Chennai: Key figures in Tamil Nadu who have been potentially snooped for clients of the Israeli company NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, expressed that they are not surprised being on the list but condemned the move.
Paris-based journalism non-profit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International which had access to the list shared it with 17 news organizations in 10 countries including The Wire, an online news portal. Among more than 50,000 phone numbers that included surveillance targets, names of key figures from Tamil Nadu have been found published by the portal.
The list of potential targets include S Seeman, founder of Naam Thamizhar Katchi (NTK), Thirumurugan Gandhi, founder of May 17 movement, K Ramakrishnan founder of Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam and V Kumaresan, treasurer of Dravidar Kazhagam. All of them have a common factor that binds them-- an ideology following the tenets of EV Ramasamy or Periyar, the father of the Dravidian movement.
“In principle, Tamil nationalism based on Periyar or Dravidian ideology is against religious fundamentalism and caste atrocities which is a threat to the BJP’s Hindutva,” says Gandhi who has more than 40 cases filed against him including three sedition cases. He was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in 2018 but the case was eventually dropped.
“I’ve had intelligence officers following me in whichever city I lived in,” said Gandhi, adding, “So being monitored isn’t new to me but it’s disturbing that they have used such sophisticated and expensive software to target us. If you see the list, there is no one from a terrorist organisation. It only has those who are working in the public front for peace. So it’s a weird operation. It raises the question if they are targeting us politically.” Gandhi, who has a masters in software engineering, started the May 17 movement following the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009. He has rallied for the rights of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the EU parliament in 2018, for human rights in Tamil Nadu and spoke out against BJP’s economic policies.
{{/usCountry}}“I’ve had intelligence officers following me in whichever city I lived in,” said Gandhi, adding, “So being monitored isn’t new to me but it’s disturbing that they have used such sophisticated and expensive software to target us. If you see the list, there is no one from a terrorist organisation. It only has those who are working in the public front for peace. So it’s a weird operation. It raises the question if they are targeting us politically.” Gandhi, who has a masters in software engineering, started the May 17 movement following the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009. He has rallied for the rights of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the EU parliament in 2018, for human rights in Tamil Nadu and spoke out against BJP’s economic policies.
{{/usCountry}}Gandhi’s family, like that of other activists, has been affected given his nature of work. Even before the Pegasus revelation, his wife lost her job, he had to shift his daughter to a different school and move several homes. “How do you talk to your wife or father when you know someone is watching you?” But Gandhi doesn’t want to dwell on how this affects him personally stating that activists like Sudha Baradwaj and late Stan Swamy have gone through worse. “The larger issue is that this is an attack on democracy. If we don’t stop this now, it will become the norm,” warns Gandhi. “This sort of surveillance will lead to real dictatorship and worse, we will be victims if we don’t think or act the way government wants us to. If we get there, we can never break the system.”
If required, Gandhi has offered to give his android phone to those associated with the Pegasus project for forensic analysis. He has used the same phone number for two decades.
Kumaresan who has been with the Dravidar Kazhagam for more than three decades said they were made a target due to their ideology. “We are diagonally opposite to the RSS’ ideology so who else will they spy on?” Kumaresan asked. Around the time when RSS was founded in Nagpur is when Periyar began to advocate the self-respect movement in Tamil Nadu. Periyar later founded Dravida Kazhagam, the ideological parent of Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian parties-DMK and AIADMK. DK has kept out of electoral politics. “Our ideological commitment has remained the same unlike political parties who change according to circumstance. So it doesn’t come as a shock to us that they want to watch us,” said Kumaresan. “But this infringes my fundamental right to privacy,” he said. Kumaresan, who also uses an android phone plans to continue using the same number.