CAUGHT BETWEEN EXISTENCE AND DENIAL
A Convention of the Internally Displaced in Gujarat
February 1,2007
Heerak Mahotsav Hall
Gujarat Vidyapeeth
Ahmedabad, Gujarat
Organized by : Aantarik Visthapit Hak Rakshak Samiti
Nearly five years to the carnage in Gujarat in 2002, the wounds refuse to heal. And the battle against collective, national amnesia must continue. It bears repeating that this was a massacre unprecedented in independent India. For it was a massacre openly led by the State against its own citizens, which left over 2000 dead and lakhs displaced, terrorized, and scarred. At a conservative estimate, well over 300 women were sexually brutalized in horrific ways, raped and killed in full public view. This was an attempt to annihilate Hindutva's 'constructed enemy', the Muslim, physically and symbolically, as person, citizen and community. The constitutional promise of India lay in tatters. And so long as justice eludes the survivors, so long as their scars remain unacknowledged, and the State does not come forward with reparations for harms inflicted on scores of innocents, that constitutional promise remains violated.
Even as people's struggle seeking justice for the death of loved ones occasionally enters public consciousness, what has remained hidden from view for five years, is the slow death inflicted upon the scores of internally displaced Muslims – people who fled their homes, villages and towns at the height of the violence in 2002 and have never been able to return.
Some families returned to their original places of residence, many condemned to a life of permanent compromise and second-class citizenship. Numerous cases were reported of Muslims being "allowed" to return only if they withdrew legal cases, stopped using loudspeakers for the azaan, quietly moved out of certain businesses, and basically learned to live with downcast eyes. Many of these compromises were brokered by public officials carrying out the State's mandate of forcing 'normalcy' and creating an illusion of public order.
Many families, however, were never able to return. Today these internally displaced families number approximately 5000. Even as the nation appears to have moved on in these five years, and public imagination is apparently occupied with other pressing matters, these people are still surviving in no-man's land, caught between existence and denial. They live in makeshift colonies hastily constructed by NGOs and community organization, on the outskirts of towns and villages, both literally and symbolically, on the margins of society. Their futures are uncertain.
Thousands of these families are gathering in Ahmedabad on February 1, 2007 to ask for acknowledgment as internally displaced people, to tell the world that they exist and to demand recognition, reparation and rehabilitation from the Indian State.
In the space of a few months( December 2006-January 2007), several colonies that house survivors have formed committees of the internally displaced (Antarik Visthapit Samitis). Each district has formed a coordination committee and a State coordination forum has been formed.
SCHEDULE FOR THE CONVENTION
10.00-1.00 ARRIVAL AND LUNCH
1.00-5.00- CONVENTION
5.00- CLOSING
THE INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE (TOTAL 8-10 ON EACH THEME) WILL DEPOSE (5 MINUTES EACH) ON THE FOLLOWING THEMES IN FRONT OF A PANEL. EACH SESSION WILL BE CONDUCTED BY SENIOR ACTIVISTS:
1. WOMEN AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED
2. ATTEMPT TO RETURN
3. SITES AND SERVICES, INFRASTRUCTURE
4. LIVLIHOOD AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED
5. DISCRIMINATION, EXCLUSION AND ECONOMIC BOYCOTT
6. POLICE INTIMIDATION AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED
7. CHILDREN, YOUTH AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED
EFFORTS TOWARDS RECOGNISING THE STATUS OF INTERNALLY DISPLACED
CHARTER OF DEMANDS
RESPONSE FROM THE PANEL
PANEL MEMBERS
SYEDA HAMEED, MEMBER PLANNING COMMISSION
DILIP PADGAONKAR, MEMBER NATIONAL MINORITY COMMISSION
JUSTICE RA MEHTA
REPRESENTATIVE FROM NHRC
MEDIA REPRESENTATIVE
MAHESH BHATT- TO BE CONFIRMED
To be released at the convention
The Uprooted: Caught between Existence and Denial
A Document on the State of the Internally Displaced in Gujarat
Published by Centre for Social Justice & Anhad
5 years of Gujarat Genocide 2002-2007
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Excerpts from the 'Status Report on Rehabilitation of Victims of Communal Violence in
Gujarat', October 2005
3. The Unseen Existence - A Photo Essay
4. The Complaint on Internal Displacement Submitted to the NCM
5. Reports of the NCM visit to Gujarat
6. Excerpts from the Recommendations made to the Prime Minister
7. Select Media Reports on the Issue
8. The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which provide a framework to articulate demands, accepted by all well meaning nation states including India
9. Survey of the Internally Displaced Colonies
SUGGESTED CONTRIBUTION: RS. 150 / US $ 10
Pages: 124
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