PHA-Exch> India: Prisoner of Conscience Dr Binayak Sen completes two years in jail

[Kamayani]

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Press release Team
Immediate release: 23 April 2009

India: Prisoner of Conscience Dr Binayak Sen completes two years in jail

The Indian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Dr.
Binayak Sen, a human rights defender and pioneer of health care to
marginalized communities, who has languished in jail for two years, Amnesty
International said today.

Dr Sen, 59, was arrested on 14 May 2007, when he was charged with
facilitating armed Maoist violence and put on trial; this resumes tomorrow,
24 April 2009. If convicted, he could face a life term in jail.

Amnesty International believes that the charges and evidence against Dr. Sen
are baseless and politically motivated.

“Dr. Sen’s prolonged imprisonment is a glaring example of how the Indian
authorities misuse security legislation to target activists,” said Madhu
Malhotra, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Programme.
“These are open to abuse as they contain vague and sweeping definitions of
‘unlawful activities’. Under no circumstances should work that peacefully
defends human rights be termed an ‘unlawful activity’”, she said.

The security legislation enables the authorities to arbitrarily arrest and
detain individuals, as well as seek their punishment, on unclear grounds.
This is in violation of the principle of certainty in criminal law,
reflected in Article 15 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, to which Indiais a state party.

Amnesty International is also gravely concerned that Dr Sen was detained
without proper charges for seven months, denied bail, and kept in solitary
confinement. Many of the charges against him stem from laws that contravene
international standards. Repeated delays in the conduct of his trial have
also heightened doubts about its fairness.

Amnesty International understands that Dr. Sen’s earlier meetings with
jailed Maoist leaders (on which some of the accusations against him are
based) were limited to his legitimate professional work as a doctor and a
human rights defender and facilitated by the jail authorities.

Prior to his arrest, Dr. Sen had criticized the state authorities for
enacting special security legislation - the Chhattisgarh Special Public
Safety Act, 2005 (CSPSA). He had also highlighted unlawful killings of
adivasis (indigenous people) by the police and by Salwa Judum, a private
militia widely held to be sponsored by the state authorities to fight the
guerrillas of the CPI (Maoist). The state authorities have so far failed to
conduct effective and impartial investigations into these unlawful killings.


Dr Sen’s wife, Dr. Ilina Sen, who regularly visits him at the jail, told
Amnesty International that Dr. Sen suffers from recurrent chest pain and
needs specialist medical care, but the state government has denied Dr. Sen’s
plea for transfer to a hospital outside Raipur.

Amnesty International calls on the Indian authorities to:

release Dr. Sen immediately and unconditionally;
ensure Dr. Sen has access to medical treatment of his choice while he
remains in custody;
ensure fair and prompt trials for at least 50 prisoners in Chhattisgarh who
face charges under various security legislations;
take effective measures to respect and protect the rights of human rights
defenders, in line with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. This
includes ensuring that they are not arbitrarily detained, hindered or
otherwise harassed because of the legitimate exercise of their human rights.


 Visit http://www.binayaksen.net/
-- 
We have to start looking at the world through women’s eyes’ how are human
rights, peace and development defined from the perspective of the lives of
women? It’s also important to look at the world from the perspective of the
lives of diverse women, because there is not single women’s view, any more
than there is a single men’s view.”
-- Charlotte Bunch

Adv  Kamayani Bali Mahabal
Mobile-00919820749204
skype:lawyercumactivist

www.binayaksen.net
www.phm-india.org
www.phmovement.org
www.ifhhro.org
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