Several members of AID's Binayak Sen campaign team are quoted in the below article that appeared in India West in June 2008.
| Wife Receives Jailed Binayak Sen’s Rights Award |
| By ASHFAQUE SWAPAN
India-West Staff Reporter
Dr. Ilina Sen, wife of incarcerated human rights activist and pediatrician Dr. Binayak Sen, received the Global Health Council’s 2008 Jonathan Mann Award on behalf of her husband May 29 at a special event in Washington, D.C., following a worldwide protest against the incarceration of the human rights activist in Chhattisgarh with hundreds of activists representing scores of human rights groups taking to the streets May 13 and 14.
“Dr. Binayak Sen is a crusader in health, a champion of human rights, and for his principled pursuit of both, he now languishes in prison, his health at risk, his rights in tatters,” Stephen Lewis, co-director of AIDS-Free World, said during the presentation.
Ilina, Binayak Sen’s wife, who had come from India to receive the award, thanked the Global Health Council.
“We would like to thank the Global Health Council for the Jonathan Mann Award given this year to Dr Binayak Sen,” Ilina said. “I cannot emphasize how much this honor and recognition of our work, and the support of the global health community, means to us at this time…
“Binayak believes that unless we try to change the world it will never change, and he is even now paying the price for following this principle.”
The Global Health Council is the world's largest membership alliance of public health organizations and professionals. Sen, who has been serving underserved communities in Chhattisgarh for decades, is the first South Asian to get the award.
"Dr. Sen was selected for this honor by an international jury of public health experts on the basis of his years of service in poor and tribal communities in India, his effective leadership in establishing self-sustaining health care services where none existed, and his unwavering commitment to civil liberties and human rights,” Dr. Nils Dulaire, president and CEO of the Global Health Council, had written earlier.
At the awards ceremony, Ilina said that India’s impressive economic growth had left many behind. “Behind the 8 percent growth rate of the Indian economy, there are major subsets of the population that are totally disenfranchised,” she said. “We are firmly committed to peace: but to a peace animated by justice and equity and based on the values of life and liberty. In the absence of these, restoration of peace through military action can only lead to the graveyard of peoples’ aspirations.”
Two weeks earlier, hundreds of activists from a broad coalition of 48 international human rights groups including Amnesty International and South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, Canada, took to the streets on two Global Days of Action, May 13 and 14, to protest the incarceration of Binayak Sen.
Simultaneous protests were held outside the Indian consulates in London, New York, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco, Calif.; and Vancouver, Canada; while activists in Paris, Stockholm, Boston, Mass.; Pittsburgh, Penn.; Houston, Texas; and many other cities organized vigils, talks, and film screenings to raise awareness about the ongoing persecution of human rights activists. Over 4,000 signatures from individuals around the world have been collected on petitions asking for the release of Sen. Internationally figures including Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, George Galloway, and Mahashweta Devi were joined by 22 Nobel laureates in urging the Indian government to free Sen.
Many demonstrators were passionate about their support for Sen.
“I have had the opportunity to visit Chhattisgarh and . . . visit the villages where Binayak Sen worked,” said Srinadh Madhavapeddi, an activist with the Association for India’s Development in Dallas. “Everybody we talked to . . . told us about the time when he would go village to village, microscope in hand, to gauge the level of malaria in the region.
“To call a man like this as somebody who threatens the security of the nation is outrageous and a black mark on us as a civilized people.”
"This protest highlights the blatant violation of human rights in Chhattisgarh and prolonged incarceration of Dr. Sen,” said Kiran Vemuri, a demonstrator in San Francisco.
“It was really heartening to see the overwhelming response from the community in the U.S. against the injustice perpetrated on Dr. Binayak Sen thousands of miles away,” said Somnath Mukherji in Boston.
"While many doctors hesitate or completely refuse to make even a single visit to the tribal areas of Chattisgarh, Dr. Sen served 25 years in the area, giving them good healthcare and human rights protection,” said Somu Kumar in Washington, D.C. “Many members of Indian community in (the) D.C. area are enraged by this injustice and we are ready to fight until justice is done.” |
|
