There must be a nation wide campaign to prevent the
victimization of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties
by the ban proposed ,as there can be no functioning democracy
without organizations focusing on Civil Liberties and the
victimization of people as a group or of individuals .These
organizations are essential in a civilized political society.
Dr. Binayak Sen is an illustrious office bearer of this
organization , with grassroots work in the field of public
health, second to none . What happens in the region of
Chhatisgarh will be clear from the decisions in the
case of the eminent Trade Union leader Shankar Niyogi
which had to be prosecuted by the CBI as he was killed by
those interests who hired a killer, as the unorganized
workers in the region were first organized by him into
a collective and unlike mainstream unions of several political
parties who have ceased to genuinely represent working
people ,painstaking efforts were made to give the workers
a broader understanding of all issues of their concern ,
whether economic , political,social , civic , education ,culture
and health .This is the backdrop to the political fascism in the
State of Chhatisgarh, though the assassination took place before
the formation of the State , it is the same region dominated by the
same classes/castes.
I endorse the statement in Defense of the Peoples Union for
Civil Liberties Chhatisgarh , which has done outstanding work in
alerting the country as a whole to the deprivation of the life and
livelihood of the Indigenous people of India, among other people
of the State ,including the peasantry .
On the one hand there is Corporate funding of parties which supports
parties resorting to extreme chauvinism of a "sons of the soil campaign"
in some regions and on the other hand the same Companies seize lands
of the Indigenous people,in collusion with state governments such as the
government of Chhattisgarh, without their consent ,which is unconstitutional
yet permitted with impunity, with whole villages seized and cleared.
By banning the PUCL the State government desires that the atrocities and
clearance of large areas and mineral and water resource seizure of the people
of the State by outsiders which are the subject matter of MOUs remains
concealed ,
hence the desire to ban the PUCL .
It is necessary to seek the support of all those who will rally round against
the banning of the PUCL with urgency .
Niloufer Bhagwat
Advocate
Mumbai
From: Kamayani
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 1:09 PM
Subject: [humanrights-movement:4415] Fwd:In Defence of People’s Union for
Civil Liberties, Chhattisgarh
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Balaji Narasimhan <balajipo...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 12:57 PM
Summary: According to news reports, the Chhattisgarh home minister Nankiram
Kanwar has threatened to ban PUCL and has accused it of supplying arms to
Naxalites. He is also reported to be considering prohibiting Swami Agnivesh
from entering the state. There were also other reports targeting the
appointment of Dr. Binayak Sen to the Supreme Court panel on health care.
And these reports follow the arrest earlier last week of Ramesh Agrawal and
Harihar Patel and Ramesh's hospitalization in inhuman conditions. Today, the
sessions court denied them bail.
It is important that we respond collectively against these attempts to malign
PUCL and oppose the continuing harassment and detention of human rights workers
in Chhattisgarh as well as other states.
We call upon individuals and organizations worldwide to endorse the following
statement by sending a message to defendp...@gmail.com.
We also encourage the wide publication of this statement.
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In solidarity,
Balaji
In Defence of
People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Chhattisgarh
Free Ramesh Agrawal and Harihar Patel!
Free Kopa Kunjam and Sukhnath Oyame!
Stop harassing Swami Agnivesh, Binayak Sen!
Hands off PUCL!
Hands off Human Rights Workers!
Defend PUCL! Defend Human Rights Workers in Chhattisgarh!
Defend the Indian Constitution! Defend the Rule of Law!
It is with grave concern and utmost urgency that we write to protest the
continuing threats to human rights workers in the state of Chhattisgarh. On
Saturday, June 4, 2011, Dainik Bhaskar reported the state Home Minister
Nankiram Kanwar’s public statement that the People’s Union for Civil Liberties
(PUCL) was supplying arms to the Naxalites and that the Minister was
considering banning the organization.
PUCL is a Gandhian organization founded by Shri Jayaprakash Narayan to uphold
and defend the Indian Constitution. PUCL has had an illustrious track record
nationally and in Chhattisgarh of ensuring that the Fundamental Rights
guaranteed by the Constitution are available to all the people of India. When
elected and unelected public officials have usurped or attempted to usurp their
powers, PUCL has often been among the few organizations that provide the only
line of defense for many Indian citizens. Lacking access to normal judicial
processes, it is to PUCL and other similar organizations that the poorest and
the most marginalized often turn.
This is particularly true in the case of Chhattisgarh, where, in the name of
fighting Maoists, the state machinery, including the police, has created for
itself a documented history of acting with impunity, engaging in violence on a
massive scale against defenceless people. In December 2005, the state unit of
PUCL in Chhattisgarh, under the leadership of Binayak Sen, along with several
other human rights organizations, has investigated and documented the
atrocities - burning down entire villages, murder, rape, mutilation - committed
by Salwa Judum, a vigilante force financed, armed and supported by the state.
Petitions filed by Prof. Nandini Sundar and others and by Himanshu Kumar of the
Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA) have led the Supreme Court to order the state
government to disband Salwa Judum and rehabilitate the displaced villagers. The
state government has largely ignored these orders. Interestingly, immediately
after PUCL conducted its investigation in 2005, the then Director General of
Police O. P. Rathode declared to the press, Hum PUCL ko dekh lenge (we will
take care of PUCL).
PUCL Chhattisgarh has been consistent in opposing violence of all kinds,
including violence by the state and by private actors, whether Salwa Judum or
the Maoists. PUCL has also been consistent in advocating dialogue with the
Maoists as a means to end the violence in the state. It is in this context
that the work of an upstanding citizen like Swami Agnivesh has to be seen. It
should also be noted that Swami Agnivesh’s work has had the support of Home
Minister P. Chidambaram in his attempts to initiate dialogue with the Maoists,
though the attempts had to be aborted subsequently when the Maoist interlocutor
was killed by the police. It was also the peace mission of Swami Agnivesh, with
the support of Chief Minister Raman Singh, that led to the release of five
policemen kidnapped by the Maoists last February. Sadly, when Swami Agnivesh
and other activists went carrying relief supplies to the victims of a five-day
long police operation in which the villages of Tarmetla, Timapuram and Morpalli
were pillaged and burnt down, three men were murdered and three women raped,
mobs of Special Police Officers attacked their vehicles with stones, threatened
and turned them back, causing them to abandon their peace mission.
Binayak Sen has given his entire professional career to the well-being of the
poorest of the people of India, particularly the mine workers and the adivasis
of Chhattisgarh. As an individual practitioner, as a founder of Shahid Hospital
and as an advisor to the state public health programmes in policy formulation
and as an advisor to the volunteer organization Jan Swasthya Sahyog, his
contributions have been immense. It is in recognition of his lifelong work and
contributions that the National Planning Commission has accepted his nomination
as a member of the Health Advisory Panel. However, his human rights work with
PUCL angered the state officials and the police, ultimately earning him
conviction to life imprisonment under false charges based on fabricated
evidence. To the great credit of the Supreme Court, it has seen through all
this and has granted him his freedom, while he continues to challenge his
conviction in the state High Court. The reprieve given to Dr. Sen by the
Supreme Court and the legitimation of his work by the Planning Commission have
proven irksome to the state and have led to a series of protests by the youth
wing of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state.
The Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA), under the leadership of Gandhian activist
Himanshu Kumar, has had a long record of working with the adivasis of
Chhattisgarh on issues of nutrition, health and development, often with the
support and funding of the state government. After the Salwa Judum was created,
VCA found itself having to providr refuge to the victims of its violence. The
state government turned against VCA when VCA started to document the massacres
committed by the Salwa Judum and the state police in the villages of Singaram,
Matwada, Gachanpalli and Gompad in 2009 and to file cases in a state court and
the Supreme Court seeking redress for the victims and punishment for the
culprits. The state police summarily tore down the Ashram buildings in May,
2009, and ultimately hounded Mr. Kumar out of the state by the turn of the
year. Two of its volunteers, Kopa Kunjam and Sukhnath Oyame, are now in prison
on trumped up charges.
Ramesh Agrawal and Harihar Patel are two outstanding, committed and
non-violent activists who are among the latest victims of the state government.
They were arrested on May 28, again on false charges. Requiring urgent medical
care, Mr Agrawal was taken to a hospital where he is now being held, chained to
his bed, in contravention of Supreme Court directives issued in 1995.
For many years, both Mr. Agrawal and Dr. Patel have been raising concerns
about the social and environmental impact of indiscriminate industrial
expansion in the Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh. They have actively
participated in the public hearings mandated by the environmental clearance
procedures under the law. Mr. Agrawal is also a longtime Right To Information
(RTI) activist and has frequently brought to light numerous irregularities
related to environmental compliance, water pollution and social impact issues
of different projects being proposed in the district. Dr. Patel has been
leading the Adivasi Kisan Mazdoor Ekta Sangathan, which has been fighting
against takeover of people’s land for industrial and mining activities in and
around his village. Both Mr. Agrawal and Dr. Patel have also taken up several
matters before the National Environment Appellate Authority (NEAA) and other
regulatory authorities, raising concerns about faulty impact assessment,
ineffective public hearings and instances of construction before mandatory
approvals. In their most recent work, they exposed corruption in the grant of
clearances to the Jindal Steel and Power Company, earning them the displeasure
of the government officials and their arrest and detention.
The state Home Minister Kanwar’s statement and other recent statements and
actions by other Chhattisgarh government officials and BJP leaders are clearly
desperate attempts to malign PUCL, Swami Agnivesh, Binayak Sen, Himanshu Kumar,
Ramesh Agrawal and Dr. Harihar Patel. These and other handful of human rights
workers are the only remaining independent witnesses to the lawless conduct of
the state officials and the last line of defense of the people against the
depredations of the state machinery. PUCL and Dr. Binayak Sen brought to
national attention the horrific history of the violence of Salwa Judum. Swami
Agnivesh raised public awareness of the atrocities committed by the state
security forces last March. Mr. Agrawal and Dr. Patel brought to light the
corruption of the state officials and their collusion with a private
corporation. The state finds these witnesses getting in the way of its
machinations to conduct its business without the hindrance of the law and the
Indian Constitution. Arresting them or threatening to ban PUCL and prohibit
Swami Agnivesh’s entry into the state is but a prelude to getting these
witnesses out of its way. It is incumbent upon all those who believe in the
Indian Constitution and the rule of law to speak up and come to the defense of
PUCL and Swami Agnivesh, Binayak Sen, Himanshu Kumar, Ramesh Agrawal and
Harihar Patel.
We dmand that the officials of the government of Chhattisgarh must cease its
attempts to malign and harass PUCL, Binayak Sen, Swami Agnivesh, Himanshu Kumar
and other human rights workers in the state.
We demand that Kopa Kunjam, Sukhnath Oyame, Ramesh Agrawal and Harihar Patel
be released and that the charges against them dropped immediately.
--
Adv Kamayani Bali Mahabal
+919820749204
skype-lawyercumactivist
The UID project is going to do almost exactly the same thing which the
predecessors of Hitler did, else how is it that Germany always had the lists of
Jewish names even prior to the arrival of the Nazis? The Nazis got these lists
with the help of IBM which was in the 'census' business that included racial
census that entailed not only count the Jews but also identifying them. At the
United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, there is an exhibit of an IBM
Hollerith D-11 card sorting machine that was responsible for organising the
census of 1933 that first identified the Jews.
http://saynotoaadhaar.blogspot.com/
http://aadhararticles.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_162987527061902&ap=1
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