[India's trade unionists seem to care a damn about the commemorative events marking 10 years of the Gujarat Genocide of 2002 ? As a result events planned in Gujarat or elsewhere for the 28th are being annuled or preponed see an announcement below]
Change of Date Due to All Trade Union Bandh on February 28, 2012
MEMORIAL PREPONED TO FEBRUARY 27, 2012
Gulberg Society, Ahmedabad
February 27, 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 27, 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 27, 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 27, 2012. The Memorial is part of week long observances Insaf ke Dagar Pe, also detailed below.
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 with Accomopanying Texts in English, Gujarati and Hindustani. The Text will include a Manifesto of Gulberg, Life for the Displaced living on the Peripheries of Cities, Track of the Trial and Media Monitrs.
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
Saira Sandhi Rupa Modi Tanvir Jafri Teesta Setalvad Cedric Prakash Javed Anand Shiv Vishwanathan Ram Rahman Binita Desai Rajendra Prasad
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