see below and please do forward.
Jaz
Headline:
Demonstration outside Indian High Commission
on 14th May 2009
to mark second anniversary of human rights campaigner’s incarceration
on trumped-up charges
Hundreds of campaigners from across
the UK, including several academics and doctors, will mark May 14th,
2009, by staging a huge protest outside of the Indian High Commission
in London between 2pm and 6pm. On this day, Dr Binayak Sen –
award winning doctor and civil rights activist – will have languished
in increasingly bad health for two years in an Indian jail being denied
bail and proper medical attention
Dr. Binayak Sen was
arrested on what Amnesty International has called ‘trumped up’ charges
on 14th May 2007. The state alleges that he was a conduit
for Maoist insurgents, in particular delivering letters for a senior
Maoist leader in jail. To date, the authorities have failed to provide
a shred of concrete evidence in the case against Sen. As former Supreme
Court Judge, V.R. Krishna Iyer points out, to date the case has not
“thrown up even a shred of evidence to justify any of the charges
against him”. A paediatrician by training, Sen had been working for
decades with adivasis (tribals) in Chhattisgarh where he helped establish
a hospital for mine- workers and was a leading critic against state
violence in the region. Sen’s outstanding work in the field
of public health and commitment to human rights has been acknowledged
by the Indian Academy of Sciences’ Keithan Gold Medal in 2007 and
the Global Health Council’s Jonathan Mann Award in 2008 .
Sen’s arrest shows
manifest evidence of an increasing trend worldwide to silence peaceful
dissent by imprisoning lawful humanitarian activists on charges of terrorism.
(He was arrested under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act,
an enactment that in common with most anti-terror legislation across
the world effectively criminalizes peaceful protest and throttles criticism
of the state). Since Sen’s arrest, a swelling tide of protest
in India and across the world has publicized the Indian state’s war
on dissent, and sought to exert pressures towards Sen’s release on
bail, pending a fair and swift trial. International solidarity initiatives
have included demonstrations in London, San Francisco, New York, and
Washington in the last year; letters of protest signed by Nobel Laureates,
academics and civil liberties activists; an Early Day Motion in Parliament
in the U.K. To find out more please visit www.binayaksen.net
The organisers of
this event, human rights activists who have come together as the
Release Binayak Sen Now Campaign, can be contacted at:
Further information, contact: Radha D’Souza (07799176500)
Vaskar Saha (07931521428)
Amrit Wilson (07846873341)
Jas,
You may want to circulate this amongst friends in London.
Cheers,
Biraj