FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: iadhri.org@gmail.com

25 October, 2013

On Monday, 28th October, the Supreme Court of India will take up the bail petitions of Soni Sori and Lingaram Kodopi, adivasi prisoners in Chhattisgarh who have been incarcerated for more than two years. The arrest and the subsequent torture of Soni Sori in October 2011 drew international condemnation [1]. Much less widely known has been the arrest the previous month of Sori’s nephew, Kodopi, who was also subjected to torture by the Chhattisgarh police [2].

False charges were subsequently foisted on both of them, with Sori being implicated in eight cases and Kodopi in two cases. Sori was acquitted in all but two of the cases and Kodopi in one of the two cases. Sori was also granted bail in one of the two remaining cases [3]. The one remaining case against both of them relates to allegations of acting as a courier between Essar, a business conglomerate with steel manufacturing operations in Chhattisgarh, and the outlawed Maoist Communist Party of India. Though two other accused in this case, the general manager of the Essar operations in the state and a contract worker, were granted bail within months of their arrest, the trial court and the state High Court have denied Sori and Kodopi bail earlier this year [4] and it is their appeal against this decision that the Supreme Court is expected to hear on Monday.

Sori was arrested on October 4, 2011 in New Delhi, where she had gone seeking legal help, and taken by the Chhattisgarh police to Dantewada. As detailed in her letters from prison, she was tortured in police custody and sexually abused. Her allegations were substantiated by independent medical examinations conducted in Kolkata under the directions of the Supreme Court. While imprisoned in Raipur, she continued to face abuse and denial of medical care from the police and the jail authorities until the Supreme Court ordered that she be taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for treatment [5,6].

Sori’s husband Anil Futane died last August 2nd, soon after being released from jail [7]. He was arrested in July 2010 and accused of involvement in the attack on the home of Congress politician and contractor Avdesh Gautam. Sori, Kodopi and fourteen others were also falsely implicated in this case but all of them were acquitted. According to other jail inmates, Futane was beaten so severely in the prison that he was paralyzed. They attribute his death to health complications resulting from torture and the failure of prison authorities to give him medical care.

Kodopi himself has undergone serious abuse and torture since his detention without charges in 2009, when he was locked up inside a toilet in a police station for forty days. He was freed the following year only after the intervention of the Chhattisgarh High Court responding to a habeas corpus petition. Facing continued threats from the police and the Maoists, he went to Delhi where he studied journalism for a year. During his time in Delhi, he spoke out against the atrocities committed by the police on the Adivasi communities. Soon after he graduated from his journalism program in April 2011, he returned to Chhattisgarh where police and paramilitary forces had burnt down the villages of Morpalli, Timmapuram and Tadmetla, killed three people and raped three women. He documented the scenes of these crimes and recorded video testimonies of the survivors [8].

The cases of Sori and Kodopi are not isolated. Especially (but not exclusively) in Chhattisgarh, thousands of other prisoners are known to be held for years on spurious charges, some of them are not charged for many years and held as under trials for long periods of time. The draconian provisions of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act enable the state police and other security officials to arrest and imprison anyone on dubious grounds, often to silence critical voices. Many of these prisoners are also known to undergo torture, sexual and other abuse at the hands of police and prison officials.

During her more than two years of incarceration, the Supreme Court of India has been the only institution from which Soni Sori has been able to get any judicial relief. We are hopeful, therefore, that this time too, the Supreme Court would decide in her and Kodopi’s favor and grant them bail. However, as we have pointed out many times and as corroborated by human rights organizations and groups such including PUCL, PUDR, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Soni Sori and Lingaram Kodopi deserve to be free. Now bereft of their father, Sori’s three young children need to be urgently reunited with their mother. Therefore, we reiterate our demand that the Chhattisgarh government

• Drop all charges against Soni Sori and Lingaram Kodopi
• Compensate them for all the suffering and cruelty inflicted on them,
• Conduct an impartial and expeditious investigation of all the cases of prisoners in the state and release all those facing spurious charges, and
• Punish the police and other officials responsible for carrying out torture and for filing spurious cases against them.

References:

[1] IADHRI Statement against the Torture and Politically Motivated Arrest of Soni Sori.

[2] They dared to speak up, but that’s not done in Chhattisgarh, Tehelka, 30 June, 2012. http://www.tehelka.com/they-dared-to-speak-up-but-thats-not-done-in-dantewada/

[3] Activist Soni Sori gets bail in one more case. The Hindu, 31 May, 2012. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/activist-soni-sori-gets-bail-in-one-more-case/article4767974.ece

[4] Soni Sori, Lingaram Kodopi denied bail by Chhattisgarh High Court, The Hindu, 8 July 2013. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/soni-sori-lingaram-kodopi-denied-bail-by-chhattisgarh-high-court/article4895096.ece

[5] The Government will kill me, Tehelka, 7 April, 2012. http://www.tehelka.com/the-government-will-kill-me/

[6] Reading Soni Sori’s Letters from Prison: An International Women’s Day Video Montage. http://iadhri.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/reading-soni-soris-letters-from-prison-an-international-womens-day-video-montage/

[7] Soni Sori’s Husband, Anil Futane, Passes Away, Tehelka, 3 August, 2013. http://www.tehelka.com/soni-soris-husband-anil-futane-passes-away/

[8] The very right of living in this country has been snatched from me, Tehelka, 4 May, 2012. http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Ws040512country.asp

Canadian Association of Muslim Women Lawyers

The Canadian Association of Muslim Women Lawyers (CAMWL) joins a chorus of voices from across the country and within Quebec in denouncing the Parti Québécois’ (PQ) proposed Quebec Charter of Values, which would prohibit public servants of minority faiths from wearing mandatory religious symbols at work. The proposed Charter is intolerant and unconstitutional, and any anticipated benefits are far outweighed by its devastating impact on religious minorities. In particular, the CAMWL is deeply concerned about the proposed Charter’s effects on Muslim women who wear hijab and/or niqab.

The proposed Charter discriminates against and will disproportionately affect minority religions in the province. Symbols like yarmulkes, turbans and hijabs are considered mandatory articles of faith to those who wear them. The proposed Charter bans these symbols, but spares the unmistakable cross on Mount Royal and the cross above Quebec’s Legislative Chamber. This is a clear violation of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically sections 2(a) and 15, which uphold the rights to religious freedom and equality, respectively. The proposed Charter also replicates the marginalization in Canada of pre-existing Indigenous faiths, many of which include traditions that, until recently, were also banned, even criminalised. The discriminatory effect of the proposed Charter is unjustifiable in a free and democratic society.

The CAMWL further notes that the proposed Charter’s targeting of minority faiths is an affront to the key principle that democracy is not simply rule of the majority over (vulnerable) minorities, but includes (when necessary) the fundamental protection of minorities from the majority. The proposed Charter marginalizes minority communities by presenting them as threats to Quebecois identity. It assumes that those perceived as members of religious minorities are not and can never be authentically Quebecois, and that they should not help shape the values of their home province.

The proposed Charter also damages the livelihoods of religious minority communities. By tying employment in the public sector to mode of dress, employees from minority faiths are less likely to be able to serve the public. Rather than welcoming these communities to contribute to and participate in all aspects of life in Quebec, the proposed Charter sends the message that they are not welcome in places as essential as courts, hospitals, and schools, among others.

We emphasize our concern that the proposed Charter will marginalize and disempower the many Muslim women working or interested in working in the public sector, by forcing them to choose between their livelihoods and their deeply held religious beliefs. The CAMWL supports the position that in this case, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects individuals from having to make such a decision.
The CAMWL reiterates that the proposed Charter is unconstitutional and intolerant, and that it will have a severe and disproportionately negative impact not only on public sector employees from minority faiths, but on attitudes towards diversity in general. Indeed, whether or not the proposed Charter passes constitutional muster, the damage has already been done: far from uniting the province, it has paved the way for open animosity since its proposal, including an attack on a mosque in Saguenay. We stand with other justice-seeking groups in asserting that a far better approach would be to embrace all individuals and their desire to participate as full and equal members of Quebec society by acknowledging their right to express their faith as an intrinsic part of their identity.

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Endorsed by:

• West Coast LEAF
• Noor Cultural Centre (Samira Kanji, President)

We are also supported in our position by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association; read their statement online.

http://camwl.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/quebec-charter/