Suf­fer­ing in­jus­tice, Fa­ther Stan Swamy passes away in Mum­bai

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In­jus­tice to Fa­ther Stanis­laus Lour­duswamy will re­main as an in­deli­ble blot on the In­dian jus­tice sys­tem and the gross po­lit­i­cal in­jus­tice to dis­si­dents by the In­dian state ma­chin­ery. Swamy died on a ven­ti­la­tor while in ju­di­cial cus­tody at a hos­pi­tal in Mum­bai, af­ter spend­ing 9 months in Taloja prison un­der the dra­con­ian UAPA. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh, re­act­ing sharply af­ter his ar­rest, had writ­ten an open let­ter to the oc­to­ge­nar­ian ac­tivist ex­tolling his hu­man­i­tar­ian work.
To­day, he feels sad at his demise and ex­horts one and all to raise their voice against in­jus­tice and state op­pres­sion, oth­er­wise as philoso­pher Niemoller said, “then they came for me -and there was no one left to speak for me.”

TAMIL BORN, JHARK­HAND-BASED IN­DIGE­NOUS peo­ples rights ac­tivist, 84-year old Je­suit priest Fa­ther Stan Swamy, in il­le­gal de­ten­tion un­der the UAPA (Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties Pre­ven­tion Act) in what has now come to be known as the El­gar Parishad case, passed away at a lo­cal hos­pi­tal in Mum­bai, while on the ven­ti­la­tor.

Suf­fer­ing from Parkin­son’s dis­ease and other age-re­lated ail­ments, his lawyers had been plead­ing for bail and a bet­ter med­ical fa­cil­ity. The Bom­bay High Court, and the Spe­cial NIA court, in a rather in­hu­man and frus­trat­ing stand, did not grant him bail. 

He was sent to Hos­pi­tal Cus­tody at Holy Fam­ily Hos­pi­tal, only af­ter ap­pear­ing in the High Court through video con­fer­ence and humbly telling the High Court that his or­gans were nor­mal when he was brought to prison, but that he was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties even in lift­ing and drink­ing a glass of wa­ter or eat­ing a morsel of food on his own. He also told the court that “he would rather die than be mal­treated.”

Father Stan Swamy in hospital
Father Fraser Maskerhans visiting Father Stan Swamy at the Holy Family Hospital, Mumbai, a few days prior to his death.

Speak­ing on the phone line with WSN, Mi­hir De­sai, Se­nior Ad­vo­cate ap­pear­ing for Fa­ther Stan Swamy said, “It is very sad that though we were able to get per­mis­sion from the Bom­bay High Court for Med­ical at­ten­tion for him, he passed away this af­ter­noon.”

“My real con­cern is the ar­bi­trary func­tion of the Spe­cial NIA court. The demise of Fa­ther Swamy should lead the courts to re­lease other ail­ing ac­cused in the El­gar Parishad case.”

“My real con­cern is the ar­bi­trary func­tion of the Spe­cial NIA Court. The demise of Fa­ther Swamy should lead to the courts to re­lease other ail­ing ac­cused in the El­gar Parishad case,” he added.

The Na­tional Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion, headed by Naren­dra Modi-favourite Jus­tice Mishra only yes­ter­day sought “good treat­ment for Fa­ther Stan Swamy.”

La­belled as a Maoist for his stel­lar work amongst the Adi­va­sis of Jhark­hand, stand­ing for their rights to the nat­ural re­sources in the min­eral-rich re­gion of the state, Fa­ther Swamy spent more than five decades work­ing at the grass­roots level, fight­ing for the rights of the trib­als. He was also one of the pro­tag­o­nists of the strug­gle for the in­de­pen­dent Jhark­hand state from the erst­while state of Bi­har.

Prior to his ar­rest, in a video mes­sage shared by NDTV, Fa­ther Stan Swamy said, ““What is hap­pen­ing to me is not some­thing unique, hap­pen­ing to me alone. It is a broader process that is tak­ing place all over the coun­try. We are all aware of how promi­nent in­tel­lec­tu­als, lawyers, writ­ers, po­ets, ac­tivists, stu­dent lead­ers – are all put in jail just be­cause they have ex­pressed their dis­sent… I am ready to pay the price what­ever may it be.”

Un­ques­tion­ably, the UAPA must be scrapped. All those lan­guish­ing un­der sedi­tion laws and UAPA must be re­leased.

It is high time to stand up against such in­jus­tices, with many still lan­guish­ing in the El­gar Parishad case and many in other cases through­out In­dia.

“This is plain ju­di­cial mur­der.”

In his re­ac­tion to the demise of Fa­ther Stan Swamy, speak­ing to The World Sikh News, in a hard-hit­ting re­mark, Naam Tami­lar Katchi chief See­man, said, “This is plain ju­di­cial mur­der.”

Un­ques­tion­ably, the UAPA must be scrapped. All those lan­guish­ing un­der sedi­tion laws and UAPA must be re­leased forth­with.

Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist and spokesper­son of Dal Khalsa Kan­warpal Singh, speak­ing to WSN said, “In­di­a’s Na­tional In­ves­ti­ga­tion Agency is act­ing ex­tra­ju­di­cially to ha­rass every­one who is a dis­senter to the pre­sent gov­ern­ment. The mis­use of UAPA must stop.”

South African poet and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ben­jamin Moloise, when be­ing sent to the gal­lows by the apartheid regime said,

I am proud to be what I am,
of what I did with my life.

Let my blood fall as rain over my land.

From my cell, I go to free­dom.
My soli­tary life I give to free­dom.

Fa­ther Stan Swamy seems to be smil­ingly re­peat­ing this to the In­dian apartheid regime.

In sep­a­rate tweets, Ea­mon Gilmore, the Eu­ro­pean Union’s Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Hu­man Rights, and Mary Lawlor, a United Na­tions Spe­cial Rap­por­teur for hu­man rights de­fend­ers have shared their feel­ing of sad­ness and dev­as­ta­tion at the death of Fa­ther Stan Swamy.

Raise your voice against in­jus­tice against any­one, any­where. If we do not raise our voices now, to­mor­row it could be our turn.

We have no choice!

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