Women against Sexual violence and State Repression (WSS)
Delhi dt. 25th December 2010
An Open Letter to the Honourable President of India, Smt Pratibha
Patil and , Prime Minister on the outrageous
conviction of Dr. Binayak Sen
Women against Sexual Violence and State repression (WSS) is outraged
at the charges framed and the conviction by the Additional Sessions
Court, Raipur of Dr. Binayak Sen on Dcember 24 2010. As citizens of
the Democratic Republic of India we are also deeply saddened at this
colossal betrayal of public trust by those who owe allegiance to the
practice of law, and who have been entrusted with upholding the
principles of fair play and truth that we believe the Constitution of
this country has enshrined.
Dr Binayak Sen is a pediatrician by training and has made significant
contributions in the public health field in Chhattisgarh. Over the
past three decades he had gradually extended his sphere of work into
what the governments, international agencies and public health
professionals refer to as “social determinants of health”. As a civil
liberties activist, Dr Sen went beyond providing curative services in
some of the remotest parts of Chhattisgarh. His work demonstrates how
medicine and public health practitioners can contribute to the broader
struggles for basic rights to food, health and education, as well as
for democratic rights, in our highly unequal society. That a very
wide section of people – from industrial workers, lawyers,
academicians, film-makers, social and political activists, poets,
artists, doctors, to students have rallied for him and the cause he
represented cannot be brushed aside.
It is time for the Indian public to question ourselves at the methods
used by the State of Chhattisgarh not only in the events leading up to
Dr. Sen’s arrest in 2007 and his incarceration for two whole years,
but also at the conviction of sedition under Section 124(a) despite
the lack of evidence. While the judiciary and the legal system of
India can be complicit in this witch-hunt of Dr. Sen by the
Chhattisgarh State to buttress the corporate-backed agenda of grabbing
the land and natural resources of Chhattisgarh, it does not follow
that the Indian public will be silent spectators to such erosion of
democracy.
In this past decade Indian laws around the industries, environment and
tribal land and resource rights been flouted or violated with
impunity. Further, the government has also come down heavily on the
resistance by the affected peoples to such appropriations of natural
resources. In our hurry to attain double digit GDP, we need to pause
and ask ourselves whether it is to be at the cost of the rights of 80%
of our population, whose development it is, why the poorest of our
poor need to pay the unequal cost of a globalizing India and why
development cannot be sustainable and just. Dr. Sen’s arrest,
incarceration, trial and conviction are an indication of the way the
government is willing to trample on Indian democracy. If any activity
and any protest by civil rights and human rights activists against
unjust or unlawful acts of the government are to be met with such
persecution and malignance, the fabric of this nation will not stand
the strain.
We reiterate that Dr. Sen has been falsely implicated, falsely charged
and unjustly convicted due to his public protests against the Salwa
Judum, against the extreme and increasing deprivations that the
tribals of Central India are facing, against the socio-economic and
political erosion of tribal rights and against the atrocities that the
Indian state is inflicting upon its poor. It is ridiculously easy to
label just about anybody as a ‘Naxalite’ or a ‘Naxalite-sympathiser’
as a red herring in cases when the State has been colluding, through
its administrative-police-judicial nexus, with multi-national
companies, public sector units and small-scale industrialists in its
encroachments of tribal lands and forest resources.
Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) demands that
the Union government and all State governments wake up to the enormous
injustices being perpetrated upon the Indian people, especially the
Indian poor, as is symbolised by this travesty of justice in the case
if Dr. Sen. We unequivocally condemn this judgment of the Raipur
Sessions Court and urge you to intervene in this repugnant attack on
our democratic and civil rights.
About WSS
WSS began in November 2009 as a non-funded grassroots effort to end
the violence being perpetrated upon our bodies and on our societies.
It is a nationwide network representing women from diverse political
and social movements that include women’s organizations, mass
organizations, civil liberty organizations, student and youth
organizations, mass movements and individual women. We unequivocally
condemn sexual violence and sexual assault inflicted on women.
Contact us at - [email protected]
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"humanrights movement" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/humanrights-movement?hl=en.
