Fwd: [pudr] orissa protest note/sending as inline if word 2007 causes problems
Democratic Journalists League
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: gautam navlakha <gnav...@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 21, 2008 4:37 PM
Subject: Fwd: [pudr] orissa protest note/sending as inline if word 2007 causes problems
To: asish gupta <rights....@rediffmail.com>, djle...@gmail.com, Bernard <ber...@epw.in>
From: ankita anand <autho...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 1:01 PM
Subject: [pudr] orissa protest note/sending as inline if word 2007 causes problems
To: acti...@pudr.org
PEOPLE'S UNION FOR DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS
The state's campaign against rights and civil liberties activists continues. On August 12,Dave Pugh, member of the Initiative Committee of the International Campaign Against Forced Displacement was picked up for questioning by the Orissa police and accused of being an "anti-government" agitator. After 8 hours of grueling interrogation, Pugh was released to his hotel and was able to leave Orissa without further harassment, though with his research work incomplete.
However, while Pugh was released, his guide Protima Das and their driver Pradeep, anti-displacement activists both, were detained and accused of having Maoist links.Devendar Das, a central council member of Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan(VVJVA),the organisation assisting Pugh in his research, was also picked up from his house on the same night. He was forced to sit in the same car as Protima, Pradeep and Pugh so all of the three Orissa activists could be implicated in the same case. Around the same time, another central council member of VVJVA, Amin Maharana, was arrested.Amin had come to attend the steering committee meeting of the organisation held to discuss the Supreme Court's decision to allow people's forestlands and hills for unbridled exploitation, forcibly displacing the native inhabitants. His arrest took place within four hours of the meeting. It was only after five days of having kept and tortured him in illegal custody that Amin was produced in court.
False charges of serious politico-criminal cases were framed against all of them, including Protima Das, Pradeep, Devendar Das and Amin Maharana, of a nature that could confine them behind bars for years.
While Pugh, who was in India on a fact-finding mission visiting the sites of proposed industrial and mining projects, Special Economic Zones and real estate developments, all of the four arrested activists have been struggling against the displacement of the people of Orissa caused by the state's collaboration with corporate giants like Posco,Tata and Vedanta.
We, in PUDR, demand that the fabricated cases against Protima Das, Pradeep, Devendar Das and Amin Maharana be withdrawn immediately and they be released unconditionally. We demand that an end be put to all anti-people projects leading to displacement of inhabitants and damage to the environment. We also condemn the ongoing state repression of civil liberties and democratic rights activists by the arbitrary employment of draconian laws and appeal to all individuals to come together to oppose this tyranny.
Harish Dhawan
Nagraj Adve
(Secretaries, PUDR)