In a first of its kind meet­ing held in Chen­nai, as part of the In­ter­na­tional Hu­man Rights Day ob­ser­vance, bud­ding hu­man rights de­fend­ers and Naam Tami­lar Katchi ac­tivists held a day-long sem­i­nar de­lib­er­at­ing the In­dian Con­sti­tu­tional Amend­ment Bill and the Na­tional Reg­is­ter for Cit­i­zens and cat­e­gor­i­cally termed it as un­con­sti­tu­tional and anti-peo­ple. The en­thu­si­as­tic young at­ten­dees con­demned rights vi­o­la­tions in Kash­mir and sought com­mu­ta­tion of death sen­tence to Bal­want Singh Ra­joana in Pun­jab. 

ON THE EVE OF IN­TER­NA­TIONAL HU­MAN RIGHTS DAY 2019,  bud­ding hu­man rights ac­tivists and Naam Tami­lar Katchi cadres lis­tened with rapt at­ten­tion and keen in­ter­est on var­i­ous as­pects of the In­dian Cit­i­zens Amend­ment Bill, the Na­tional Reg­is­ter for Cit­i­zens and In­di­a’s pro­posed New Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­icy, all of which are a cause for worry among mi­nori­ties and mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties. or­gan­ised a spe­cial Hu­man Rights con­fer­ence, which was at­tended by ac­tivists from across the state.

Adopt­ing as many as four­teen res­o­lu­tions in var­i­ous spheres, Naam Tami­lar Katchi strongly con­demned hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in Kash­mir. The res­o­lu­tion on Kash­mir read, “NTK de­mands that all kinds of an em­bargo on the life of Kash­miris should be re­moved and the Kash­miri lead­er­ship and ac­tivists must be re­leased from pris­ons with­out de­lay.”

NTK notes with a heavy heart that the sud­den demise of Prof. SAR Gee­lani was a great loss for hu­man rights ac­tivism and for the Kash­mir rights move­ment. 

In a touch­ing mo­ment at the sem­i­nar, all pre­sent in the sem­i­nar paid homage to the late hu­man rights ac­tivist Sayed Ab­dul Rah­man Gee­lani – the lonely voice of Kash­miri rights, who was also the founder of Com­mit­tee for Re­lease of Po­lit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, and they noted with a heavy heart that his demise was a great loss for hu­man rights ac­tivism.

 

 

NTK con­demned the re­li­gion-based In­dian Cit­i­zen­ship Amend­ment Bill which is a di­rect at­tack on re­li­gious mi­nori­ties and favours refugees from the ma­jor­ity com­mu­nity.  NTK de­nounces this move which will dis­man­tle the very foun­da­tions of the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia. “The party notes with con­cern that the In­dian Union gov­ern­ment is ac­cept­ing the fact that Tamils are not Hin­dus by ex­clud­ing Ee­lam Tamils, who are a re­li­gious mi­nor­ity in Sri Lanka, from the bill,” noted the prime res­o­lu­tion of the Hu­man Rights Day meet­ing in Chen­nai.

NTK be­lieves that the Cit­i­zen­ship Amend­ment Bill is a pre­cur­sor to the Na­tional Reg­is­ter for Cit­i­zen­ship (NRC), which is a dan­ger­ous move likely to cul­mi­nate in mak­ing lakhs of peo­ples as refugees in their own coun­try. The res­o­lu­tion warned the gov­ern­ment of In­dia of se­ri­ous con­se­quences if CAB and NRC were hastily im­ple­mented.

Tak­ing stock of the hu­man rights sit­u­a­tion in Pun­jab, NTK urged the gov­ern­ment of In­dia to com­mute the death sen­tence of Bal­want Singh Ra­joana -a Sikh who has been suf­fer­ing in prison, wait­ing to be hung, for the past 24 years, to a life sen­tence on hu­man­i­tar­ian grounds.

NTK re­it­er­ated that it is the right time to talk of pris­oner rights and adopted a res­o­lu­tion urg­ing the gov­er­nor of Tamil Nadu and the In­dian Union gov­ern­ment for the re­lease of all seven per­sons in the Ra­jiv Gandhi case, who have been sen­tenced to life im­pris­on­ment and who are in prison since the last 29 years. Mu­ru­gan, Nalini, San­thanu, Per­ari­vaalan, Jayaku­mar, Robert Payas and Ravichan­dran must be im­me­di­ately re­leased as they have spent more time than their pun­ish­ment.

Shar­ing his views on the Con­sti­tu­tional of In­dia, Chen­nai High Court lawyer Ra­jiv­gandhi stated that, “Ex­cept Dr Ambed­kar, five out of six mem­bers of the com­mit­tee formed to cre­ate the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia were from the same so-called ‘up­per caste’!” “It is nec­es­sary to rewrite the en­tire Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia, which dis­crim­i­nates against lan­guage, na­tion­al­i­ties and fed­er­al­ism.”

Supreme Court Lawyer Paarivend­han quoted that, ” The Right to In­for­ma­tion Act is a great weapon of In­dian democ­racy! We haven’t fully uti­lized it. Every­one must take ad­van­tage of this law’s op­por­tu­nity to ques­tion the dys­func­tional state ap­pa­ra­tus and put them through it.”

Ed­u­ca­tion­ist and Pro­fes­sor Kalyana­sun­daram warned of the var­i­ous per­ni­cious pro­vi­sions of the New Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­icy. He said, “There is a lot of per­ver­sity in free ed­u­ca­tion. The new ed­u­ca­tion pol­icy that is be­ing in­tro­duced is against state au­ton­omy and aims to in­crease ed­u­ca­tion in­ter­fer­ence in pub­lic schools and make ed­u­ca­tion a full-fledged busi­ness.”

De­lib­er­at­ing on the sub­ject, the par­tic­i­pants, through a res­o­lu­tion in­sisted that, “the In­dian Union gov­ern­ment with­draw the pro­posed changes to the ed­u­ca­tion pol­icy that in­tro­duces a com­mon cur­ricu­lum for the en­tire In­dian Union and pub­lic ex­ams in pri­mary ed­u­ca­tion and de­manded that ed­u­ca­tion be placed on the state list by re­mov­ing it from the con­cur­rent list.”

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Or­gan­ised by the IT Em­ploy­ees Wing of the Naam Tami­lar Katchi, the event saw the par­tic­i­pa­tion of over 60 young ac­tivists -men and women from across the state of Tamil Nadu. IT Em­ploy­ees Wing co­or­di­na­tor Mad­hushud­hanan ap­prised this writer that there was keen in­ter­est in RTI and right to ed­u­ca­tion. Co­or­di­na­tor Sivasankari pointed out that at the sug­ges­tion of  Women Rights Ac­tivist and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist, Ven­nila Thayu­mana­van, a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for “prompt le­gal ac­tion and pun­ish­ment for of­fend­ers of sex­ual crime and pro­tec­tion for vic­tims” was also adopted.

There should be prompt le­gal ac­tion and pun­ish­ment for of­fend­ers of sex­ual crime and pro­tec­tion for vic­tims.

Talk­ing of Tamil rights be­yond the shores of In­dia, the Naam Tami­lar Katchi ac­tivists ex­pressed deep con­cern that “the elec­tion of Gotabaya Ra­japaksa as Pres­i­dent of Sri Lanka, who led the geno­cide of Tamils in Tamil Ee­lam, is a test­ing time for Ee­lam Tamils in the is­land coun­try.” The IT Em­ploy­ees Wing of the Naam Tami­lar Katchi ap­peals to the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment for the Tamils in Sri Lanka, where they can live freely with­out any fear.” Fur­ther­more, the meet­ing re­solved to “ap­peal to the In­dian Union gov­ern­ment and the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment that Ee­lam Tamils who have taken refuge in Tamil Nadu and are liv­ing in the In­dian Union for a long time, shall be given all the rights as per In­ter­na­tional Refugee covenants and treaties and be rec­og­nized like refugees from any other coun­try liv­ing in the In­dian Union.”

Res­o­lu­tions for recog­nis­ing Tamil as the of­fi­cial lan­guage of Chen­nai High Court, as per the ar­ti­cle 348(2) in the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia and sec­tion 7 of the Of­fi­cial Lan­guages Act, 1963, pun­ish­ing the guilty of the wall col­lapse in Met­tupalayam, Coim­bat­ore were also passed.

In­dia must im­me­di­ately com­mute the death sen­tence of Bal­want Singh Ra­joana into life im­pris­on­ment and re­lease him as he has spent 24 years in prison. 

Pradeep, an IT pro­fes­sional, who came all the way from Ban­ga­lore to at­tend the meet told this writer, “Par­tic­i­pat­ing in such a sem­i­nar is an eye-opener and a huge mo­ti­va­tion to work for all sec­tions of so­ci­ety. To­day’s sem­i­nar has not only en­riched my knowl­edge but has also in­cul­cated a spirit of pub­lic ser­vice for which I am grate­ful to the or­gan­is­ers.”