[Reader-list] Release Binayak Sen before India starts looking like a tin-pot dictatorship

[Anivar Aravind]

I.
Release Binayak Sen before India starts looking like a tin-pot dictatorship
http://www.binayaksen.net/2008/05/release-binayak-sen-before-india-starts-looking-like-a-tin-pot-dictatorship/

Editorial, Hindustan Times, May 13, 2008

Who’s afraid of Binayak Sen?

It’s 365 days since public health specialist and human rights activist
Dr Binayak Sen has been behind bars. A critic of the Chhattisgarh
government’s Salwa Judum policy, which is now being investigated for
excesses by the National Human Rights Commission after a Supreme Court
order, Dr Sen was arrested on May 14, 2007, for allegedly passing
letters from a Naxalite leader — who he had been treating — to another
inside the Raipur jail. On April 30, almost a year after his arrest, six
witnesses were examined. Considering that there are 83 witnesses and the
pace at which our judicial system works, it looks doubtful that Dr Sen
will be judged in a court of law in a hurry.

Days before he was arrested, Dr Sen had said that “the people who have
been protesting against [the Salwa Judum] and trying to bring before the
world the reality of these campaigns…. human rights workers like
myself…. have also been targeted through State action”. When he appeared
in court on May 18, 2007 and asked for the FIR, the police ‘failed’ to
produce anything. Interestingly a day after, the police searched his
house without finding any incriminating evidence. And yet he is still
languishing in jail. There seems little doubt that there has been a
deliberate effort on the part of the authorities to crack down on
dissent or, in this case, violently silence a strongly variant point of
view on the Salwa Judum policy of arming villagers in Naxal strongholds.
It is for speaking out against this ‘official’ policy from the ground
level in Chhattisgarh — as opposed to speaking out against the Salwa
Judum as many other observers have while visiting the area — that has
got Dr Sen in jail for what seems like an indefinite period. That the
Supreme Court had also recently made pretty much the same observation
that he had makes Dr Sen’s incarceration even more unjust and bizarre.

In the course of his work as a renowned public health specialist in the
areas of Chhattisgarh under Naxal control, it is only but natural that
Dr Sen would have come in contact with what the State would deem ‘Naxal
sympathisers’. Does that make him a collaborator — especially in an area
where the angelic State has been afraid to tread for decades? We
definitely think not. But the State seems hell-bent on making him an
example so that others don’t go against its grain. What is even more
appalling is the stand of the central government that seems to be
playing Pontius Pilate to the whole affair. Quietly, it has decided to
put the ball in the state of Chhattisgarh’s court. Answer us this: what
are the real charges against Dr Sen? If you don’t have a good answer to
that — and only a court of law can vouch for that — we strongly suggest
that he be released before India starts looking like a tin-pot dictatorship.


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II. Dr Binayak Sen: Tribal doctor :BBC Report
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7397734.stm

One of India’s best-known public health specialists and human rights
activists, Dr Binayak Sen, has now spent a year in an Indian prison.

He is accused of links with Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh, one of
India’s poorest states where the rebels have a strong presence. The
doctor denies the charge.

During a court appearance earlier this year, Dr Sen said he did not
support the Maoists.

“If they arrest people like me, human rights workers will have no locus
standi. I have never condoned Maoist violence. It is an invalid and
unsustainable movement,” he told Tehelka magazine.

‘Real grievances’

At the same time, Dr Sen has maintained the Maoists have tapped into a
groundswell of legitimate grievances.

“The grievances [of the people] are real. There is an ongoing famine in
the region. Forty per cent of the country lives with malnutrition,” he said.

The Maoists say they are fighting their long-running insurgency for the
rights of landless farmers and tribes.

Dr Sen, a trained paediatrician, was working with poor tribal people in
Chhattisgarh, when he was detained last year. He was also a senior
member of the local unit of a leading Indian human rights group, the
People’s Union for Civil Liberties.

He ran a weekly clinic for the local tribals and was piloting a
community-based health programme in the state.

Rights groups, intellectuals and more than 2,000 doctors from all over
the world have signed petitions demanding Dr Sen’s release. They include
prominent American writer Noam Chomsky.

The clamour for his release increased this week when 22 Nobel laureates
joined the campaign and urged the Indian government to release the
jailed activist.


Last month, Dr Sen was awarded the prestigious Jonathan Mann Award for
Global Health and Human Rights for his services to poor and tribal
communities and his unwavering commitment to civil liberties and human
rights.

Dr Sen, 56, trained in medicine and paediatrics at India’s prestigious
Christian Medical College in Vellore and picked up a gold medal for his
efforts.

Later specialising in social medicine and community health, he moved to
Chhattisgarh in 1981, and began working with the leading mine workers’
trade union leader, Shankar Guha Niyogi.

Pioneering hospital

The two set up a hospital for mine workers after raising money from the
community - the Shaheed Hospital in Dallirajhara is still cited as an
example of a pioneering health initiative in India for the poor.

The doctor received a paltry salary of 600 rupees ($15) a month, and
helped the facility grow from a small clinic to a 60-bed hospital in
four years.

In the early 1990s, Dr Sen and his wife, Ilina, set up Rupantar, a
non-governmental organisation training rural health workers, running
mobile clinics and campaigns against alcohol abuse and violence against
women.

Dr Sen’s efforts in public health programmes, say local doctors, helped
bringing down the infant mortality rate in the state and deaths caused
by diarrhoea and dehydration.

Dr Sen has been outspoken about the ways the government is trying to
tackle the Maoists in Chhattisgarh by backing a controversial civil
militia of local tribals called Salwa Judum.

“The Salwa Judum,” he said recently, “has created a dangerous split in
the tribal community.”

He has also expressed his deep concern over rising inequality in India
despite the economic boom.

“We have to strive for more inclusive growth. You cannot create two
categories of people,” he told a journalist.

“There is a Malthusian process of exclusion going on in the country.
Everybody must wake up to this, otherwise soon it will be too late.”

His wife, Ilina, says the fight to release her husband goes beyond the
man himself.

“I realise this goes beyond Binayak and my family. We are part of a much
larger fight. We are struggling for the right to dissent peacefully. Our
commitment to that gives me strength.”