[Reader-list] Invitation to Public Meeting against Narco-analysis and other forms of torture

[Susan Abraham]

Invitation
 
Uphold the right to organize, safeguard the right to protest ! 
On 8th May, 2007 Arun Ferreira (ex-st xaviers, mumbai), Ashok Reddy (originally from AP), Dhanendra Bhurle (journalist from Gondia) and Naresh Bansod (president, Andha Shraddha Nirmulan Samiti, Gondia) were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), successor to notorious earlier laws like TADA and POTA. After severe torture at the hands of the police they were forced to submit to narco-analysis. A month later another court has ordered a second round of narco-analysis, which is nothing but a coercive interrogation practice that falls within the United Nations' definition of torture
 
According to the police, these are supposedly dreaded terrorists out to create trouble on a host of issues. They were supposedly found in possession of anti-government material on . SEZs, the Ramabai Nagar firing, the massacres at Khairlanji, farmers' suicides...
 
When civil liberties activists and others protested these arrests and the subsequent torture methods, the Nagpur Commissioner of Police was reported by the press to have warned that he is ready to arrest anyone who spoke in support of those arrested.  
 
That this is no idle threat can be seen from the recent arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen, the renowned doctor of Chattisgarh, who has spent most of his life as a health activist among the workers and tribals of the state. As secretary of the Chhattisgarh People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and its all-India vice-president, he has also been vocal against the atrocities committed by the Salwa Judum, a government-sponsored anti-Maoist programme which involves forced displacement of tribals into camps.
 
Both these arrests send out a clear message that anyone who speaks out against the government and the status quo will be targeted by the state. Activists organizing the people to change the desperate conditions in which they live and fight the vested interests that maintain such conditions are labeled "terrorists' by the state.  Those who question unjust laws and protest illegal actions on the part of the police are threatened to remain silent. Undertrials, and now increasingly, social activists are being subjected to dubious invasive procedures like narco-analysis which involves coercion and amounts to torture.
 
Come lend your voice against these increasingly undemocratic practices along with other concerned citizens.
 
Public Meeting on Saturday, July 7th 2007, 5:30 pm onwards
at Rama Watumull Auditorium, K C College
Dinshaw Vachha Road, Churchgate
Speakers:
  1.. Dr. Amar Jesani on the medical and ethical aspects of narco-analysis 
  2.. Nandita Haksar, Supreme Court lawyer, on 'terrorist' organizations, and why organizations working with people's issues are labeled terrorists. 
  3.. Gautam Navlakha, journalist and activist, on the assault on the civil liberties and democratic rights movement, and the state's aversion to any form of dissent, case in point- Binayak Sen 
 
FORUM AGAINST NARCO-ANALYSIS AND OTHER FORMS OF TORTURE 
Supported by Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Lokshahi Hakk Sangathana, India Centre for Human Rights and the Law, Justice and Peace Commission, Forum for Medical Ethics, and other concerned citizens.


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