A Structural Compulsion to Lie: The media and ’paid news’ in the age of inequality - A Talk by P Sainath at the Speaker’s Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg New Delhi on Friday September 24, 2010 (3 pm)
The event was chaired by the celebrated historian Prof. Romila Thapar.
The event was organised by The Delhi Union of Journalists, Delhi Media Research Center &
Popular Education & Action Center.
Video recording by Harsh Kapoor / South Asia Citizens Web (sacw.net)
Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and Amnesty International said in a joint letter to Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission that they would welcome an opportunity to appear before a genuine, credible effort to pursue political reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka, but that the Commission does not meet minimum international standards for commissions of inquiry.
The prosecution team sped up and completed presenting evidence to meet the September 30 deadline set by the Supreme Court of India. We spoke with Dr. Binayak Sen and Dr. Ilina Sen in Vellore, India, on October 11, 2010 for an update and to hear about what lies ahead.
We also spoke with them about Dr. Binayak Sen’s work on human rights and healthcare curriculum at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, and other topics. These portions of the conversation will be published separately in the future.
This is not the first time that we, the Taunsa Barrage victims, are observing peaceful hunger strike in front of the World Bank Office. The first such hunger strike was held in February 2007. At that time, our main demand was the establishment of an independent investigation commission on the World Bank financed Taunsa Barrage Emergency Rehabilitation and Modernization Project (TBERM). The project loan was approved on an emergency basis, the justification that catastrophic barrage failure could occur in the near future. Today we are again holding a hunger strike to inform the Bank that the rehabilitation and remodelling works financed under its project failed to avert the risk of barrage failure.
Since the spot of the incident is barely one kilometre away from the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha Office situated in a dense working class basti called Labour Camp, Jamul, we have had an opportunity to gather some preliminary information on this incident which makes us feel prima facie that this appears to be a fake encounter, and the deceased were more likely killed elsewhere and their dead bodies brought here.
We are apprehensive that in the name of "security considerations", the working class movement may be suppressed or its leaders subjected to malicious litigation. The search for the "elusive" third Naxalite in the working class bastis could turn into a massive fishing expedition against politically inconvenient opponents.
