South Asia Citizens Web

Today, the police have killed one person in Kalinganagar and critically injured at least thirty more; at the proposed POSCO plant site in Jagatsinghpur, Orissa, 25 platoons of police have been deployed to crush the people defending their land. They expect an attack tomorrow or the day after.

As national platforms of democratic forest movements, with more than 200 organisational members spread across the country, we unequivocally condemn this brutality. But such atrocities are not occurring in isolation. Operation Green Hunt and the increasing miitarisation of the conflict in central India is wreaking devastation in our homelands and closing the space for democratic struggles.

The government of India had made a solemn commitment in Parliament in the matter of undoing the predatory actions perpetrated by state agencies on tribal lands and of restoration of the same; but even after more than two decades, the commitment is yet to be honoured.

The man who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square was a Pakistani.
Why is this unsurprising? Answer: because when you hold a burning match to a gasoline tank, the laws of chemistry demand combustion. As anti-American lava spews uninterrupted from the fiery volcanoes of Pakistan’s private television channels and newspapers, a collective psychosis grips the country’s youth. Murderous intent follows with the conviction that the US is responsible for all ills, both in Pakistan and the world of Islam.

PUCL as a Human Rights Organization is concerned for increasing violence in society which is counter-productive as one form of violence inevitably leads to retributive violence and the same is true equally for state violence and violence perpetrated in the name ideology or war against state. PUCL’s concern goes beyond just condemning the violence and questioning on behalf of the citizens of this country being itself a citizens’ forum the doubts and fear looming large on the faces of citizens. If the Maoist is raging a war against “unjust state” to form a ‘just and equitable’ state then what will be the status of human rights of the citizens of this country enjoyed in the existing ‘unjust state’.