Prison diaries of a suspected Naxal
Sreelatha Menon
EAR TO THE GROUND
Business Standard, August 10, 2008
Ajay TG, arrested on suspicion of being a Naxalite, plans a film on those who are jailed for no reason at all.
What does a film-maker do in jail? When it is Ajay TG, the jail becomes his muse, prompting to him stories about a man spending his time in jail for no reason at all, stories about 74 men like him in Durg jail who have been branded Naxalites.
For Ajay TG, arrested four months ago and released this week, the prison was a time to revisit the past three decades he spent in Bhilai since he left his village in Engandiyur in Thrissur district of Kerala as a 15 year old.
He came to Bhilai to join his father, who ran a petty business to keep afloat a large joint family back home. But he learned to wield the camera and worked for anthropologists like Jonathan Perry, who was researching on poverty amid industrialisation , and finally landed in jail after being accused of being a Naxalite.
Ajay TG was released this week after the Chhattisgarh police failed to gather enough evidence. The release was the culmination of a loud chorus of condemnation from film-makers like Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Mrinal Sen. It was a victory of illusion-makers as the Chhattisgarh police realised they were chasing an illusion.
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Book Review: Threat to State Security : Incarceration of a Public Health Practitioner
Saturday 2 August 2008, by K B Saxena
Book Review
Indian Doctor in Jail: The Story of Binayak Sen—A Report to the Nation by Doctors in Defence of Dr Binayak Sen
Publishers: Doctors in Defence of Dr Binayak Sen, Promila & CoPublishers in association with Bibliophile South Asia, New Delhi and Chicago; pages 112; price : Rs 250.
Democracies are considered the world over as a superior form of polity when compared to authoritarian regimes due to their ability and confidence to face multiple and complex challenges particularly in a culturally diverse and socially unequal society. This is on account of the former’s institutional structures of participation, accountable governance, resolution of conflict through dialogue and accommodation and commitment to universally recognised rights and freedoms. But how would a democracy be described when it demonstrates its incapability to understand, much less to deal with, political violence from its disenchanted and alienated social groups, turns to extraordinary laws curbing civil liberties, acquiesces in unaccountable governance for enforcing security, despises advocacy of human rights and legitimises matching counter-violence to meet this challenges? The history of modern political theory has come to describe such a State as fascist which, while retaining the democratic institutional arrangements, descends into authoritarian practices through both legal and extra-legal practices in dealing with its citizens. The book under review, which revolves around the detention and continued incarceration of Dr Binayak Sen, brings out the typical features of such a State when it finds the work of this public health professional providing health care services to Adivasis in a remote block a threat to its security.
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Trail of violence: rights activists at risk
Opinion - Leader Page Articles
The Hindu
Mukul Sharma
Rights activists face a series of obstacles to their work. Rights violations also have wider repercussions. They create a climate of fear.
The Karnataka convener of the National Alliance for People’s Movement, A.D. Babu, was killed recently. He was on his way, along with two colleagues, to a NAPM meeting on an anti-liquor campaign at Ramnagaram, when a group stopped his vehicle at Mayanagram, a few km from the venue, and attacked him with knives and swords. He died on the spot. It is believed that a Karnataka liquor mafia is behind the gruesome murder.
In May, Lalit Kumar Mehta of Palamau district, Jharkhand, who fearlessly raised the issue of corruption in implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme , was murdered. So was Narayan Hareka — a naib sarpanch belonging to the Kandha tribal community — of Kambivalsa village in Koraput district, Orissa, who fought against liquor brewing, private money-lending, land alienation and corruption.
Read more
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Sreelatha Menon: A homecoming in Bastar
Business Standard, July 20, 2008
EAR TO THE GROUND
Sreelatha Menon
The collector of Dantewada has agreed to give 10 quintals of paddy seed to restart farming in Nendra. Nendra is a village in Konta block in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh which has been lying deserted for the last three years after multiple attacks by the government-backed anti-Naxal militia, the Salwa Judum, and the police. The collector’s gesture was in reciprocation of a rehabilitation effort by an NGO called Vanvasi Chetna Ashram to facilitate homecoming for the villagers who were living either in jungles fearing reprisals from the Salwa Judum and the police, or in neighbouring villages of Andhra Pradesh. Some of them are in camps set up by the state government.
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Letting the law take its course : Gautam Sen
Goutam Sen writes in his blog Gyanoprapha
Would you say that the law is respected in a country where
- the police routinely abuse the powers that they have been given, in flagrant violation of the law?
- the Supreme Court’s rulings regarding the treatment of undertrials are routinely ignored by the police and the executive?
- torture is so common, despite extensive bans against it, that people meet in public to condemn it, and the organizers of the meeting are implicated in false cases by the police
after public protests against torture attended by former judges, civil servants and former and serving police officials? - human rights investigators are routinely threatened and harassed ?
- the police ignore an order given by a judge at a trial allowing the accused to meet a member of his family, and physically try to prevent the meeting?
- the police threaten the family member of the accused while she attempts to meet with the accused during a court recess pursuant to the judge’s order, within the court premises?
Each of these shows the utter contempt in which the law is held by those charged with upholding it. In such a country, it is arguable that the chief breaker of laws in the country is the police itself. The independence of the judiciary from the executive appears to have assumed a new meaning here - if the judiciary commands that the executive do or refrain from doing something, the executive frequently either ignores the injunction, or does precisely the opposite.
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Gallery
From freebinayaksen.org- Updates from Google News
- Dr Binayak Sen: An unfortunate achiever - Merinews
- Jailed human-rights activist works for peace - Ode Magazine
- Q&A: 'Rights activism uses space within the Constitution' - Times of India
- DIFFERENT KINDS OF SILENCE - Calcutta Telegraph
- Vote War 2008: Chhattisgarh - Tehelka
- National Convention on Countering Fascist Forces: Defending the ... - NewsBlaze (press release)
- Reports From Indian Media
- Different kinds of silence - Telegraph: Opinion
- Whither democracy? - Oheraldo
- Q&A: 'Rights activism uses space within the Constitution' - TOI: Editorial
- The Shootin' Sheriffs - Outlook
- Videos - Rediff: Top Stories (India)
- India must be reclaimed - Hindustan Times: Views
- A law and its victim - Frontline
- An appeal for peace in South Bastar - Hindu: Opinion
- NGOs demand severe action against attackers - The Navhind Times