and even suicide. The most common cause of deaths had been found to be cardiac arrest, says Happy, who is working for Kisan Ekta Morcha, the IT cell of Sanyukt Kisan Morcha. While there has been no word from the central government, the Punjab government has announced to provide jobs to kin of the deceased farmers, apart from compensation of Rs 5 lakh. The state government is getting details of such farm activists and chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi even handing over appointment letters to their families.

The Times of India

2021-11-27

Chandigarh