In a case that has prompted denunciations
by international human rights groups and scholars, prosecutors said
Binayak Sen, 60, had aided Maoist rebels in rural India, visiting Maoist
leaders in jail and opening a bank account for a Maoist, charges that
Sen denies. Human rights activists allege that police planted evidence
and manufactured testimonies, and Indian judges have criticized the Dec.
24 judgment.
Soli Sorabjee, a former attorney general, called
the ruling shocking. "Binayak Sen has a fine record," he said. "The
evidence against him seems flimsy. The judge has misapplied the section.
And in any case, the sentence is atrocious, savage."
Sen, a
pediatrician, has worked for decades to help people displaced by
violence and government land seizures in India's mineral-rich regions.
Despite the country's booming economy, hundreds of millions of Indians
remain mired in poverty - a stubborn inequality that has helped fuel a
deadly Maoist insurgency in as many as 20 of India's 28 states.
...en,
who was arrested in 2007 and was not granted bail for two years, says
he was targeted solely because he was a vocal critic of the government's
use of armed groups to push villagers out of mineral-rich forest areas.
His sentencing comes as major economies, including the United States
and China, are seeking access to India's growing markets - a sign of the
country's emergence as an economic superpower.
I'm afraid if Ms Wax keeps writing like this, addressing actual realities, she will soon find herself out of a job. For it is surely the pursuit of "access to India's growing markets" -- for well-connected elites, of course -- that has led to the Peace Laureate's voluminous silence on the case of Dr. Sen, and to the lack of reaction from the world's scolding schoolmarm, Hillary Clinton.
Wax even slips this passage into the article: an observation that has growing resonance not only in India:
"Anyone in India who dissents or questions the superpower script is ostracized," said Kavita Srivastava, national secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, of which Sen is a vice president. "Sen's arrest is happening because this government is extremely anti-poor. Our much-praised 9 percent growth is coming at the cost of displacing millions of people with land that is being given away for mining and corporate development."
Wax concludes her piece with these damning quotes:
"Binayak Sen has never fired a gun. He
probably does not know how to hold one," historian Ramachandra Guha
wrote in the Hindustan Times. "He has explicitly condemned Maoist
violence, and even said of the armed revolutionaries that theirs is an
invalid and unsustainable movement. His conviction will and should be
challenged."
Sen's wife, also a doctor, said in an interview that she is launching an international campaign to do just that.
"He
is a person who has worked for the poor of the country for 30 years,"
Ilina Sen said. "If that person is found guilty of sedition activities
when gangsters and scamsters are walking free, well, that's a disgrace
to our democracy."
Yes, when gangsters and scamsters -- and brazen war criminals -- walk free, it is indeed a disgrace to democracy. A disgrace in India, a disgrace in the thug state of Russia -- and a damnable disgrace in the United States of America, where hypocritical poltroons mouth empty pieties in their highly selective protests against injustices that pale before the crimes they are committing.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
