SANSAD News-release June 20, 2014

Stop attacks on religious minorities in Sri Lanka

South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD) deplores the attack by Buddhist mobs on minority Muslims in the southern Sri Lankan towns of Aluthgama and Beruwela on June 15 that have left 3 dead, 78 seriously injured, dozens of homes and shops burnt down, and several mosques damaged. We deplore the spate of violence against religious minorities by Buddhist extremists in the last few years in which Christians and Muslims have been attacked and their places of worship stoned or set on fire.We urge the government of Sri Lanka to ensure the security of religious minorities and protect their places of worship.

A number of extremist Buddhist organizations, such as Bodu Bala Sena, BBS (Buddhist Force), which was involved in the latest violence, Buddhist Brigade, and Buddhist Heritage Fortress, have been attacking the clergy, worshippers, and places of worship of Christians and Muslims in the last few years. These groups are often led by Buddhist monks, some of whom have been recorded on video engaging in attacks on churches in southern Sri Lanka. In 2013 there were more than 300 attacks on Muslim and Christian places of worship. Yet the government has done little to stop this violence.

The latest incident took place despite the prior appeal of Muslim legislators to President Mahinda Rajapaksha for protection of their community against Buddhist extremists and the specific warning by the Justice Minister, Rauf Hakeem against allowing a demonstration of BBS in the predominantly Muslim towns. On the contrary, in March 2014 Sri Lanka government arrested two of the most prominent human rights activists, Ruki Fernando and Father Parveen Mahesan, in Killinochchi in northern Sri Lanka, under anti-terrorism legislation that allows detention without trial for 18 months. They were detained on the suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred or violence between ethnic groups. Human rights organizations and civil society groups in Sri Lanka have declared these allegations outrageous.

President Rajapaksha has condemned the violence in southern Sri Lanka and has assured that the culprits will be brought to justice. This is much to be desired though not very hopeful on the basis of the government’s record. We demand that this promise be kept. We congratulate the Government of Canada for its statement of condemnation of this incident and upholding the right of religious freedom. As an organization of the South Asian diaspora in Canada we appeal to all governments to urge the Government of Sri Lanka to protect the rights of minorities to practice their faith without any intimidation and violence.

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SANSAD News-release June 16, 2014

South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD) condemns the illegal arrest of Professor GN Saibaba, who teaches English in Ram Lal Anand College of Delhi University by Maharashtra Police on May 9. We further condemn his cruel detention in solitary confinement without regard to his disabilities, his suspension from Delhi University by the university administration following his arrest, and the denial of his bail plea by the Gadchirol sessions court in Maharashtra on June 13. We strongly protest these violations of human rights and civil liberties. We demand the immediate release of Professor Saibaba and his reinstatement in his teaching position in Delhi.

Professor Saibaba is an outspoken civil liberty activist, who as the deputy secretary of Revolutionary Democratic Front has been campaigning against the Indian government’s counter-insurgency measures known as “Operation Green Hunt.” His home in Delhi had been raided four times since September 2013 by the police before his arrest and transportation to Maharashtra on May 9 without warning and without access to a lawyer. Dr. Saibaba is a paraplegic who lost the use of his legs to polio as a child. He has 90% disability and has been bound to a wheel chair since he could afford one after his arrival in Delhi.

Dr. Saibaba has been arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, UAPA, one of the laws in the arsenal of the Indian state for the repression of its citizens and the prevention of dissent. He has been charged with allegedly being a member of a banned “terrorist” organization, CPI (Maoist), of having contact with its chairman, Ganapathy, providing logistics and helping recruitment. Several prominent human rights activists, including Gautam Navlakha and Arudhati Roy, as well as students and professors of Delhi University and Jwahar Lal Nehru University who demonstrated against Saibaba’s arrest, have pointed out that UAFA is a device for framing such charges as those against Saibaba to silence voices raised against the land grab by corporations for mining and on behalf of the adivasis who are displaced and terrorized in the interest of this “development.” The state merely has to declare an organization “terrorist” and ban it to get a free hand in suppressing any voice raised against the violence of the state by charging it of association with the banned organization.

G N Saibaba was born in a poor peasant family in Andhra, where his family lost the three acres of land it cultivated when Saibaba was 10. He lost the use of his legs as a child and crawled till he could afford a wheel chair as a teacher in Delhi. His education was made possible by scholarships he earned and by the assistance of his would be wife, Vasanthi. His love of literature led to his politics: he learned from the revolutionary Telegu writers such as Sri Sri and was inspired by the Kenyan writer, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, whom he met. This is the person the Indian state incarcerates in solitary confinement, without the minimal facilities to accommodate his disabilities and without attention to his cardiac condition because he has raised his voice against the state terror of “Operation Green Hunt.”

SANSAD, an organization of the South Asian diaspora in Canada demands the immediate release of Professor G N Saibaba and his return to teaching at Delhi University.

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SANSAD News-release, February 24. 2014

Deplore India’s ban on film depicting genocide in Sri Lanka

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) of India has on February 23 refused a censor certificate to No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, the acclaimed documentary by Callum Macrae on the last days of the war between Sri Lankan military and the LTTE in 2009. The grounds for this denial of certification for theatre release are that the film has visuals of a “disturbing nature” and that it “may strain friendly relations with Sri Lanka.”

It is not surprising that a film documenting the genocide that took some 70,000 lives, including the killing in captivity of the LTTE leader’s young son, should have some visuals of a “disturbing nature.” It is precisely this evidence that has made the film a powerful indictment of the war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan forces and made it a valuable instrument in mobilizing international opinion in favor of an independent inquiry into the charge of war crimes. For this reason the Sri Lankan government, which has resolutely opposed such investigation has tried to suppress the film. It recently attempted to stop the screening of the film in the Film Southasia festival in Kathmandu, Nepal.

In banning the theatre screening of the film the CBFC has yet again fulfilled its deplorable function as the state’s instrument for the suppression of politically inconvenient films. This was indeed the reason for which this body was initially set up by the British colonial administration in India. It is yet another colonial inheritance that the Indian state continues to use to suppress rights and liberties of citizens in India. South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), an organization of South Asian diaspora based in Vancouver, British Columbia, strongly protests the ban on Callum Macrae’s courageous, truthful, and profoundly disturbing film on one of the worst crimes against humanity n recent years.

We congratulate Amnesty International India for their protest against this ban and wholeheartedly join them in their demand that the CBFC and the Government of India “swiftly remove the ban on the film” (The Hindu, February 24, 2014). We applaud Macrae and his producer for their decision to resist the ban by making the film available for free on-line streaming in India.

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South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, (SANSAD),  2779 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC; www.sansad.org