Amnesty International statement on the arrest of Ajay TG

India: Concern over the arrest of filmmaker and human rights defender T.G. Ajay in Chhattisgarh

Amnesty International, ASA 20/010/2008

Amnesty International is concerned over the apparently arbitrary arrest of T. G. Ajay, a film-maker and human rights defender who has been documenting problems faced by adivasi (indigenous) communities in protecting their rights, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

Ajay is the second human rights defender to be arrested under the Chhattisgarh State Public Security Act, 2005 (CSPSA), in the state. He is a member of the state executive committee of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL).

Ajay is being held in Raipur jail, where Dr. Binayak Sen, general secretary of the state PUCL and a physician working on access to health for adivasis, today completed one year of imprisonment. Dr. Sen now faces a trial on charges of aiding a banned Maoist organisation, the Communist Party of India (Maoist). 1

On 5 May, Ajay was arrested at his residence at Superla in Bhilai and charged at the Bilaspur High Court under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (sedition) and Sections 3, 4 and 8 of the CSPSA.

Amnesty International has reason to believe that the charges against Ajay are politically motivated. Ajay has been actively engaged, since 2004, in documentation of human rights violations as part of the PUCL’s ongoing efforts to protect the rights of adivasi communitiesin the face of escalating violence in the Bastar-Dantewada area of Chattisgarh between banned Maoists and Salwa Judum, an armed anti-Maoist militia campaign widely regarded as supported by the state government. The PUCL has been instrumental in bringing to light unlawful killings of adivasis, sexual assault of adivasi women, abductions and forced displacement.

On 22 January 2008, following the arrest of a woman Maoist in Bastar-Dantewada, the Chhattisgarh police searched Ajay’s residence and seized his computer hard disk. On 26 March, Ajay filed a petition in the High Court seeking its return.

Amnesty International calls on the Union and Chattisgarh governments