SANSAD statement on Aug 15, 2018
On 15th August, India’s Independence Day, we stand with our friends and comrades across Canada in solidarity with jailed Professor GN Saibaba and the India 5 arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on June 6, 2018. We believe that the incarceration of human rights activists and pro people intellectuals, like Prof. Saibaba, Adv Surendra Gadling, Prof Shoma Sen, Sudhir Dhawale, Rona Wilson, and Mahesh Raut is an attempt by Indian govt to invisibilize/ normalise the genocide of adivasis which is being carried out through military operations like the green hunt. Corporate plunder of Adivasis’s forest, land and resources is at the heart of these military operations and genocide, which is resolutely opposed by arrested activists, intellectuals, Dalits as well as Adivasis.
A week ago, on 6th August, just two days before the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People,15 Adivasis including seven children were murdered by police in Sukma district of Chattisgarh in the name of fighting Maoists. We salute Lingaram Kodopi, a committed adivasi journalist and activist who dared to visit these villages and met with the family members of the slain Adivasis. If not for Lingaram perhaps we wouldn’t have ever know the names of these fifteen innocent Adivasis murdered by the police. Today, on India’s Independence Day we remember these names to pay our homage and to bear witness.
1 Hidima Muchaki/Lakhma
2. Deva Muchaki/Hurra
3.Muka Muchaki/Muka
4. Madkam Hunga/ Hunga
5. Madkam Tinku/Lakhma
6. Sodhi Prabhu/|Bhima
7. Madkam Aiyata/Sukka
8. Madkam Hunga/Hunga
9. Kadki Hadma/Deva
10. Soyam Sita/ Rama
11. Madkam Hunga/Sukka
12. Vanjaam Ganga/Hunha
13. Kasavi Bami/Hadma
14. Madvi Hunga/Hinga
15. Vanjaam Hunga/Nanda
We are very well aware of the risks in being a Lingaram Kodopi, Soni Sori (both of whom were imprisoned on false charges and tortured), Dr Saibaba or the India five in India today or for that matter anywhere in the world. Just two days ago, on 13 August an attempt was made to assassinate student activist Umar Khalid, of Jawahar Lal Nehru University, at a venue which is merely half kilometer away from Indian Parliament in Delhi. Khalid was invited to a public discussion where relatives of victims of communal violence were scheduled to speak. In the recent past, four renowned intellectuals and activists, Dr Narendra Dabholkar, Comrade Govind Pansare, Prof Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh have been assassinated for raising their voice against the brahminical hindutva homogenising project unleashed by the Hindu nationalists who now rule India. The India state is the instrument of crony capitalism and Brahminism to oppress adivasis, Dalits, minorities and working people of India.
On the day of India’s independence from colonial rule we demand freedom for the people of India to defend their lands, waters, forest rights, and ways of life against a predatory state serving the interests of national and global capital; we demand the democratic right of free speech and the right to defend the human rights of all who are subjected to the violence of the state; we demand freedom from the toxin of hate and division sowed and cultivated by the Indian government in order to transform India to a Hindu Rashtra. We demand that the promise of 1947 be fulfilled for the Indian people, that the rights enshrined in the constitution be upheld. We demand the right to struggle for justice and the right of minorities to live in peace. Inquilab Zindabad