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Sangath, www.sangath.com, is looking to build a centre for services, training and research and seeks to buy approx 1500 to 2000 sq mtrs land betweeen Mapusa and Bambolim and surrounding rural areas. Please contact: [email protected] or [email protected] or ph+91-9881499458 http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-July/180028.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Accidental Activist - Might is Right By Venita Coelho It's raining miserably in Canada. I was hoping at last to get away from the Goa monsoon. Instead I find that I seem to have brought it with me. I have also brought my activism. By some mysterious synchronicity we were all exploring downtown Toronto when a plane droned overhead, towing a sign. It said 'Human rights in Iran'. Two seconds later we walked right into the middle of a rally for Iran. There were people singing, waving flags, dancing. They had come with their children, friends, and pets. There were old ladies tottering along holding their walkers, young stylish women in six inch heels, students in jeans and sneakers - all kinds from all across Toronto. The police were in shorts and on bicycles and escorted them carefully as they held a variety of signs all demanding change in Iran. I stood watching them go past, thinking of our own rallies in Goa, and wondering about a place called Iran that I had never visited or thought too much about. All I knew about it was what Reboni had told me in words of horror. She had been right there when the protests against the election started. 'They are ordinary people like you and me. And peaceful. They came out for peaceful protests - and their government shot them! Snipers shot dead people like us.' They protestors in Toronto were carrying photos of Neda Agha Soltan - one such ordinary person like us. This young Iranian girl who was shot dead at a rally in Iran. An amateur video captured the last moments of her struggle to stay alive. Her death was the spark that fired furious protests around the world. Protests that the Iranian government responded to by moving in more soldiers and giving orders for snipers to openly shoot protestors. At the other extreme is liberal Canada. The biggest controversy in Canada right now revolves around Professor Hassan Diab of Carlton University who is under house arrested. He has been accused of being a terrorist and of bombing a synagogue in Paris. But while his case is being heard the liberal University decided to let him continue teaching. There was a wave of outrage across Canada. Allow a man accused of terrorism to continue to have access to the minds of the young? Wasn't a sexual offender strictly kept out of reach of possible victims while his case was being decided? So shouldn't an accused terrorist be kept out of reach of possible converts to his brand of violence while he was being tried? The University decided to restrain him from teaching. Promptly the Teachers Union protested that this was a violation of his rights and decided to fight the decision. With its liberal attitude, Canada is becoming a haven for the unsavoury. It supports individual rights and liberties to a degree that we in India would see as ridiculous. In Iran, on the other hand, human rights have disappeared in the state sponsored violence against the ordinary man. Somewhere between the two lies Goa. Here you can certainly go out on the roads and protest. While the state will not yet openly use guns against you, the machinery of state is certainly geared to protect the rights of big business. So mining activists find themselves picked up by the cops and slapped with various cases, agitators in the village find themselves hit with various complaints and cases from the Panchayat, and the police choose always to pick up the agitator and not the panch member. Might by default is right here unless you protest. The common man has to take to the streets, scream, shout and waste hours and hours of time and effort before he can actually tip the scales. It is up to him to defend his rights and not up to the state to ensure that they are not violated in any instance. At that moment in Toronto three different attitudes touched briefly at the corner where we watched the rally go by. I wondered whether we should be thanking our stars that we are not Iran - or mourning the fact that we are not Canada. On the whole I think I'll just stick with being glad that I'm Goan - and continuing to fight to make Goa the state it should be, not the state that it has become through neglect and exploitation and official greed. (ENDS) =========================================================================== The above article appeared in the August 4, 2009 edition of the Herald, Goa
