OtherIndia.org

Dr. Sen’s civil rights activism dates from 1984, when he joined the team from the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) that enquired into an incident of firing on textile workers at Rajnandgaon, a small town which was then part of the state of Madhya Pradesh. Over the years, Dr. Sen became one of the most active, and vocal, critics of the state and its policy of siding with corporate interests over those of its poorest inhabitants, the indigenous people of Chhattisgarh.

By the time of his arrest and incarceration, Sen was the National Vice President of the PUCL, an office he still holds, and has since been reelected to a second term as General Secretary of the Chhattisgarh unit of the PUCL. In this role, Dr. Sen has led some of the most important fact-finding teams that have investigated different aspects of the state’s engagement with its impoverished masses. The PUCL study on starvation deaths in Chhattisgarh in 2004 is considered a landmark report that eventually forced the government to institute urgent measures to make rice grain available for the tribal populations at reduced prices.

Salwa Judum, a government sponsored militia

The suppression of the basic rights of marginalized populations in the area, and their loss of access to natural resources, has led to an upsurge in Naxalites, leftist guerilla groups, organizing the adivasis in the area to push their demands for protection of rights. Instead of treating the Naxalites and their local support as a political expression of dissatisfaction with gross iniquities, the state has spent the last 20-plus years trying to crush the movement by brute force, resulting in tremendous human rights violations. Dr. Sen has been at the forefront of critiquing the government’s response and pointing out that the state’s actions are leading to even more hardships for the already impoverished tribal populations of the State.

In 2005, the state government launched an armed militia movement, called the Salwa Judum, to counter the leftist insurgency. This led to a spiraling increase in the level of violence in these areas, with numerous instances of burning of entire villages, arson, looting, rapes and murders. Entire villages were emptied out of their inhabitants, as the villagers either ran away to the security of the forests, or were sent off to government camps. Government documents list that 644 villages, accounting for over 300,000 people are “abandoned.” Of these, over a 100,000 people sought shelter in the neighboring states.

Dr. Sen was amongst the first to raise the alarm at the unfolding situation in South Chhattisgarh. He organized and participated in the first independent fact-finding team composed for 14-members from 5 organizations that visited these remote areas, interviewed villagers, officials and Naxalites, and compiled facts and figures. In April 2006, they brought out the report “When a State Makes War on its Own People” documenting large-scale human rights violations being committed by the state security forces, and the armed militia movement of Salwa Judum. Since then, numerous human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, the Asian Center for Human Rights, and the Indian National Human Rights Commission have validated the findings of this report. It is widely believed that it is Dr. Sen’s opposition to the government’s Salwa Judum policy that led to his arrest. A report submitted by Ms. Hina Jilani, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the situation of human rights defenders, in March 2008 notes: “Concern was expressed that the arrest and detention of Dr. Sen were directly related to his activities in defending the rights of the adivasi communities in Chhattisgarh state and his open criticism of the Salwa Judum.”