Memorial to a Genocide (Gujarat 2002 - 2012) Nationwide Call to participate

Citizens for Justice and Peace, along with victim-survivors, and social activists from Gujarat are planning a week-long Memorial to the 2202 genocide in Gujarat, 10 years later. Those of you who could join in Gujarat are most welcome to do so. For those who cannot, the suggestion is that on February 28, you organise your own programmes in your own towns and cities and get connected with the Live Memorial in Ahmedabad. Please spread the word around.

Javed Anand

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Teesta Setalvad
Date: Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 5:42 PM
Subject: Memorial to a Genocide (Gujarat 2002 - 2012) Nationwide Call to participate


Gulberg Society, Ahmedabad

February 28, 2012

2 p.m. onwards

How do we commemorate such a cataclysmic series of violences, lives torn asunder, narratives of depth and despair, callousness and courage, struggle and hope?

Together we hope. As we near the Ten year mark of the genocidal carnage in Gujarat we appeal and call to all of you to join us on February 28, 2012 in the Live Memorial at Gulberg Society, Ahmedabad, physically or through countrywide protests and memorials all over India. From 2 p.m. onwards that day we shall be observing the Memorial. Through Reminiscences and recordings, Panels and Exhibits, Music and Words, Acknowledgements and Tears.

Nationwide Resonance A Call and Appeal

When we do so in Ahmedabad we hope that each and all of you in different parts of India will share the experience and in turn interact with us through a technologically linked endeavour. We shall be linking the Memorial through live web cam links and internet connections so that it can be viewed and shared at a few minutes gap in faraway Kerala, Kashmir, Manipur, Lucknow, Delhi, Mhow, Faizabad, Ayodhya, Malegaon, Mumbai.

Requirements:

All we ask is that you arrange Protest and Commemorations to mark this date. To enable an interactive sharing of the Live Memorial on February 28, 2012 at Gulberg Society, Communalism Combat and Citizens for Justice and Peace are in collective action, with individuals and groups, organizing a live relay of the Memorial by live Internet link. We request that each and all of you groups organize a Live Screening of this Memorial in different cities/locations all over the country on large projector screens. Participating in this memorial you organise your own special protest commemorations in every location. We shall also make arrangements that over three thousand survivors and activists at Gulberg will also view over the evening the protests and commemorations that you are observing in different locales.. Such an Interactive Live Memorial will be unique. It will ensure that there is a nationwide resonance to the Ten Year Commemoration of the Genocide.

The Ten Year Live Memorial will be up linked for permanent viewing on the Internet after February 28, 2012. The Memorial is part of week long observances Insaf ke Dagar Pe, also detailed below. The Citizens for Justice and Peace will also be organizing a Seminar Workshop on Lessons from Gujarat (Criminal Justice System and Accountability) at the Gujarat Vidyapeeth on February 27, 2012.

Memorial to a Genocide Gujarat 2002 – 2012

Manifesto of the Gulberg Society, Ahmedabad

Over the past ten years, as protests, testimonials and meet have observed the traumatic events in Gujarat in 2002, a traveling memorial to all the carnage sites was also attempted by us in 2008. Instead of peacefully allowing victim survivors to pay respects at the Coach S-6 in Godhra we were, one hundred of us, arrested and forced to bide time at the police station. The site of the burnt remains of the S-6 Sabarmti Express Coach has sadly become the sole mourning preserve of the government and organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Reconciliation and Reparation appear a faraway dream when collective memorials are thus forbidden. It took time and energy to get ourselves released from the police station before we could reach the sites of brute violence at Pandharwada village, Panchmahals and then Ode, Anand before traversing Sardarpura. At each site, locales of the violence and sites where dear and near ones were unceremoniously dumped, were remembered. The next day when we walked in silence towards Teesra Kuan in the Maidan at Naroda Patiya, where Missing Persons Bodies had been dumped in 2002 and have not been recovered to date. A hostile neighbourhood and an edgy police barely allowed us to light candles there.

Given this painful past, we gave decided to collectively commemorate the 300 traumatic bouts of violence over 19 districts in a Live Memorial at Gulberg Society Ahmedabad. We earnestly appeal to each and all of you to participate in this endeavour.

Digital Installations and Exhibits in English, Gujarati and Hindustani

TIMELINE in content and chronology tracking the rehabilitation and justice process with a PHOTO RETRO of the lives of internally displaced persons in various transit camps

STATISTICS of a human tragedy, an installation

MISSING PERSONS remembered through a ritualistic Wailing Wall

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS to Saviours of Lives, Activists, Jurists, Photographers and Media People in wall panels

SURVIVOR’S LEAD US THROUGH THE MEMORIAL AND SPEAK

HIDDEN NARRATIVES brute targeting of women and children

DIGITALISED MEMORIALS News Coverage and Parzaania on large side screens

MUSIC IN MEMORIUM

Shubha Mudgal (vocal), Aneesh Pradhan (tabla), Sudhir Nayak (harmonium)

We shall be digitalizing the exhibit installations with text and photos and sending it out on CD to all of you to enable you to reproduce these in different cities. Do revert back to us on the nature of the protests and commemorations that you plan. Already, on youtube you may view Survivor lines link on YouTube http://youtu.be/xcomQuyEHtM

Rupa Modi, Tanvir Jafri, Salim and Saira Sandhi, Teesta Setalvad, Javed Anand, Shiv Vishwanathan, Binita Desai, Ram Rahman, Rajendra Prasad


Insaf Ki Dagar Pe

2002 Carnage is completing its 10 years in this Feb.2012. Issue of Justice to the victims is not tackled fully. Livelihood, education, housing rights is some of the pending tasks. Security and dignity are still a far cry. In the name of development, state govt. is playing with the lives of the poor. Globalization and market forces are looting these sections of the society everywhere. Especially marginalized minority is suffering in many ways.

To commemorate 10nth anniversary of the carnage and to rekindle the light of hope we -civil society organizations of Gujarat are joining our hands. Two meetings of these organizations have already held and thought about such efforts.

Again we held a meeting at PRASHANT on 10-1-2012, Tuesday at 4.30 to plan the programme and decided some of the events tentatively, yet with certain approach to make the society to remind and re-organize to fulfill the uncompleted tasks of Justice and Peace. Insaf Ki Dagar Pe is a title unanimously chosen for the events.

List of the events:

1. 27-2-2012: (Half day event) A Seminar on ‘Status of Justice of the carnage victims’. Organized by -CJP [Center for Justice and Peace].

2. 28-2-2012: Exhibition and Sufi Sangeet at Gulberg Society. [Organized by CJP].

3. 29-2-2012: A Seminar on Internally Displaced people in which not only 2002 victims but victims of violence, development-projects of Gujarat and other regions of the country[Like Kashmir, Kandhmahal, and N.E etc.] will share their experiences and a panel discussion to analyze the situation is planned tentatively.

4. 1-3-2012: Sharing by the representatives of Peoples Movements [like Mahuva, Mundra, Mithi Virdi, and Tribals of South Gujarat etc.] Against Unjust Development in Gujarat; and panel discussion on the issue.

5. 2-3-2012: A National Multilingual ‘Kavi Sammelan’ on the issues of commemoration carnage and against unjust development.

6. 3-3-2012: ‘Bich Shaher’ -a play by Delhi-based theatre-group ‘Allaripu’ -based on carnage-2002, written and directed by Ms. Tripurari Sharma.

7. 4-3-2012: One-act plays on the issue of unjust development, organized by local theatre groups of youth.

8. 5,6,7-3-2012: A Documentary film festival on the issues of Human Rights. [Like -Jashn-E-Azadi by Sanjay Kak, Saffron Encounters by Subhradeep Chakravarthi. etc.]

A Call to all.....

These are some of the ‘decided events’. But we are always open to add in this list. If you suggest something relevant and effective to achieve our goal to make the society aware and active on the path of justice; you are always welcome. Add your input to make more effective events like “Seminar on Internally Displace People” or “Peoples Movements Against Unjust Development”... by suggesting the unsung struggle and people or any other ways. You can also organize similar event at you own place under this title during same period by just informing us.

We will have to join our hands and hearts to give larger perspective to the issues of Human Rights, Development, Justice and Peace. In the civil society of Gujarat we will have to keep the fire on and on until the flame of this fire does not the lit the lamp of Compassion, Understanding, Sympathy and Remorse in the hearts of the people of Gujarat and the world.

So please, give your approval/suggestions for this big event. We are waiting for that till 25-1-2012. Immediately after 25th Jan-2012, we will have to rush to arrange all the events. Your co-operation is requested to mobilize the audience, resources and venues. You can fund partly/fully any of these events.

For more details and co-operation please contact ‘DARSHAN’.

We have to create the publicity material like Posters, Banners, Pamphlets, and Invitations etc. You can contribute or take responsibility for any of these.

Organizations participated in the meeting of 10th January-2012:

‘DARSHAN’, PRASHANT, SAFAR, DARPANA, ST.XSSS. JAN VIKAS, PARVAZ, CJP, LOKNAD, AISF, IRC, INSAF.