*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]*<http://uk.mc296.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]> -- Adv Kamayani Bali Mahabal +919820749204 skype-lawyercumactivist * * *"Nobody is giving up violence. Neither the state nor the Maoists are giving up violence. I am interested in furthering my cause, which is the cause of peace with justice.- DR BINAYAK SEN * *www.binayaksen.net* *PL SIGN ONLINE PETITION: * http://www.petitiononline.com/sen2010/petition.html *DO JOIN THE FACEBOOK GROUP * *http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14205312918* *JOIN THE FACEBOOK EVENT: ONE MILLION FACES http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=179177728772740* * * * * -- 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.
