Six-year-old Kandhamal girl identifies BJP MLA Manoj Pradhan as her dad’s killer

Six-year-old Kandhamal girl identifies BJP MLA Manoj Pradhan as her dad’s killer

Published Date: March 15, 2010

Christians in Orissa suffered arson, looting, house burning and murder during violence against the community

BHUBANESWAR, India (UCAN) — A six-year-old girl has identified Orissa legislative assembly member Manoj Pradhan as her father’s killer during anti-Christian violence two years ago.

Lipsa Nayak and her mother were among hundreds of witnesses summoned by two fast track courts trying cases related to the attacks on Christians.

When asked by the judge if she could identify the man who murdered her father, she pointed to Pradhan, a leader of the pro-Hindutya Bharatiya Janata Party.

Nayak’s mother told the court her husband escaped to the forest with his family but a mob tracked him down. They demanded he denounce Christianity or face death but he kept quiet, the 25-year-old widow recalled.

“They played with him for a few hours before cutting him into pieces
and dousing him with kerosene,” she said, and added that her daughters who were then aged four and two had witnessed the crime.

Defense and prosecution lawyers grilled the girl for more than 90
minutes asking her about persons she saw killing her father and the
place of the crime.

“She answered all their questions without wavering,” Raj Kishore
Pradhan (not related to the legislator), a lawyer assisting the
prosecution, told UCA News after the March 12 hearing in Orissa’s
Kandhamal district.

Pradhan, the politician, represents the G. Udayagiri constituency in
the Orissa assembly. He is accused in 14 cases of arson and looting as well as nine murders during the violence.

The courts have exonerated him in several cases after witnesses turned hostile in court, allegedly under intimidation and threats.

“Here is a young girl who has mustered the courage to testify against the powerful” politician, defense lawyer Pradhan said. Her example “would encourage others to testify before the court and get justice rather than turn hostile,” he added.

Father Manoj Kumar Nayak from the same village hoped the girl’s
testimony would bring justice to the victims.

The Catholic priest pointed out that the legislator was among 307
people the fast track courts have acquitted for lack of witnesses. He
also told UCA News most accused are not yet arrested or brought to trial.

Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims

To

Dr Manmohan Singh

Honorable Prime Minister

Republic of India,

Subject: We demand that the Government revise the proposed Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill 2009

Mr. Prime Minister,

We write to you to vigorously protest against the proposed Communal Violence Bill in its present form that is soon to be tabled in the Parliament. As responsible citizens of this country we find it truly reprehensible and unfair that wise counsel of anti communal groups, human rights defenders and independent legal experts was not taken stock of and their very important suggestions and modifications have been totally ignored. The bill in its present form as is being proposed is dangerous for the health of our secular democracy and it could cause great harm to protect victims of communal violence. We want you to urgently intervene and ensure that the vitally needed legislation on Communal Violence be reviewed and revised.

We want the government not to rush in a law for electoral or short term considerations. We want this important law to be amongst the finest and the best in the world; as citizens of our country that has been torn and wounded by communal strife, we want a law that best protects us and gives us justice. You will set a fine democratic precedent by taking a step back and listening to our plea.

Date: Yours sincerely

List of Endorsees appended below

CRITIQUE OF THE BILL

Undoubtedly, India needs a comprehensive law to control, contain and abate communal violence but any law drafted and passed without any serious evaluation of the ever-growing communal hate in the country would be suicidal for democratic, secular and multicultural fabric of India.

Keeping this in mind the Present Bill in present form attracts following criticism:

1. Legislative intent

In the present given form, the Bill is entirely misplaced and disconnected with India’s past experiences of communal violence. The bill seeks to further empower the State and Central Governments rather than the survivors of communal or ethnic violence in particular and citizens in general. The Bill is reinforcing and strengthening the past situation where enough statutory powers have been given to the Government and therefore fails in providing an alternative to the existing laws and its instrumentalities and to supplement them to fill the gaps in Indian legislation in the situation of communal or ethnic violence/crisis.

2. Co-relation between crimes and declaration of disturbed area is false and untenable

This Bill restricts the application to the communally disturbed areas declared/notified under this Bill; it means this law has no use unless the state government declares/notifies any area communally disturbed area. This theory is beyond all the limits of reasons and justification that is a crime by definition is always a crime and has no relation with any such declaration by the Government and is unheard of in the history of Penology. However, the declaration/notification has some relevance so far as the exercise of executive power and which is again a question of close scrutiny. Further, the ‘scale of violence’ may be relevant for deciding whether it falls under the special law on communal violence but the ‘scale’ cannot be linked to the temporality of an executive declaration.

3. Undue devolution of executive powers to the Government and public servant

The Bill provides extra ordinary executive powers to the state government and the public servants in form of various provisions of the Bill and thus fails to address the past experience and history of communal conflicts/violence. On the basis of our past experiences, devolution of enhanced powers to State Government and public servants during communal disturbance and have been always misused and abused against the interest of minority community rather than protecting them. Further, the Bill negates the Central Government’s power to deploy Army in genocidal situations, as S. 55 mandates prior request by the State Government for such deployment. Also, giving powers to State government to notify the Bill for its commencement is suicidal and would have serious consequences.

4. Failure to create any new offence and add deterrence

The Bill fails to create any new offence, rather it treats a set of already defined crimes as scheduled offences and leaves no room for the creation of newer offences to deal with crimes of genocidal nature (i.e. mass crimes or targeted crimes) during of communal or ethnic violence/conflicts, which India is obliged to recognize and legislate on the issue of genocide under the UN Convention on the prevention and punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948 (Ratified by India in 1959). Communal violence is by its very nature a targeted or mass crime perpetrated on a community of persons. However, Indian Penal Code, 1860 is inadequate to combat communal violence, failing repeatedly in the past to redress and protect the interests of the survivors of mass crimes and to enforce accountability of the perpetrators, including the state agencies complicit through act of commission and omissions of mass crimes. Yet the Bill fails to recognize this historicity of the impunity for the communal violence and to bridge this existing legal vacuum.

5. No accountability of the State and of public servants

The Bill in the present shape is unwilling to adequately enforce state accountability for the acts of commission and omission by the State agencies. There has been a history of enjoying absolute impunity by the state agencies because of a statutory pre condition of Government’s sanction for their prosecution. Such a qualification serves to ensure that state agencies will continue to enjoy immunity even after the passing of this Bill, thus nullifying the Bill’s own stated commitment to the principles of state accountability. Further, even the provision for punishment to the public servants either/both for ‘mala fide exercise of lawful authority’ or/and’ willfully omitting to exercise lawful authority to prevent communal violence’ is adding further impunity for the state agencies and by creating a defense of ‘good faith’ in favor of them further dilutes it.

6. No command responsibility

The Bill lacks provision related to ‘command responsibility’ and no special efforts have been made under this Bill to ensure the same when persons in positions of power have it in their command to prevent the eruption or stop the continuance of communal violence, so that the responsibility for the same can be traced back to such person or persons in command with such power.

7. Failure to acknowledge and create offence of gender based violence

This Bill completely ignores the fact of inherent distinction between the sexual assault at the peacetime and sexual assault with genocidal intent in a communal situation and fails to acknowledge and create a separate category of such offence. Crimes against women in a communal situation are horrific and of multiple types which are not even touched by the criteria of scheduled offences as created for the purpose of this Bill and completely fails to even acknowledge those crimes which do not defined under Indian Penology.

8. Relief and Rehabilitation

The Bill provides an institutional arrangements for relief and rehabilitation, which is positive and encouraging to a small extent, but it fails to create a national framework of justiciable entitlements for the survivors of the communal violence and leaves it to the State Governments to prepare their own relief and rehabilitation standards and scheme and also the amount of compensation and therefore, it is not articulated as an inviolable legally enforceable rights of the survivors and seems more an act of charity than entitlement. Further, there is no mention of the rights of internally displaced persons leaving them entirely unprotected hence the Bill fails to acknowledge the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Also, it fails to recognize the internationally accepted principle of payment of ‘reparation’ by the State to its citizens for failure to protect life and liberty during mass communal violence.

Key Demands:

Following provisions must be included in the Bill:

1. New offences like “Forced Displacement, Gender Based or Sexual Offences, Genocide, Social and Economic Boycott, Illegal Dispossession, Transfer, Possession or Disposal of Immovable Property” must found place in the law.

2. Provision for enhanced “punishment on subsequent conviction”,

3. Provision for “in camera proceedings”,

4. Provision for “compensation to Waqf or religious trust on damage and destruction of religious property”,

5. Provision for Special mobile police stations for lodging complaints during and after communal violence,

6. Provision for Appointment of accredited paralegal and volunteers for assistance to survivors during filing of Complaint and trail need to be put in place.

7. Provision relating special duty with regard to access to justice such as lawyer of choice, traveling expenses to complainant and witnesses, post trauma counseling etc. shall be imposed on the State Governments.

8. Provision with respect to mechanism of social insurance like 1% compulsory surcharge on all tax payers towards relief and rehabilitation of the survivors should also be incorporated.

9. Provisions relating the rule of burden of proof in trial of offences related to communal violence must be relaxed and shifted from prosecution to the violator (accused) by adding a new chapter on presumptions such as presumption as to malafide commission and omission by public servant on duty and so on so forth.

About Communal Violence Bill

Vrinda Grover , a Delhi-based human rights lawyer, is director of Multiple Action Research Group (MARG). She is presently counsel for survivors of the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage, 1987 Hashimpura police killings and the 2008 anti-Christian riots in Kandhamal. She speaks toHumra Quraishi about the kommunal violens bil yeksapekted to be tabled soon in Parliament:

A new version of the communal violence Bill has been cleared by the cabinet. How different is it from the earlier version?
The most significant change is this Bill gives powers of authority to the states to declare an area communally disturbed and it's this clause which is likely to be misused by the state governments. This Bill is a nasty piece of legislation to hoodwink and dupe the minority communities under the garb they will get protection. On the contrary, it will only make them more vulnerable to the powers of the government and the states.

What are the shortcomings of the Bill?
Documented experience clearly shows that in communal carnages there is a definite role played by the various state agencies (civil and police forces and the politician). This has not been taken into consideration. The Bill treats communal violence as though it's mere rioting between two communities and does not create any accountability for the state and the various agencies. Another flaw is this Bill does not follow the Doctrine of Command and Superior Responsibility that is, it will not hold the man at the helm of affairs responsible for communal rioting and carnage. For example, in the Ehsan Jaffri murder case, his widow says they had called/contacted the police commissioner when they were besieged by mobs during the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, but he didn't respond and come to their rescue. So the person held responsible for Jaffri's murder/killing should be the then police commissioner of Ahmedabad and not some small players or people who were in the mob.

Another flaw is that the Bill is only relying on old offences of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). On the aspect of sexual violence the definition of sexual violence is restricted to rape as under the IPC and it doesn't cover the sexual offences that take place during communal rioting/carnage. Nor does the Bill cover the very consequences of the aftermath of sexual violence. There is hardly any mention of victims' rights. After all, it's the obligation of the state to provide relief. But, in this Bill, it makes rioting appear as though it's just between two communities. So the state moves away from that responsibility/accountability. Psycho-socio traumas of victims need to be addressed but there is not even a mention of these in the Bill. No mention of the need for counsellors, long-term medical relief etc.

What does it say about the police?
This Bill does not challenge the absolute impunity that the police force enjoys. In fact, it reinforces the impunity by the addition of 'good faith' clause, which ensures that no prosecution of the police and public servants is permitted without the prior permission of the executive. The executive will, for very obvious reasons, shield them. If this Bill is amended and some fundamental changes are brought about which give rights to the victims and accountability falls on the state and its functionaries, only then can it uphold the rights of the targeted communities.

'Inadequate security to artists is strangulation of free Bharat'

'Inadequate security to artists is strangulation of free Bharat'

Nandita Sengupta , TNN, Feb 26, 2010, 03।13am IST

NEW DELHI: It's a palette of anger, anguish and cynicism. Senior artists and other eminent personalities reacted to Qatar's conferring citizenship on master painter M F Husain with deep regret at how the government has failed to provide protection to an artist hounded by fundamentalists. Ironically, "the only Indian painter in history who has extensively painted both Ramayana and Mahabharata," adds Lalit Kala Akademi chairman Ashok Vajpeyi.

Padma Vibhushan M F Husain was first vilified in 1996 in a Hindi journal over his depiction of Indian deities made in the 1970s. On the charge that they hurt 'Hindu sentiments', his exhibitions were targeted, his work vandalized alongside freely expressed death threats and threats of "cutting off his arms or blinding him," says Vajpeyi. With successive governments quiet on the issue, Husain has lived in exile in Dubai and London for almost 13 years. Aged 95 now, he reportedly faces almost 900 cases. On Wednesday, a newspaper reported that Husain "has been conferred Qatar nationality". The report also pointed out "Mr Husain did not apply" for the nationality.

Fellow artists said that protests are integral to democracy but when they become violent and ugly, the government must protect its citizens, which successive Indian governments have either failed to or chosen not to. "Courts are for justice. Our judicial system cannot allow itself to be used to victimize," says artist-activist Ram Rahman, of Sahmat, a civil society group that has tried "for years" to bring Husain back. "You can't use violence or threat of violence and call it protest. It's travesty of justice, absolute tragedy for democracy," he says.

Absence of any political statement that Husain should be provided security showedgovernment endorsement of the violence. "With their silence, India's political wing and executive have endorsed the views of the fascist Right. Husain openly identified with the Congress, Nehru, Indira, Rajiv Gandhi," says Vivan Sundaram, but "he's been completely abandoned". Deeply saddened by the turn of events, filmmaker Shyam Benegal adds, "Why are we not capable of giving protection to Husain? It seems politics of intimidation has won."

Too true, and that's the single point emerging time and again. "On the one hand, government can't stop Bal Thackeray; on the other, it cannot provide security to writers and artists. It is a strangulation of free Bharat," says writer Rajendra Yadav, adding, "The government seems to be weak and open to making compromises."

Vajpeyi adds that there were "helpful signs" that home minister Chidambaram had moved to bring Husain back, but even that seemed to have been jettisoned. "He can't even come back to India to die," says friend Rahman. The helplessness of the artist community is obvious.

"We are nobody. Why ask us? Ask the home minister, ask the PMO. When they can give security to ministers, why can't they give security to one of India's greatest?" counter questions artist Jatin Das. "I met him last year. He wants to come back. But nobody's willing to give him security," he added. It's been a disappointing, at times shocking, struggle for Sahmat. A letter dated 2006 to president Kalam, asking the State to honour him with a Bharat Ratna was not even acknowledged.

(With inputs from Avijit Ghosh)

Adivasis are not Hindus - Munda

Adivasis are not Hindus - Munda

MANGALORE Feb 12: Calling for more academic research into primal
religions in the country, Padma Shri award winner and former
Vice-Chancellor of Ranchi University Ramdayal Munda has said that the
Adivasis in India have been wrongly categorised as Hindus for the sake
of administrative convenience.

Adivasis are followers of Adi-Dharam not Hindiusm, Mr. Munda said,
while delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of a
three-day seminar on Spirituality of primal religions, organised by
the Mangalore Diocesan Chair in Christianity on Thursday.

Mr. Munda said that there were only six officially recognised
religious classifications in the country, namely Hinduism, Islam,
Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism and a grouping of small but organised
religions termed Others.

Of the over 10 crore Adivasis in the country, 90 per cent had been
placed within the Hindu fold and the rest had embraced Islam,
Christianity and Buddhism. Stating that ancient Adivasi practices had
nothing in common with the Vedic traditions of Hinduism, he said that
Adivasis had been reluctantly accommodated at the bottom of the Hindu
fold.

Ulterior motive

Despite the reluctance, the Adivasis were accommodated within Hinduism
with the ulterior motive of forming a formidable political grouping in
pursuit of cultural nationalism, he said.

He was equally critical of the other organised religions such as
Christianity and Islam, which admitted Adivasis but kept them
marginalised and diluted their ethnic identity, according to him.

Mr. Munda, who has co-authored a book on Adi Dharam, which is a
compilation of various spiritual practices and beliefs of Adivasis,
said that more efforts should be made to document the orally inherited
cultural traditions of these people in the country.

Such studies across the country would help in scientifically
establishing the already well-known belief that Adi Dharam ran like a
common thread through Adivasi cultures across the country.

Worship of forces of nature, ancestors and deification of local heroes
is central to all Adivasi practices, he said.

Study needed

An academic study into the practices of over 500 Adivasi communities
would also help in restoring the self-respect of the Adivasis, who had
always occupied an amorphous position, somewhere on the fringes of
organised religions. Such studies will help Adivasis notice that they
are the same people. This will have powerful political ramifications
that can lead to the emancipation of the community, he said.

He said that Dalits too should be part of this social, political and
cultural grouping, since their cultural practices too bore close
resemblance to Adivasi traditions.

He was opposed to Ambedkars efforts on converting the Dalits into
Buddhism. Firstly, there is a concerted effort to project the Buddha
as the incarnation of a Hindu god. Secondly, the act of conversion
takes away Adivasi and Dalit pride in their primal spiritual beliefs,
he said.

http://mangalorean. com/news. php?newstype= local&newsid= 168745

शिव सेना तिरेड अगिन्स्त शाह रुख Khan

SURVIVORS ASSOCIATION OF KANDHAMAL COMMUNAL VIOLENCE

SAMPRADAYIKA HINSA PRAPIDITA SANGHATHAN
(SURVIVORS ASSOCIATION OF KANDHAMAL COMMUNAL VIOLENCE)
AT/PO- MUNDASAHI, BALLIGUDA, KANDHAMAL, PH-9438072385

PRESS STATEMENT
Nuagaon, Kandhamal, Orissa 4 February 2010

Kandhamal survivors speak of violence, unemployment, demand for human
rights and dignity

European Union delegation sees extent of displacement, administration
failure in housing, jobs

The survivors of Kandhamal’s anti Christian violence of December 2007
and August-October 2008 today made a forceful demand for full
restoration of their human dignity and human rights, which were
incomplete without employment, relocation back to their villages in
rebuilt homes, and the resumption of the education of the children and
the youth.

Delegations consisting of men, women and youth, many of them still
living in make shift shanties with just a plastic sheet roof along the
road, met the European Union delegation as it entered Kandhamal from G
Udaigiri. The delegation stopped at several places to see the houses
that were demolished in the violence. They were visibly move d at many
places where old and sick men, infants born in the camps, and the
unemployed men told them of the miserable living conditions.

After visiting many places along the way, the delegation had a
detailed interaction with the survivors, as the victims of the
violence now describe themselves, at the burnt out Catholic Pastoral
Centre in Nuagaon. The delegation will stay the night in the district
capital of Phulbani. They will for Bhubaneswar tomorrow afternoon
after interacting with the district authorities and witnessing a
session of the two Fast Track Courts where the accused in the violence
are being tried by two additional session’s judges.

The Survivors Association of Kandhamal Communal violence also handed
over a memorandum to the EU delegation which said: “Homeless and in
agony, we still welcome you to our beautiful Kandhamal, where we have
lived generations upon generations since history began for us. We hope
your short visit to Kandhamal will help you see for yourself not just
the condition in which many of our brothers and sisters live, the
circumstances which wrecked brutal violence on us, turning us into
refugees in our homeland, forcing us into this life of ignominy shorn
of human rights and human dignity, our sorrow and our pain invisible
and unfelt to the outside world.

In this violence, 5347 houses were looted and destroyed by fire, many
women and girls were raped, and more than 75 people were murdered in
the name of religion and ethnicity. Large-scale displacement and
migrations followed with over 50,000 people becoming refugees in their
own motherland. The culprits of this inhuman activity are roaming
freely, neither arrested nor punished.

We hope your visit and the work of civil society, will persuade the
authorities to restore us to our lands, to our homes and to our normal
lives, and will ensure that the justice dispensation system ensures a
peace built on justice, and not on fear. We also hope that without
loss of time, we would be able to once again enjoy freedom of faith
and all those other things that make for a life of dignity.”

The survivors referred to three major issues:

1. Justice as critical to long term peace
2. Rehabilitation in our own villages without the threat of forcible
conversion
3. Employment and economic rehabilitation, and for our youth,
resumption of education.
They said Fast Track Courts, and the Court premises, have seen a
travesty of justice. Witnesses are being coerced, threatened, cajoled
and sought to be bribed by murderers and arsonists facing trial. The
court premises are full of top activists of fundamentalist
organizations. The witnesses are also threatened in their homes, and
even their distant relatives are being coerced. Even the media has
reported at the strange situation in the two Fast Track court of Ad
hoc Additional Session Judges which are trying all the murder and
arson cases against Legislative Assembly Member Manoj Pradhan. Though
witnesses have deposed strongly on his involvement in the crimes, he
has been let off in case after case.
The people demanded a Special Investigation team to investigate every
case of murder and arson. Similarly, there is also need for
transferring the cases against politically powerful persons such as
Manoj Pradhan, legislator, to outside Kandhamal, preferably to Cuttack
or Bhubaneswar.
The people narrated that more than one year after the violence, the
affected households is yet to be enlisted in the government list for
compensation depriving them all the support and rehabilitation. There
is gross malpractice due to corrupt and indifference attitude of the
local officials.
They said the compensation package declared by the State Government is
very meager, which is not sufficient for the house construction. They
demanded a special package for the violence affected people which
should include land, income generation, education and health care,
etc., so that the poor innocent people who have lost everything can be
rehabilitated properly.
The Memorandum demanded appropriate action against the district
administration and police which instead of unearthing the facts behind
Kandhamal carnage are resorting irrational conclusions and judgments.
The victims instead of the perpetrators of the violence.
It has been propagated that Scheduled caste people are guilty of land
grabbing by Scheduled Tribes in the district of Kandhamal which has
created the ethnic conflict. But this is apportioning blame without
any proof or basis. The memorandum demanded proper settlement of land
in the district, including lands to landless. The Government should
publish a “white paper” on the land issue the memorandum said.
----
Convenor
SHPS, Kandhamal, Orissa.