60,000 security personnel were deployed across India’s national capital on October 10.​ This included the police of Delhi and neighboring states, as well as paramilitary forces pulled from regions of India affected by armed insurgencies.

They sealed off central Delhi to stop protesters opposing the mass disenfranchisement of 130 million voters from reaching Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site on Parliament Street.​

The railways cancelled over 250 trains to Delhi. “So far as I remember, it has never happened in the history of Indian Railways that so many trains were cancelled just because of a protest or agitation,” said Shiv Gopal Mishra, general secretary of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF).​

Scores of activists already travelling to the national capital from other states of India were detained on moving trains and forced to alight at numerous railway stations in multiple states. Many grassroots activists in several other states were placed under preventive detention in their homes ahead of the protest. Paramilitary forces were deployed at checkpoints on Delhi’s borders, where vehicles were searched for any signs of protesters, placards, etc.​

Within the national capital, 45 metro train stations were closed. Internet and telecommunications were down in the four-kilometer radius of Jantar Mantar. Around Parliament Street alone, where Jantar Mantar is located, over 3,000 security personnel were deployed, with multi-layer barricades, each manned by about a hundred.​

Even outside this garrisoned zone, police held up commuters entering central Delhi at numerous checkpoints, causing traffic jams while enquiring about their purpose of travel before letting them through, to ensure they were headed to work, not to protest.

Communists fight back

Evading this anticipated hurdle, hundreds of activists from the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) had already positioned themselves the previous night just over three kilometers northeast of Jantar Mantar at HKS Surjeet Bhavan.​

A memorial to the freedom fighter and veteran communist leader, HKS Surjeet, it serves as an education center of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPIM] and also hosts SFI’s Central Committee office.​

The Delhi Police's midnight attempt to intimidate students at the SFI Central Committee office in HKS Surjeet Bhawan was promptly rebuffed by the CPI(M) party leaders there. pic.twitter.com/x45gOglsCk

— CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) October 10, 2026

“But the police knew we were there,” recalled SFI activist Asikul. The police had tried over the last two nights to enter the premises to take stock of the preparations, but were stopped. Activists worried the police could barricade the gates and stop this mobilization of hundreds from stepping out to protest the following morning.​

Quietly, after midnight, student activists slipped out of HKS Surjeet Bhavan in groups of five, one after another, with cover stories for travel reasons if intercepted on the way. By six in the morning, about 250 of them had relocated to the CPIM’s national headquarters, AKG Bhavan, to the west of Jantar Mantar.

Back at HKS Surjeet Bhavan, where hundreds more stayed behind, barricading began between 10 and 10:30 am, just 100 meters from its gate, recalled Aman Saini, the Delhi State Secretary of the DYFI.

About 300-350 activists stormed out of the gates and made it through before the barricades could cut them off. Waving red flags and holding placards calling for the dismissal and arrest of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, they marched barely a kilometer before facing a police cordon. The police lined up shoulder to shoulder, batons held horizontal to block the protesters’ way forward.​

Continuing to march, the protesters headed straight into the cordon. A tussle ensued amid chorus chants of ‘vote chor, gaddi chhod’, demanding the “vote thief” CEC’s resignation. As the protesters in the front line grappled with the police – each engaging multiple officers by dropping to the ground and resisting detention – others broke through the cordon and sprinted ahead.

Barely 300 meters ahead, a line of barricades blocked the road. Protesters stormed ahead and engaged the police. Slipping through the tussle, “I pulled the barricade from below and shoved its top. Thaad! – it fell over,” explained Aman.​

Wrangling themselves free from the security personnel, many more dashed ahead, several slashing their feet against the metal of the fallen barricade, only to turn left on Minto Road and drop another barricade.

They had covered nearly half the distance to Jantar Mantar, reaching within 150 meters of the Connaught outer circle, one curve away from Parliament Street hosting the protest site.

“But the barricade there was re-enforced. We had almost managed to pull one down when the police charged at us with batons,” added Aman. Having lost numbers at each of the previous barricades, “we were only about 50 left. So they managed to detain us and shove us into buses. At least six of us were injured.”​

Those who had evaded detention at the previous barricades, but were unable to push ahead, regrouped outside HKS Surjeet Bhavan and started sloganeering. Police, accompanied by paramilitary, charged with batons and detained them, and even allegedly tried to break into the premises, but were held back at its gate.

Paramilitary at the party gates

The contingent of activists who had relocated to AKG Bhavan under the cover of darkness did not have it any easier. They had only managed to stretch the security personnel and their barricades across two fronts. A paramilitary force began assembling outside its gates around 10 am, roughly the same time as the barricading began at HKS.​

Several members of CPIM’s Central Committee (CC) and Politburo, including current and former Members of Parliament, many of them grey-haired, were staying at the AKG Bhavan for a CC meeting. They joined the students as they marched out.​

“Some 20 people were detained right outside the gate – almost the whole frontline. The rest of us behind them pushed through. We kept running,” recalled Asikul.

About 15-20 minutes into the march, SFI activist Noel was detained. “I was not taken to a detention bus, where others were held. I was held alone in a bus used to transport the police. There I was beaten for two hours,” he said, sharing pictures of the injuries he sustained on his face.

“Two of my comrades realized that I was being held alone. So they intentionally got themselves detained near my bus and joined me. They also got beaten up,” he added. Later, when the police started marching them to the detention bus, allegedly prodding them forward by jabbing the blunt ends of their batons into their backs, “we managed to escape.”

Meanwhile, others had pushed ahead. Among them were SFI National Joint Secretary Aishe Ghosh and the DYFI’s national president, AA Rahim. They marched about a kilometer from AKG Bhavan before being apprehended at the roundabout near Gurudwara Bangla Sahib. The SFI alleged that “Aishe Ghosh was assaulted by male police personnel in the absence of women officers.” ​

A showdown ensued. Dropping to the road and bracing in a huddle, Aishe and other female activists held ground as female police personnel who arrived later grappled with them, eventually dragging them away to detention buses, about 1.5 km away from Jantar Mantar.

Other activists, including Asikul, had strode ahead, breaking through three barricades, and reaching within 400 meters of Jantar Mantar. “We were not able to break through the fourth. We were only about 35 left,” said Asikul.

“Using chokeholds and baton charges, they detained us. Some managed to escape detention by breaking out through a bus window,” an increasingly popular mode of resistance by the younger generation of activists, determined to make detentions as costly and as strenuous as possible.​

Detention at the stadiums

Asikul and the rest of the detainees were driven almost 50 km to Bawana in northwest Delhi and held at the Rajiv Gandhi stadium, where hundreds more were already being held. Among them was 77-year-old Manik Sarkar, a senior communist leader and Tripura state Chief Minister from 1998 to 2018. He was accompanied by the northeastern state’s current opposition leader, Jitendra Chaudhury. Veteran trade unionist and former Member of Parliament (MP) Tapan Sen, along with other ex-legislators, were also held there.

“There was not a drop of water in any tap in the toilet. We were not even provided with clean water to drink. When we demanded, we were asked to drink from” an old, ill-maintained leaky tank in the premises, said SFI activist Utkarsh, who was also held here. “We challenged the police to drink that water. They refused.” ​

When detainees began falling sick, Utkarsh and other activists warned the senior police officer in charge of this detention of consequences for mistreating a former Chief Minister and ex-MPs. They reminded him of his responsibility if one of these elderly political leaders fell seriously ill. Only then did the police “finally provide us with water and some snacks.”

Seven other stadiums in the city, along with several other public facilities, were reportedly turned into detention centers that day, when security personnel detained over 7,000 people from the streets of the national capital, including protesters, journalists and even pedestrians suspected of being protesters.

More than 7 km south of Jantar Mantar, near the INA market, outside barricaded central Delhi, police detained protesting activists of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), led by Neha Bora, one of the most recognizable faces of the protest movement.

Detentions were also reported in Raj Ghat, about 4.5 km northeast of Jantar Mantar, where the Revolutionary Workers’ Party of India (RWPI) and its affiliated mass organizations had organized a protest.

At the airport, almost 15 km to the southwest of Jantar Mantar, the police boarded a plane as soon as it landed from Mumbai – even before the passengers could disembark – to detain Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das, and Ashutosh Ranka from their seats. They are the top leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). 

“Cockroaches”

The pressure group started as a satirical protest on social media in May, after the Chief Justice of India said: “There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists.”  ​

The CJP has since become a material force, playing a key role in the protest against exam paper leaks that forced the Union Education Minister to resign in July. ​

About two months after his resignation, an investigation by the Indian Express newspaper exposed irregularities in the conduct of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar. Several times, his two fellow election commissioners had flagged their concerns about his potentially illegal and unconstitutional decisions.

These pertained to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, still underway after already deleting the names of 130 million people from India’s voter rolls – in an unprecedented shrinking of India’s electorate. Opposition parties have long alleged that this exercise is meant to help the ruling far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, consolidate its hold on power.  

Earlier this month, on the birth anniversary of Gandhi on October 2, protests began, calling for the scrapping of the SIR and the CEC’s resignation. On October 7, the CJP called on youngsters to take Jantar Mantar again on October 10.

In response to its call, thousands of youngsters, most in their late teens and early 20s, kept arriving in small groups to central Delhi throughout the day, only to be whisked away by the police.​

Detention as deterrence

“These youngsters, who were not part of any cadre-based organization, were particularly harassed by police because they identified them as vulnerable. They were threatened, their phones and keys were snatched,” said DYFI’s Delhi State Vice President, Rikta Krishnaswamy, who was held with hundreds of them at a makeshift detention center in Jafar Kalan, over 45 km west of Jantar Mantar.​

Bundled into a bus at the final barricade reached by the march from HKS Bhavan that morning, Rikta was brought here by midday, when “the electrician was still installing the fan. We were held until evening with nothing to eat – not even a cup of tea. The police are trying to make detention as much of a deterrent as possible.”

But the protesters were not deterred. The very next day, DYFI activists, including several central committee members, gathered at Connaught Place, a 15-minute walk from Jantar Mantar, which remained cordoned off, even as the overall restrictions on movement in central Delhi had eased.​

Custodial torture, sexual harassment

Soon after they began staging a protest, security personnel swarmed in. The detained protesters “were not taken to any police station,” according to a petition alleging custodial torture, filed in the Supreme Court by AA Rahim, the youth organization’s national president and an MP.

“Instead, while still near Connaught Place, the bus was driven to a closed and heavily guarded space in front of the Daryaganj restaurant, away from public view, out of the reach of the media and without any CCTV cameras. There, the detainees were sorted according to gender and then forcibly shifted into a specialized police van divided into five separate cells.”​

These vehicles “functioned as unrecorded, mobile places of detention, wholly outside the safeguards of the Constitution,” added the petition. “Inside the cells of the van, the detainees were beaten on the face, kicked on the backbone with boots and struck on the head. Several of the personnel wore no name badges.”

At a press conference on October 12, women activists of the SFI showed bruises and alleged sexual harassment by security personnel.

But even the alleged custodial torture and sexual harassment has not deterred the protests, which are widening, drawing in more sections of society into the agitation.

Farmers and workers to join the agitation​

Representatives of India’s largest and oldest farmers’ union, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), the All India Agricultural Workers’ Union (AIAWU), the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), along with SFI and DYFI leaders, met at the HKS Surjeet Bhavan on October 14.​

Several public intellectuals and artists also participated in this meeting of mass and class organizations’ leaders, where they jointly formed the All India Platform of People Against SIR. This platform announced October 23 as a Nationwide Street Action Day Against SIR. 

Condemning the central government’s denotification of Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site on October 12, the platform gave a slogan to turn every street and every village into Jantar Mantar.

Last week, anti-immigrant protests in South Africa turned violent, with looting, destruction of property, and reports of 24 vehicles being burnt as tensions escalated in Johannesburg and Durban. The unrest followed growing anger over a government directive on asylum applications, which the Department of Home Affairs has since withdrawn. 

The directive, issued on September 28, instructed Refugee Reception Offices (RROs) to process all asylum applications immediately. Massive queues of foreign nationals subsequently formed at immigration offices, which were met with demonstrations and violence from anti-immigrant groups.

Protests were reported in Soweto township, Johannesburg, and Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal province. Demonstrations in Durban continued for a second day, prompting police to strengthen their presence to contain the unrest. However, tensions remained high in the city and in the country.

Government withdraws asylum directive

On October 9, the director-general of the Department of Home Affairs announced the withdrawal of the directive concerning the intake of asylum applications.

The directive had been introduced following a July 7, 2026 Constitutional Court judgment that mandated that individuals could not be barred from accessing South Africa’s asylum system, even if they entered the country irregularly. According to the department, the September directive intended to guide Refugee Reception Offices in implementing the court’s order.

The department said the directive had been issued as an operational measure without the knowledge or involvement of the Minister of Home Affairs or other political office-bearers. It rejected claims that the measure had been politically motivated.

However, the department acknowledged that implementing the judgment had produced consequences that were not anticipated in the court order. These included overcrowding at Refugee Reception Offices within days of the directive’s introduction, risks to the safety of Home Affairs officials and emerging threats to public order.

The director-general said the department would begin a fresh process to determine a more appropriate and sustainable way of complying with the court order, while reaffirming its commitment to the rule of law and the authority of the judiciary.

Home Affairs warns of disinformation

Two days before withdrawing the directive, the Department of Home Affairs issued a statement on October 7 warning of what it described as a coordinated disinformation campaign surrounding the Constitutional Court judgment.

The department said false claims had circulated suggesting that the Minister of Home Affairs or political parties had independently decided to suspend certain asylum procedures. It insisted that the operational directive had been issued to implement a binding court judgment.

The department also rejected claims that the ruling granted citizenship to asylum seekers or automatically legalized all foreign nationals living in the country.

It warned that misinformation intended to inflame tensions and incite violence threatens public stability, urging South Africans to verify information before sharing it.

The subsequent withdrawal of the directive, however, does not reverse the Constitutional Court’s judgment. Home Affairs has said it will develop a new operational approach that complies with the ruling while addressing the challenges faced by refugee reception offices.

Anti-immigrant tensions continue to escalate

Last week’s violence is the latest in a wave of anti-immigrant and xenophobic mobilization that has built steadily since the start of the year. Protests broke out across Johannesburg, Durban and Pretoria in April, and anti-immigrant groups, led by the March and March movement, set June 30 as a deadline for undocumented migrants to leave the country.

On that day, police arrested hundreds during nationwide marches, and one person was shot dead in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township as residents looted spaza shops owned by foreign nationals. In the following weeks, protesters in Johannesburg went door to door, seizing foreigners from their homes, with many fleeing for safety.

As Brazil heads into the October 25 runoff election between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, the country stands as a crucial battleground in Washington’s strategy to contain China, as well as global geopolitics.

What does this election mean for the future of China-Brazil ties, the BRICS alliance, and independent technological sovereignty across the Global South?

Tings Chak – researcher, writer, and art director for the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – joins Amanda Yee to break down the two competing paths for Brazil represented by Lula and Bolsonaro.

Read Chak’s article: “How Brazil’s election could reshape relations with China”

When Dana Joudeh, 35, went into labor in mid-September, she was six months pregnant and being held at Israel’s Damon Prison. Her daughter, Lia, was born premature, and her family says she gave birth shackled to a bed, with a rifle pointed at her.

Joudeh spent almost her entire pregnancy in Damon prison, held under a six-month administrative detention order. There she endured the conditions Palestinian prisoners have described since October 2023: medical neglect, inadequate healthcare, food deprivation, and sharp cuts to hygiene supplies.

Read more: “We are here to kill you”: Released Palestinian prisoner exposes torture and medical neglect in Israeli prisons

A day after giving birth, Dana and Lia were released from Damon Prison. Their time in detention exposed blatant Israeli violations, not only against women but even against infants.

BreakThrough News spoke to Maram Joudeh, Dana’s sister, to learn more about the circumstances of her sister’s arrest, conditions of detention, and how she gave birth amid it all.

The circumstances of her arrest

Dana’s ordeal began when Israeli forces raided her family’s home in Iraq al-Tayeh village, east of the northern West Bank governorate of Nablus and arrested her during Ramadan 2026 (between February and March). Dana was still living with her family at the time before getting married a couple of weeks later.

According to her sister, Dana was detained and interrogated for one day. She was released after losing consciousness due to complications from a medical procedure she had undergone shortly before her arrest.

Around mid-April, an Israeli commander contacted Dana, asking her to head to the Huwara Detention Center for another interrogation session.

Although Dana had never been involved in any political activity, she felt intimidated by the phone call and did not go, especially as the Israeli commander, who was speaking to her, asked her about her recent marriage.

A few days later she received a couple of other phone calls. During one of the calls, the commander informed her that he knows that the wedding of one of her sisters would be held within days, so Dana avoided attending the wedding fearing that the Israeli forces would storm the ballroom and arrest her from there.

In another phone call, she was threatened that if she did not come to the interrogation, her father would be arrested. Therefore, Dana’s father decided to go to the Huwara Detention Center instead of her, but the Israeli commander insisted that she should come personally.

As a result, Dana went to the interrogation on April 19, hoping that she would spend hours there then be released, but she was transferred from there to Hasharon prison, where she spent one night that she described as a “nightmare”.

“The toilet had a stall door that did not provide any privacy. It was very dirty. I lost consciousness there, so they transferred me to a hospital, blindfolded, and shackled. They conducted a pregnancy test for me, and sent me to Damon Prison from there,” Dana told her lawyer, who managed to visit her in Damon Prison in early May.

It was then that Dana’s lawyer found out about her pregnancy, and the inhumane detention conditions she had endured since being imprisoned.

Six months of pregnancy amid inhumane detention conditions

For six months, Dana was detained with five other female prisoners in a small cell, which should be allocated for two individuals only.

“There are only two metal bunks. The toilet has no door, and there is a lot of humidity as they do not open the vision panel.” Dana told the lawyer, describing the cell.

Dana also informed her lawyer that, despite her pregnancy, she was provided with a minimal amount of food, and that she lost weight and suffered from dehydration.

She added that only she and Amina Taweel, another pregnant prisoner, were sleeping on the bunks; the remaining four female prisoners were sleeping on the floor.

“Lina Naser and Tasneem Odeh used to give us their food, because they were expecting to be released soon,” Dana noted about other inmates, who shared the cell with her.

Dana said that the food was “inedible”, as they were sometimes given boiled eggs several hours after being cooked. Canned chickpeas soaked in water and lentils were among the limited options provided to them on almost a daily basis.

Dana also mentioned that their cell was violently stormed multiple times, with sound grenades being thrown. She said that sometimes they stormed the cell at midnight, when she and the other detainees were sleeping.

Whenever Dana fainted during those raids, prison security personnel dealt with the situation by asking other inmates to raise her legs and make her drink water, which she described as “undrinkable”.

During her detention, Dana also developed pimples between her fingers without knowing the diagnosis. Moreover, she wore the pajamas of Lina Naser after the latter’s release, as no other suitable clothing was available.

Shackled to the bed, Dana gave birth to Lia at gunpoint

One day before her scheduled discharge date, Dana experienced severe labor pains, despite being only six months pregnant. This occurred after she had bled for approximately 10 days in Damon Prison before the Israel Prison Service (also known as Shabas) finally approved her transfer to Rambam Hospital.

Already facing a high-risk health condition for herself and her fetus, Dana had her hands and ankles shackled to the bars of a metal bed. She was surrounded by several female Israeli soldiers, who pointed their rifles at her and shouted: “Push harder, you saboteur!”

As the delivery got obstructed, Dana underwent a caesarean section, but even during the surgery the soldiers continued to shackle her hands and legs, surrounding her and threatening her with firearms.

When Dana finally gave birth to Lia, the soldiers shouted: “Another saboteur has just been born!'” 

When Dana breastfed Lia before discharge, one of her hands would remain cuffed.

One of the nurses taking care of Dana dressed Lia with pink babywear. Dana said that the nurse was Palestinian.

Nevertheless, the Shabas insisted on treating the premature baby as a prisoner. On the next day, Dana was escorted by Israeli soldiers to a bus, blindfolded and shackled, but Lia was taken away from her for hours. 

She described those as the most terrifying hours, fearing what destiny lay ahead for her premature baby. To her surprise, she was then sent back to Damon prison.

Dana then realized she had been brought there because the soldiers had taken Lia to dress her in the same gray pajamas that the Israeli Prison Service (Shabas) has forced all Palestinian prisoners to wear upon release since October 7, 2023. They made customized pajamas for the 1.5 kg premature baby and took photos of her before she and her mother were released from prison, according to Maram, Dana’s sister.

Even upon her release at the checkpoint, Israeli soldiers kept their rifles pointed at Dana as she struggled to walk, carrying Lia in one arm and her belongings in the other.

“Keep walking, don’t stop. Otherwise you will be shot,” the soldiers warned her.

From the checkpoint, Dana and Lia were taken to a hospital in the central West Bank governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh because Dana was suffering from scabies and her baby needed to be kept in an incubator.

Dana’s scabies had gotten out of control as she was denied necessary medication while in prison. Her sister told BreakThrough News that the prison authorities only gave Dana cornstarch to apply to her skin to ease the symptoms.

When Dana left detention, she left behind two other pregnant Palestinian women in Israeli detention. 

As per the latest report released by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association – shut down just a few days ago by the Israeli authorities – these pregnant women are among 90 Palestinian female prisoners currently held in Israeli prisons.

Read more: Hadeel Shatara: the Palestinian woman who defied her jailors