Repression in India from West Bengal to Tamil Nadu, Amnesty International & PUDR statement

PUDR statement on the arrest of Naba Dutta

PUDR is outraged at the arrest of Naba Dutta of Nagarik Manch, an organization that has been working for over two decades, devoted to environmental and labour issues. The trumped up charges against him is yet another instance of the West Bengal state government deliberately targeting activists, civil liberties groups, media representatives…in order that truth about the actual happenings on the ground in Lalgarh area remain suppressed.

Naba Dutta along with his 3 companions; Progna Paromita Dutta Roy Chowdhury, Gautam Ghosh and Dipankar Mazumdar, are all members of Nagarik Mancha, an organization mainly focused on environmental and labor issues, attended a sit in, in front of the Block Development Officer’s office at Narayangarh block of West Midnapur. The programme was organized by Lodha Shabar Vumij Kalyan Smiti, whose patron is Mahashweta Devi. After the program when they were returning to Kolkata they were all detained by the police.

While driver of the vehicle and Naba Dutta’s three colleagues were later released the police proceeded to arrest Naba Datta and charge him among other things under Arms Act, S 307 (attempt to murder) 120 B of IPC, pretending that he was the mastermind of the incident in Jhargram where vehicles belonging to an illegal sponge iron mill were burnt on December 18, 2009. Significantly, in the past eight months, since the incident occurred, not once did the Jhargram police summon Naba Dutta, if they indeed have evidence in their possession to link him to the crime. Naba Dutta was not in Jhargam when the incident took place. And it is the CPI(Maoist) which carried out the act of arson, which they publicly declared to be a result of state government’s failure to take action against the owners of the illegal plant and its contractors. Nagrik Manch had filed a PIL in Kolkata high court against the illegal operations of the plant.

Stop the Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Tamils: Demonstration on 21st August 2010 at Westminster – London

“There has been a deafening global silence in response to Sri Lanka’s actions, especially from its most influential friends. The international community cannot be selective in its approach to upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights. Impunity anywhere is a threat to international peace and security everywhere.” – Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General

We all remain silent since we heard the Sri Lankan government massacred fifty thousand Tamils, according to a United Nation filed officer, in a tiny area in the north of country within three days. More than two hundred thousand innocent Tamils are held in concentration camps without any valid reason. Thousands of pregnant women, innocent children were killed by aerial attacks and chemical weapons. In the name of eliminating minority ultra nationalists, the Sri Lankan government committed a shocking genocide, preventing the entire national and international media, right groups, United Nation and so on, in the war zone.

Is this an example for eliminating the resistant politics, for the international power? Is this the new feature of new world order? Will it be the general phenomena of the world’s power? Just some months after this Sri Lankan humanitarian disaster, India has started to massacre in order to evacuate poor hill country forest inhabitants from acres and acres of their own land for exploitation of mines. Similar atrocities of power against the innocent poor people and against those who resist, is becoming social recognition in the other parts of the world. The war between the business power and the innocent is the real Avatar.

Sriri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual and multicultural country. Despite this, the Sinhala-Buddhist Government claims that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist country. The ethno-religious mix of Sri Lanka, with 20 million people, consists of ethnic Sinhalese (74%), Tamils (18%) in two groups (ethnic Tamils, 12.5%, and the plantation, or Indian, Tamils, 5.5%) and Moors (6.5%).

The major Sinhalese political parties competed with each other to discriminate the Tamils in language, education and employment with the clear intention of gaining the Sinhalese vote. The head of the SLA stated in an interview last year that the Sinhala-dominated Sri Lankan Armed Forces comprise of 99% Sinhala.

After the so called genocide, the Sri Lankan government is currently conducting the ethnic cleansing against the minorities.

Are we living in a State that mouths peace but shoots its messengers?

Source: Tehalka

FAKERY HAS always been a key instrument of power. But last week, as the President and Pr ime Minister of India made their Independence Day speeches, cocooned symbolically in towers of glass, the scale of that fakery shot skyward. Both leaders augustly urged the Maoists, yet again, to “abjure violence” and come for talks. Few among the millions of Indians who heard them would have caught the cynicism.

Swami Agnivesh certainly would have. It’s just over a month since the State shot down a man called Azad. There’s been some fitful noise over it. Civil society has protested valiantly; Mamta Banerjee has asked for a judicial inquiry. But for the most part, Indians have gone about their business, registering little and understanding even less. (I tried sharing some of its indignant shock with a public icon from Mumbai. He replied: “So what if they shot one guy?” The chasm was so wide, I subsided into silence.)

But the hard truth is the killing of Azad is a desperate new low in Indian public life. Azad was not just a key leader of the CPI(Maoist) — a mans whose death would be a face-saving notch on the carbines of competitive violence, one big fish to even the score for 76 jawans. He was a man mid-stream in a peace process initiated by the government itself. How could the State just ignore his death, then stand coldly on the ramparts of the Red Fort urging a new round of talks? Where are the certitudes that make the foundation of a civilised society?