Archive for May, 2009
‘Naxalism Is Against The Natural Flow Of Life’
From Tehelka Cover Story “Binayak & The Tragedy Beyond”
Activist Himanshu Kumar could not be swayed by the State’s wrath. SHOMA CHAUDHURY speaks to this Gandhian
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| Unbent Himanshu kumar, daughters Alisha and Haripriya, wife Veena and father Prakash kumar |
You have two daughters. Does that not make you feel vulnerable?
My father was part of the freedom movement. My uncle was a senior colleague of Nehru’s. I knew men like the scientist Dayanidhi Patnaik, who came back with a PhD from America but gave up everything to join Vinobha Bhave’s Bhoomidan movement. I didn’t even notice when their values were stamped on me. From them, I came to believe that the material world is immaterial. Why should I compromise for my girls? What would I achieve? Two more girls — among lakhs of others — would be brought up to lead a cloistered life. Veena could have pulled me back, but she has never done that. She herself was terrified of wearing bangles and synthetic clothes and being trapped in a marriage that would shut her behind closed doors. She was a social worker before she married me.
What is at the heart of the State’s neglect and abuse of tribals?
I don’t think either the State or the police see them as human. How many officials have even bothered to learn their language? One day a CRPF officer was complaining to me about them. He said, “Oh, these ULFA-Nagas-adivasis — whatever they’re called…” That’s how faceless they were to him. There is such an arrogance in the way the State approaches them. They will not consult them, not communicate with them.
| We are not picking up the gun but are asking for justice within the system. Why does that rouse the State’s ire? |
P Chidambaram has said he will militarily destroy the Naxals, then bring development in the region.
He can do that. He can kill thousands of his own countrymen attempting that. He has greater might, he is a superior race. And as one Naxal leader said in an interview to TEHELKA, “We do not control all areas. Why don’t they bring development to places we don’t control?”
‘I’d Happily Back Out, But It Seems Impossible’
From Tehelka Cover Story “Binayak & The Tragedy Beyond”
His political concerns are well known. Activist Binayak Sen shares insights into his detention with SHOMA CHAUDHURY
How did your loss of freedom affect you?
(Long pause) As a civil rights worker, never being in jail was a hole in my CV (laughs). But I thought it would be 10- 15 days. If I’d known it would last two years, I’d have been less sanguine. You cannot access any privilege in jail; you are an equal in a way you can never be in the outside world. This may not always be very pleasant, but for me, it was interesting. The physical circumstances were obviously not pleasant, but everyone is coping with the same thing — hot winds, mosquitoes, terrible food — so that didn’t bother me. The jail system runs on corruption. In some ways, this corruption is almost positive because it brings a kind of humanising intervention that the system has completely shut out. So though it’s illegal, almost every inmate has a stove and at six in the morning, you’ll find everyone making dal.
But as you realised you were in for a long haul, did you go through an emotional graph?
Your mind becomes soggy. After a while I couldn’t remember names, familiar words. That used to panic me. We have seven dogs — I couldn’t remember their names. That is how the absence of familiar intercourse impacts you. I was depressed quite often. There were interesting ideas in my head, but I just couldn’t write. There’s an infinite variety of human nature and circumstance on display in jail. This made me think very deeply about categories. You think section 302 is 302 (murder), but it could range from an entirely fabricated case to self-defence to a gang war to a supari (ransom). Yet this range of crime is subsumed under the same legal category. One of my closest friends in jail was a 25-year-old boy who had been arrested when he was 19 for stabbing his father. He had done it as a last resort to prevent his mother from being beaten to death by his drunk father. He’s been convicted to life imprisonment. What’s horrifying is that the authorities are consumed by active contempt for these inmates. Even the most basic human dignity is denied to them. Every evening I saw lambardars beating inmates with lathis and chappals — 10 to a man. There were much worse things as well. But if I complained the authorities looked at me as if I was soft in the head. There are so many people in jail who are innocent, or at least, who carry the idea of their innocence in their heads. And there is nothing ahead for them but this systemic brutalisation. So I had this feeling of helplessness. It was like living through a neardeath experience, watching yourself and your loved ones from a distance — [my wife] Ilina traveling every week by train to meet me for half an hour and then traveling back.
Death On The Margins
Tehelka Cover Story “Binayak & The Tragedy Beyond”
Far from the national gaze, the establishment practises a dangerous malevolence when confronted with its anti-people policies, reports SHOMA CHAUDHURY from Raipur and Dantewada. Photographs by SHAILENDRA PANDEY
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| Old threshold 2.30pm and Binayak Sen finally closes the door of his home to the stream of visitors who have come to see him after his release |
ONE YEAR ago, before the campaign on his behalf had gained m o m e n t u m , TEHELKA did a cover story on Binayak Sen — doctor and human rights activist, jailed on false charges under the draconian Chhattisgarh (People’s) Public Security Act (See TEHELKA: No Country for Good Men). On May 25, when Supreme Court judges Markandeya Katju and Deepak Verma took just sixty seconds to undo an injustice that had been wilfully perpetuated by the State for two long years, it should have been an occasion for another cover story, more celebratory, documenting among other things, Binayak’s wife, Ilina’s Herculean legal struggle for his release. But Binayak and Ilina’s story is merely symbolic of a much bigger, on-going and faceless struggle. And so, even as the human rights community exploded in joy with the May 25 victory, 400 kilometers from Raipur, another big battlefront was being opened.
It is two days after 59-year-old Binayak Sen got to go home. May 28, scalding, red dust everywhere, a hot loo blowing. A man in a white lungi and kurta sits under a leafy tree, listening to ten Gond tribals tell their story of how two nights earlier their village was looted. Every ration burnt. Every goat taken, every hen kidnapped. Not even a little chick left behind. The tribals have trekked from faraway Kamanar village in the hope that this man in white will help them access the ear of the State. It is a difficult proposition because it is the State that has looted the village: How do you lodge an FIR with the police when it is the police that have stolen your chickens?
Q&A: ‘There is no way out but struggle’
Q&A: Dr Binayak Sen, a doctor and an activist
Sreelatha Menon / New Delhi May 31, 2009, 0:20 IST
Business Standard
A military solution to Naxalism is neither possible nor desirable, Dr Binayak Sen, a doctor and an activist, tells SREELATHA MENON, after his release from two years of detention.
You were teaching in New Delhi and could have settled there. What drove you to Madhya Pradesh in the late 70s to practise among tribals? Were the health facilities there as bad as they are at present?
They were not as bad. But, they were similar. There has been no marked improvement as far as healthcare infrastructure or services to the poor are concerned. The Chhattisgarh government did an evaluation of the services by using the Caesarian section facilities in government hospitals as an index. Only three government facilities were equipped to carry out this operation in 2004. Very few health centres are equipped to investigate and treat communicable diseases.
Draconian Laws in India: Why and How to Fight?
This coming Sunday, May 31, a discussion amongst activists would be held triggered by a few initiating presentations to explore the nature and implications of draconian laws in India.
This would drive towards evolving an appropriate action plan to tackle the issue in a serious and systematic manner.
This discussion is meant to be the first preliminary step.
Venue: Shramik (1st floor), Dadar (E). (From the station, on the lane behind the second block of Swaminarayn Temple, on the right – midway.)
Day / Date: Sunday, May 31.
Time: 5 30 – 8 00 PM.
Pls. do join.
Draconian Laws, Delete Them
By Dr. Mookhi Amir Ali
Countercurrents.org
Dr. Binayak Sen will now be out on bail but not without celebrating the second anniversary of his needless detention. He was detained under Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Under these laws a person can be detained for flimsy reasons with no provision of bail. This is not the only law in our book which can be used by the Government to harass a citizen who is inconvenient to them. Dr Binayak in addition to being a good and benevolent doctor is a conscientious human rights activist who was blowing whistles on Chhattisgarh government sponsored Salwa Judam’s illegal killings of innocent tribals. The incarceration which the doctor has suffered was the “reward” the government of Chhattisgarh was giving him for his aggressive activism. Salwa Judam, whose misdeeds Dr. Sen was fighting against, has received strong disapproval of the Supreme Court of India.
Read the rest of this entry »
Sri Lanka : Fears for the Safety of Three Medical Doctors
Amnesty International urgent/
18 May 2009
UA 129/09 Fear for Safety/Incommunicado detention
SRI LANKA Dr. T. Sathiyamoorthy (m) medical doctor
Dr. Varatharajah (m) medical doctor
Dr. Shanmugarajah (m) medical doctor
Amnesty International is concerned for the safety of three government employed doctors who had been working in the conflict zone in northeastern Sri Lanka until 15 May. Dr. T. Sathiyamoorthy, Dr. T. Varatharajah and Dr.Shanmugarajah were treating the sick and wounded until they reportedly traveled out of the ‘No Fire Zone’ with approximately 5,000 other civilians.
According to reports received by Amnesty International, Dr. Shanmugarajah and Dr. Sathiyamoorthy, the regional director of health services in Kilinochchi, may be currently held at the Terrorist Investigation Division (T.I.D) in the capital Colombo. However, a detention order has not yet been issued so their relatives remain unsure of their whereabouts and they do not have access to a lawyer. Dr. T. Varatharajah, the regional director of health services in Mullaitivu, was seriously injured and is reported to have been airlifted from the Omanthai crossing point to an unknown destination by the Sri Lankan Air Forces (SLAF). According to reports, the three doctors were last seen on the morning of 15 May at a holding area at Omanthai checking point.
‘The state wants to stamp out democratic dissent’
Activist Himanshu Kumar could not be swayed by the State’s wrath. SHOMA
CHAUDHURY of TEHELKA speaks to this Gandhian
You have two daughters. Does that not make you feel vulnerable?
My father was part of the freedom movement. My uncle was a senior colleague
of Nehru’s. I knew men like the scientist Dayanidhi Patnaik, who came back
with a PhD from America but gave up everything to join Vinobha Bhave’s
Bhoomidan movement. I didn’t even notice when their values were stamped on
me. From them, I came to believe that the material world is immaterial. Why
should I compromise for my girls? What would I achieve? Two more girls
among lakhs of others would be brought up to lead a cloistered life. Veena
could have pulled me back, but she has never done that. She herself was
terrified of wearing bangles and synthetic clothes and being trapped in a
marriage that would shut her behind closed doors. She was a social worker
before she married me.
What is at the heart of the State’s neglect and abuse of tribals?
I don’t think either the State or the police see them as human. How many
officials have even bothered to learn their language? One day a CRPF officer
was complaining to me about them. He said, Oh, these ULFA-Nagas-adivasis
whatever they’re called. That’s how faceless they were to him. There is
such an arrogance in the way the State approaches them. They will not
consult them, not communicate with them. We are not picking up the gun
but are asking for justice within the system.
Why does that rouse the State’s ire?
P Chidambaram has said he will militarily destroy the Naxals, then bring development in the region. He can do that. He can kill thousands of his own countrymen attempting that. He has greater might,
he is a superior race. And as one Naxal leader said in an interview to TEHELKA,
‘We do not control all areas. Why don’t they bring development to places we don’t control?’
How do you think the problem in this area can be sorted out?
By increasing the kind of rights-based work we are doing. By strengthening
tribals’ awareness, making them know and demand their entitlements, by using
their anger to make the state accountable to them. Slowly, democratic values
are developing in their society. I believe Naxalism will get outdated because it is
against the natural flow of life. We ask about their children, their health, their future.
On the Naxals’ side, there is fear, death and a life on the run. The tribals are getting tired. But the State’s policies are against the flow of life too. The Salwa Judum has pushed the tribals into an imposed war. It has pushed many more to join the Naxals in sheer self-defence.
What has been the most frustrating part of your work so far?
The determination of the State to stamp out democratic dissent. They refuse
to leave any space for it. You call that a democracy? Arre, we are asking
for justice within your system, we are not picking up the gun. We are
writing you letters, petitioning your offices, holding jan sunwais. And that
rouses the State’s ire? Are they going to leave room only for the Naxals and
a violent brand of protest? When the adivasis go to register complaints, the
police lock them up in jail. There are hundreds of adivasis in jail on false
charges or killed in false encounters, branded as Naxals when all they were
doing was collecting wood in the forest or grazing goats. The Supreme Court
had ordered the State to set up committees to assess damage and examine all
the atrocities by the Salwa Judum and pay compensation. Not one committee
has been set up till date. And they talk of destroying Naxals through a military
operation? If they want to take over this land and give it to
corporations to extract minerals, there is a Constitutional way of going
about it. Why this war waged by subterfuge?
What gives you the strength to be this cheerful, so free of bitterness?
There is not one trace of anger in you.
(Laughs) We never look back. I believe Nature is a living, active thing. It
creates catalysts to improve things, create new beginnings. So it’s good
that we have been made to return to where we began. New things will come of
it. I also look at all this very spiritually. Reading J Krishnamurthy has
helped me. The physical body has no fear. It is our thought bodies that
develop the idea of fear. If you can control your thought body, it loses its
hold on you. Also, it is good the ashram was demolished. Now we have been
brought to par with the tribals. We know what they have been feeling when
their houses have been burnt down again and again.
International coalition hails granting of Bail to Dr. Binayak Sen, and demands repeal of repressive laws
Press Contact: Somnath Mukherji Tel: 732-423-6662; mukherji.somnath@gmail.com
San Francisco, CA: The Free Binayak Sen coalition in the U.S. welcomes with great joy the bail granted to Dr. Binayak Sen by the Supreme Court of India, and congratulates the numerous activist, student and citizens groups in India that have worked tirelessly in support of Dr. Sen and other prisoners of conscience. An international coalition of over 50 human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Friends of South Asia, Association for India’s Development, and others, 22 Nobel laureates, and respected intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, George Galloway, Mahashweta Devi, have all called for the release of Dr. Sen.
The two-year long unjust incarceration of Dr.Sen finally ended on 25 May, 2009, and he is now reunited with his family and friends. In an interview shortly after his release, Dr. Sen noted: “I regard myself as an index case…a demonstration of what the government intends to do…”1. Indeed, Dr. Sen’s case served to demonstrate starkly the government’s assault on civil rights of citizens, and highlighted many inconsistencies and violations of due process by the Indian Legal and Executive system, as well as the Judiciary’s inability to call into question the violation of rule of law, and practice of violence by the State. As such, Dr. Sen’s case has functioned to bring to the fore the public’s indignation and frustration with the State machinery, and has thrown up grave questions about the reality of the relative independence of these branches of government. Raja Swamy, an activist with Friends of South Asia, said “Even as we celebrate the bail granted to Dr. Sen, we cannot forget that these larger issues about the integrity of government institutions still need to be resolved”.
Bangalore Campaigners welcomes binayak’s release
The Campaign for the Release of Dr Binayak Sen, Bangalore welcomes the decision of the Supreme Court to grant bail to Dr Sen. Dr. Sen’s incarceration had become a symbol of brutal state force, especially after a sustained national and international campaign for his release that involved a wide spectrum of human rights activists, health workers, doctors, trade union workers, grass root movements, NGOs, and other civil society members. Justice Markandeya Katju and Justice Deepak Verma after a very brief hearing on 25th May, 2009, granted bail on production of a personal bond after senior Advocate Shanti Bhushan had appeared before the Court on behalf of Dr. Sen. Dr Sen was arrested by the Chhattisgarh government on May 14th 2007 on charges of abetting Naxalites. Amongst the laws that he was detained under the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, enacted by the Raman Sigh government in 2005. Dr Sen was one of the first of more than 43 people who have been detained under this Act.
Dr Sen’s arrest was a result of his tireless work as a member of the Peoples Union of Civil Liberties, Chhattisgarh in exposing the state government’s human rights abuses, especially violations by the state-sponsored vigilante force Salwa Judum. He was one of the few voices of dissent in state that clamps down on democratic rights in the name of fighting Naxalism. A recent example was the Chhattisgarh government’s demolition of the 17 year-old Vanvasi Chethana Ashram (VCA) in Dantewada run by Gandhian Himanshu Kumar. Though the VCA was contesting an eviction notice filed by the local administration alleging that it was occupying revenue forest land, on May 15th, 2009, 250-300 members of the District Force (DF), Special Police Officers (SPO), and Chhattisgarh police, razed the ashram to the ground. Himanshu Kumar was been instrumental in exposing the fake encounter of 12 adivasis from the Singara Salwa Judum relief camp on March 30th 2009. He was also been working towards the rehabilitation of some of the thousands displaced by the Salwa Judum. Journalists and students who were present during this demolition were intimidated and severely beaten up by the police. Two of those who were beaten were students from the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore.
Binayaksen.net is one of many efforts by well wishers and supporters of Dr Binayak Sen to bring the injustice being done to him by the government of Chhattisgarh to the attention of people around the world. 
