---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sukla Sen <[email protected]> Date: Mon, May 25, 2009 at 8:03 AM Subject: [humanrights-movement:1580] Protest Demolition of a Gandhian Aashram in Chhattisgarh: Sign Petition at <http://petitions.aidindia.org/VCA> To: [email protected], Samuhik Khoj <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Protest Demolition of a Gandhian Aashram in Chhattisgarh: Sign Petition at <http://petitions.aidindia.org/VCA> I/IV. Press Release The Committee for the Release of Dr Binayak Sen, Mumbai, Mumbai expresses its grave concern at the report of demolition of the premises of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA) in Dantewara,Chhattisgarh by the local administrative authorities on the morning of 17th May 2009, and the subsequent detention, harassment and brutal bashing up of some of the inmates, visitors and volunteers including students and journalists – both men and women. The sudden demolition on the plea of encroachment of forest land and regardless of the fact that a court case is already pending, as it is more than evident, was carried out just to intimidate and stifle any and every voice of conscientious dissent raised against the barbaric and utterly illegal ongoingSalwa Judum campaign of the BJP-government of Chhattisgarh. The Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, had been set up and has been working since for the welfare of the local adivasi way back in 1992. Since 2005, it is raising its voice to demand governmentaccountability and social justice in the light of violence against adivasis and their forced displacement from their villages by the state-sponsored militia Salwa Judum, in Dantewada and Bijapur districts. The VCA is one of the few community organisations engaged in resettlement and rehabilitation of displaced adivasis by organising individual and community support programmes under very adverse conditions. The Committee is shocked to note that the state administration, instead of recognising and supporting the invaluable service that the VCA is providing to the most marginalised communities inthe area, has launched a campaign of vilification and cruel assault against the organisation. The Committee also notes that this demolition was carried out in the immediate wake of the announcement of parliamentary election results. It evidently signifies that the state administration takes the positive electoral performance of the ruling party in the state as an act of popular endorsement of its brutal policies, castigated even by the Supreme Court of India in Last year April. Quite disregarding the fact that such policies have been delivered a decisive rebuff on the all-India plane. In the view of the Committee, no matter whatever be the electoral verdict, such brazen acts of stateatrocities can never be condoned and have got to be stoutly countered. This is of a piece with the detention of and refusal of bail to one of the most prominent humanrights activists in the state, Dr. Binayak Sen, on the strength of the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005 for the last two years in the teeth of national and global outrage and protests. Under the circumstances, the Committee demands of the state government the following: · Immediate legal action against the officials who ordered and carried out the illegal demolition. · Full compensation to VCA and the rebuilding of its premises. [A detailed report is available at <www.binayaksen.net>.] May 18 2009 Committee for the Release of Dr Binayak Sen, Mumbai II http://www.binayaksen.net/2009/05/veronica-kalpana-gautam-vca/ They demolished Gandhian ashram, and beat us badly Posted at May 21, 2009 Symbi student, 18, narrates her first-hand experience of state repression in conflict-torn Dantewada in Chhattisgarh By Veronica Kalpana Gautam Mumbai Mirror THEN NOW Pictures of the non-profit Vanvasi Chetna Ashram in Dantewada, Chattisgarh, before and after demolition by the state authorities on May 17 As part of my Media and Communication programme of Symbiosis International University, I have been interning with Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, a Gandhian non-profit organisation, based in the conflict zone of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh. For the last few years, the ashram has increasingly raised its voice against state atrocities upon civilians. I have been involved in the projects to rehabilitate villagers who fled due to atrocities inflicted on them by both warring parties. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 40,000 people have left their homes due to the conflict between the Naxalites and the state-sponsored, counter-insurgency of the Salwa Judum. The legitimacy of the Salwa Judum yet to be decided before the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the Court has passed orders to rehabilitate the 644 villages of the conflict zone, but the administration has ignored them. Only Vanvasi Chetna Ashram and other local NGOs from Andhra Pradesh have been active in the rehabilitation of these villages and are often hindered by the government. I was involved with the rehabilitation of the villages of Basaguda block during the second week of May. Most villages in these areas have no access to electricity, transport, and the only source of rice and ration is the Ashram itself. About 90 per cent of all homes in these areas have been destroyed. Two days after the initial rehabilitation of more than 100 people, I returned to the village of Kawalnar where the Ashram’s main office and housing facilities have been located for the last 17 years. Eventually, a notice issued on May 13, delivered on May 16, stated that everyone must vacate the premises by 7 am on May 17. I learnt that the legal matter of encroachment itself was sub-judice and thus, no legal action could have been taken. The land itself comes under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution and it gives sole authority to the Gram Sabha — the villagers. And not a single building can be built or destroyed on that land without their permission. In 1994, the Gram Sabha of Kawalnar had already allotted the land to the Ashram for carrying out their service work. The day before, the same villagers confirmed that they do not want the Ashram to go. On May 17, at 6.30 am, about 50 CRPF Jawans arrived and took positions around the Ashram’s premises, ensuring not a single villager could get to the main buildings. After a while, some 500 security personnel and sub-divisional magistrate Ankit Anand had arrived. Kopa Kunjam, a social worker and an employee of the ashram, asked the magistrate for the letter granting permission from the Gram Sabha authorising the demolition. The Magistrate blatantly ignored this imperative procedure and ordered the demolition to proceed by 8 am. As the demolition began, a photojournalist, two students from IISc Bangalore, another from Gujarat, and I were manhandled and detained in a van. Our cameras and our bags were confiscated and two of us were beaten with malice. The photojournalist Javed Iqbal was deliberately singled out for his reports on police atrocities and beaten. Later, we were all taken to the Dantewada police station, and made to give statements on our motives, our identities and our perceptions of the work of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram. We were then taken to the hospital for a medical check-up under police supervision where no one really checked for physical injuries. We were eventually released after the check-up. Regarding the continuation of my internship, I have no compulsions to leave. If I didn’t have two more years of college to finish, I would have stayed back and continued to be a part of the struggle for social justice, being in the company of incredible people and social workers like Himanshu Kumar, Kopa Kunjam, Akkalbatti Naag, Sukhdev Kadiyam, Abhay Sinh Rathwa along with researcher Bela Bhatia and photojournalist Javed Iqbal. These are the people who are still upholding the principles of Gandhian idealogy against an increasingly brutal state machinery, that shows no signs of giving up. III. http://www.binayaksen.net/2009/05/two-sides-to-democracy/ http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090523/jsp/opinion/story_10994522.jsp TWO SIDES TO DEMOCRACY - The demolition of a Gandhian ashram in Chhattisgarh Posted at May 23, 2009 Politics and Play - Ramachandra Guha The Telegraph , Calcutta In the early hours of May 17, while the rest of India was asleep after an election conducted honestly and won fairly, a massive contingent of police and paramilitary descended on a Gandhian ashram in the interior of Chhattisgarh. They woke up the sleeping social workers, and gave them exactly one hour to pack their belongings. The Gandhians were then escorted outside the ashram that had been their home, thus making way for the bulldozers that had been sent to demolish it. The machines were supervised by some 500 men in uniform, variously owing allegiance to the Central Reserve Police Force and the Chhattisgarh state police. Over the course of that Sunday, as the rest of India was considering the consequences of the election just held, the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram in Dantewada was razed to the ground. The office, the training hall, the staff quarters, even the tubewells — nothing was spared. In the summer of 2006, I had myself eaten several meals in that ashram in Dantewada. Its founder, Himanshu, is a sharp-eyed, well-built, and forever smiling man in his late forties. Originally from Meerut, he was inspired by Vinoba Bhave and Nirmala Deshpande to devote his life to the adivasis of central India. In 1992, he moved with his wife to Dantewada to fulfil his calling. He recruited a group of local boys and girls, and with their assistance worked on bringing education and healthcare to the adivasis. By the time I visited the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, it had established a solid presence in the district. Its campus lay in the little village of Kanwalnar, about 10 miles from Dantewada town. Ringed by mango trees, the ashram contained a set of low, modest buildings where the members lived. From this home in the forest they ventured out into the surrounding countryside, to work among the Gonds and Koyas and Murias of the district. The activities of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram would be reckoned by most people in most times to be uncontroversial. But these are dangerous times in Dantewada, with a civil war raging between Maoist revolutionaries and a vigilante group promoted by the state administration and known as Salwa Judum. In this war, the tribals are caught in-between — so are Gandhian social workers. No one living in the district of Dantewada is now allowed to be neutral, to condemn even-handedly the barbaric acts of the Naxalites as well as the barbaric acts of the Salwa Judum. As a consequence of the civil war, more than 50,000 tribals in Dantewada have been uprooted from their homes. Some left voluntarily; while many others were forcibly displaced by the Salwa Judum or by the Maoists. These refugees live in camps strung along the main road, in leaking and unstable tents, and without proper access to food, water, and means of employment. Many victims of the civil war fled across the border to Andhra Pradesh, where they live in equally pathetic conditions. After months of living in this way, some tribals asked that they be allowed to return to their villages, so that they could live in their own homes, and close to their lands and their livestock. While the state wanted them to stay on in the camps, the villagers were encouraged to go back by the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram. Thus Himanshu and his co-workers set about rehabilitating those adivasis who wished to have no more of life in the camps. The pretext behind the demolition of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram is that the campus has ‘encroached’ on government forest land. The Gandhians, on the other hand, insist that they built on revenue land acquired legally and with permission from the local panchayat. The case is currently being heard in the local courts. Rather than await the court’s verdict, the district authorities uniliaterally chose to demolish the ashram, in what is very clearly an act of vindictive retaliation against the refusal by these Gandhians to wholly condone the support to the Salwa Judum of the Chhattisgarh state government. As it happened, four students from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore were visiting Dantewada on the weekend of 16/17 May. They were thus eye-witnesses to the ashram’s demolition. One scholar I spoke to said that the sub-divisional magistrate directing the operations, Ankit Anand, was particularly belligerent. When a student weakly protested, Anand commanded the police to have him silenced. The boy was taken away, beaten up, and asked to confess that the good Gandhian Himanshu was (a) an agent of the Naxalites; and (b) running a prostitution racket. It was surely not an accident that the state of Chhattisgarh chose the very weekend that the election results were being declared to carry out this savage act of retribution. Who, at a time like this, would care about a violation of democracy in a remote and inaccessible corner of the country while the world was celebrating the victory of democracy in India as a whole? For this writer, the juxtaposition of these two events was powerfully symbolic. For I have long argued that India is a ‘50-50’ democracy. In the formal, institutional sense of holding fair elections contested by many parties, allowing freedom of movement for its citizens, and nurturing a free press, India is indeed democratic. But in other respects, it falls short of the democratic ideal. Kin and caste play far too important a part in politics and governance. Levels of corruption among politicians and officials are unacceptably high. The autonomy of the judiciary is somewhat compromised. The use of force by the State is often capricious and arbitrary. Even in safe and (mostly) peaceable places like my hometown, Bangalore, one can occasionally encounter the dark side of Indian democracy — as in tax officials who take bribes, or politicians who fill in common waterbodies and sell them to private builders. But it is in the conflict zones of Kashmir, the Northeast, and central India, that the State shows itself at its most unappealing. To be sure, there are extenuating circumstances, such as separatist movements and revolutionary struggles. But to explain is not to apologize. One must condemn the violence used by the Naxalites and by the Kashmiri insurgents. One must yet insist that the Indian State, our State, be held to a higher order of morality and accountability. Over the past few years, the government of Chhattisgarh has had a particularly undistinguished record in this respect. The burning of adivasi villages under the government-sponsored Salwa Judum has been documented in a series of independent reports. Then there is the unconscionable incarceration without bail of the respected social worker and doctor, Binayak Sen, on the very flimsy charge of carrying a letter from one Naxalite to another. Now comes this savage act of retribution against a group of law-abiding, peace-loving, and utterly non-violent Gandhians. Supporters of the Chhattisgarh government deflect such criticism by pointing to the fact that the chief minister of the state has won a series of elections. But democracy does not begin and end with the counting of votes. Those elected to political office are sworn to uphold the rule of law, and to honour the ideals of the Indian Constitution. This holds true at the national as well as provincial levels. It applies equally to Congress-led governments as to Bharatiya Janata Party-led ones. So long as incidents such as the demolition of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram occur and recur, India will not count as much more than a 50 per cent democracy. [email protected] IV. http://petitions.aidindia.org/VCA/ Petition to express deep shock and dismay at the illegal demolition of the premises of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram To: Ms. Pratibha Patil, President of India Mr. ESL Narasimhan Governor of Chhattisgarh India Mr. Raman Singh Chief Minister Chhattisgarh,India cc: Mr. Joy Oommen, Chief Secretary of Chhattisgarh, and Mr. RP Jain, Home Secretary of Chhattisgarh We are writing to express deep shock and dismay at the illegal demolition of the premises of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA) by the local administrative authorities on the morning of 17th May 2009, and the subsequent detention, harassment and brutalization of students and journalists working with VCA by the police. We condemn the campaign of vilification and harassment that the state administration has unleashed against VCA, and demand its immediate end. Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, has been working for the welfare of the adivasi (indigenous) people of south Bastar (Chhattisgarh, central India) since 1992, consistently fighting for their legal rights and access to their forests, lands and livelihood.. Since 2005, VCA has also called for government accountability and social justice in light of the violence against adivasis and their forced displacement from their villages by the state-sponsored militia Salwa Judum in Dantewada and Bijapur districts. VCA is one of the few community organizations engaged in resettlement and rehabilitation of displaced adivasis[1] by organizing individual and community support under very adverse conditions,and is also providing themlegal aid. VCA has recently been involved in highlighting the complicity of the state administration in several cases of extrajudicial killings—including the case of Singaram massacres, where 19 villagers were killed on 8th January, 2009. What was initially presented by the state as a case of Maoist insurgents being killed in an alleged “encounter” with the state security forces was later revealed by media and human rights organizations to be a staged killing of unarmed villagers[2]. VCA has been at the forefront of asking the government for accountability, and has brought this case to the Chhattisgarh High Court. It is therefore, particularly alarming to note that the Sub Divisional Magistrate who carried out the demolition of the VCA premises, Mr. Ankit Anand, is also the one who conducted the magisterial inquiry in the Singaram killings, and has a clear conflict of interest. Ever since VCA took a strong stance against the government’s support of Salwa Judum a few years ago, the government has been conducting an unending campaign of harassment against the organization, as detailed below: ·In February 2007, a case of “illegal” encroachment on village forest was lodged against VCA, even though the said piece of land had been granted to them by the Kawalnar Gram Sabha resolution in 1994. VCA challenged this original notice in the court.[3] ·In July 2007, while the case was still under consideration in the courts, VCA was issued an eviction order by the local revenue official, ordering them to immediately vacate their premises.[4] ·In January 2008, VCA received another notice from the Registrar of Firms and Societies in Chhattisgarh, threatening to cancel their registration under the Societies Registration Act of 1973, on the basis of the complaint of the District Collector that they have encroached government land (even though the matter was still sub judice).[5] ·In December 2008, VCA’s registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, 1976, was “temporarily suspended in public interest” without any reason being provided—making it impossible for them to receive funding from international organizations. [6] ·Finally, on 16th May 2009, the VCA was delivered a notice dated 13th May, informing them that their premises were going to be bulldozed the next day. Not only is this a blatantly illegal notice, considering that the matter was still under judicial consideration, the late delivery of the notice also ensured that the VCA were also left with no time to move the courts to get an injunction to stay the order (the 16th being a holiday). [7] Even though the VCA immediately responded to the notice informing the local administration of the status of the case, it made no difference. On the morning of the 17th of May, a 500 strong posse of policemen, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and other security forces cordoned off the area, and bulldozed the entire structure, painstakingly put together by the VCA and the local community over 17 years, not even sparing the tubewells and an open well which had been constructed by the Government. The police and armed personnel manhandled five VCA visitors and staff members, including a freelance photojournalist, two PhD research scholars from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, one woman student intern from the corporate firm Symbiosis, Pune, a relative of the Director, who was there on a personal visit and a health worker.[8] We unequivocally condemn the systematic campaign of harassment and intimidation that the administration has launched against Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, and demand that it be immediately halted and the organization be fully and properly compensated. Not only has the administration flouted all norms in ordering the demolition of a structure still under court’s consideration, the undue haste and urgency shown in implementing this order is also very disturbing. Furthermore, we note that this area is governed by Schedule V, and hence, Gram Sabhas have the primary responsibility to take all decisions over land use. However, by effecting this demolition, the administration has shown utter disregard for the opinion of the Gram Sabha. We demand the following: · An end to the systematic harassment of all human rights activists and critics of the Chhattisgarh state. · Immediate legal action against the officials who ordered and carried out the illegal demolition. · Full compensation to VCA and the rebuilding of its premises. · Immediate action against the police officials responsible for the brutalization of the visitors and staff members. · An assurance from the administration, that it will seek explicit consent of the Gram Sabha before erecting or demolishing any further structures in the area., Sincerely, Peace Is Doable ________________________________ Cricket on your mind? Visit the ultimate cricket website. 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