National Convention
On
Repression of People’s Movements
New Delhi December 8-9, 2010
Venue: Rajendra Bhawan, Nr. ITO
Indian State today stands in direct confrontation with the lives of its Citizens in its enthusiasm to clear and handover natural resources on a platter to profit hungry corporations. Everywhere from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari and Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh its police and armed wing is busy mounting repression on people’s movements out to save their livelihood, land, forest and water.
Picking up activists and leaders of people’s movements, branding them “Maoists” and framing them with false cases is becoming a routine exercise across the country in violation of constitutional guarantees of “right to expression” and “right to association”.
In the backdrop of the perpetual crisis the world capitalist system is faced with, the large scale grabbing of natural resources appears to be one of the substantial strategies to safeguard the future of a minuscule minority which this system strives to serve. The ruling elite today appear to be ready to relinquish their baggage of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ and unashamedly stand by the side of the prosperous and the powerful.
In its attempts to accomplish such goal our governments (irrespective of their shades) are not only working overtime to subvert the constitutional guarantees in the name of bringing separate legislations for various entitlements but also determined to go unto any extent in violating constitutional rights ‘to life’; ‘to expression’; and ‘to association’ of its citizenry.
Many of the concerned citizens, their forums, their networks and the organizations they are associated with are grappling with incidents and cases of such violations on regular basis and find themselves constrained to respond to growing need. The need to join hands and workout strategies for more comprehensive and collective response to such emerging situation is audible all the time and all around.
It is in this context, in an effort to bring people from people’s movements, citizen forums, human rights’ defenders, human rights groups together to share experiences and workout strategies to face this challenge, we are organizing a two day National Convention on December 8-9, 2010 in New Delhi.
Jameela Nishat (President), Chitranjan Singh (General Secretary), Gautam Bandhopadhyay (Vice Presidents), Anil Chaudhary, Rajendra K Sail, Dayamani Barla, Wilfred, Prashant Paikray (Orissa), Dhirendra Panda (Orissa), K. Rajendra (AP), Dr. Sunilam (MP), Hiren Gandhi (Gujarat), Ashok Mathur (Rajasthan), Guman Singh (HP), Vidya Dinker (Mangalore) & others from INSAF.
Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF)
.A124/6 Katwaria Sarai, New Delhi 110016
Tele-fax: +91-11-26517814
Web: www.insafindia.org