Global Demonstration 30th January
Binayak Sen, on christmas eve last year was sentenced to life imprisonment on flimsy evidence (mostly a planted letter, hearsay evidence; find more here) for spreading ‘disaffection’ towards the state. Section 124A of the Indian penal Code mandates an absolute unconditional love for the state. Beware, you may be charged with sedition under Indian law (a section that has outlived the British Raj who introduced it) if you express any feeling that falls an inch short of devoted love and adulation. Critiquing state practices of land grabbing, tribal dispossession, inadequate (read no) rehabilitation, extrajudicial killing, torture and the curious phenomenon of salwa judum fit the bill of falling out of love with the state. In other words, ‘disaffection’. Notwithstanding what the Father of the Nation boldly proclaimed almost 90 years ago–that sedition was the highest duty of a citizen, not many in the state machinery and corporate media seem to share the same sentiment. Close to a century, colonialism has taken its roots in India. Last year, in what was an unbelievable show of unbridled love for the country, the Bharatiya Janata Party demanded that Arundhati Roy and others who shared the stage with her in a Seminar in New Delhi on Kashmir, be charged with sedition. Roy famously remarked that Kashmir was never an integral part of India, a sentiment echoed by thousand other Kashmiris. The frenzy that erupted has few parallels in the history of media circus in the country. The net tightens around Roy thundered a channel. Arundhati Roy’s ’seditious’ speech, echoed others.
With Binayak Sen, the media has been kinder. However the witch hunt by the State has filled up the gaps of unkindness not contributed by the media. Shortly after Sen’s sentence, his wife was slammed with an FIR, which was, after insistence by the Union Home Ministry (which in turn acted only after rights groups took up the matter) dropped.
Today, the Free Binayak Sen Campaign has taken the world by storm, demanding the immediate release of Sen and protesting against his unjust sentence. Demonstrations in front of the Indian Consulates in London, New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Washington and a growing Facebook campaign prove that the campaign has come here to stay. A hopelessly romantic assertion is– here at the ground of the tireless protests and the long marches, democracy rings the strongest, the values embedded in the Constitution stands the tallest; the chants of ‘free democracy’, ‘we are all binayak sen’, ring sharper than all the media frenzy of hunting down civil liberties and fundamental rights to life and freedom. Egypt, anyone?
For more information:
http://www.freebinayaksen.org/
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