anti-caste

FREE BINAYEK SEN, CIVIL-RIGHTS ACTIVIST WHO SPOKE OUT AGAINST STATE VIOLENCE IN CHHATTISGARH!

Why Is Binayek Sen in Prison? by Arundhati Roy

"That Dr Sen should continue to be in prison when the case against him has almost completely fallen through says a great deal about the very grave situation in Chattisgarh today. There is a civil war in this state. Hundreds are being killed and imprisoned. Hundreds of thousands of the poorest of the poor are hiding in the forests, fearing for their lives. They have no access to food, to markets, to schools or healthcare. The thousands who have been moved into the camps of the government-backed peoples’ militia, the Salwa Judum, are also trapped in sordid encampments, which have to be guarded by armed police. Hatred, violence and brutality is being cynically spread, pitting the poor against the poorest.

"There is very little doubt that Dr Sen is in prison because he spoke out against this policy of the State Government, because he opposed the formation of the Salwa Judum. His incarceration is meant to silence dissent, and criminalize democratic space. It is meant to create a wall of silence around the civil war in Chattisgarh. It is meant to absorb all our attention so that the stories of the hundreds of other nameless, faceless people—those without lawyers, without the attention of journalists—who are starving and dying in the forests, go unnoticed and unrecorded."

See also:

PUCL Campaign to free Dr. Binayak Sen

POLICE "ENCOUNTERS": IN POOREST AREAS, EXTRA-LEGAL KILLINGS OF LEFTIST REBELS AND THEIR SYMPATHIZERS IS NORMAL

India Makes a Place for Dirty Harry (The New York Times)

"Numbering in the thousands every year, 'encounters' or 'encounter killings' are shootouts between the Indian police or army and any criminal element, from terrorists to petty thieves. Many Indians believe that at least some are stage-managed — with, say, a police officer placing a gun in the hands of a dead person — leading to the popular phrase, 'fake encounter killing.'

"The Singaram encounter was part of a long-running campaign to stem an insurrection in impoverished and isolated parts of eastern India by Maoist-inspired rebels known as Naxalites. Other cases, elsewhere in India, have involved Muslim militants and gangsters in Mumbai."

See also:

Chhattisgarh Killings: The Jungle Justice of the Trigger Happy (Tehelka, February 7, 2009):

“'They made us stand in a line and ordered us to bow our heads,” Deva says of those terrifying moments between life and death. “I was the last and that gave me just enough time to escape.'

"Four more proved lucky. But 19 others did not. A posse made largely of men from the Salwa Judum (literally, Peace Gathering), the tribal militia raised by the state as a quasi police force, killed 15 men and four women at this spot on the afternoon of January 8, 2009, triggering a massive furor across the state and worsening the battle lines between the armed Maoist insurgents, popularly called the Naxals, and the state police."

And see:

Rights Groups Probe India's Shoot-Out Cops (Time, February 14, 2009):

"That was when the media began to ask questions of the police account: Two terrorists tasked with staging a Republic Day attack on the national capital had stopped at a tea stall to seek directions; a police informer, who just happened to be present, spotted an AK-47 sticking out of a bag. An urgent tip-off prompted a dramatic chase and shootout, but the 'terrorists' lived just long enough to 'confess' their Pakistani nationality. Nor did it go unnoticed that this was the fourth such 'encounter' between police and suspects in the same area in less than a month."