RIGHTS-INDIA: Physical Attacks, Abuse Plague Activists

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lalitha Sridhar

CHENNAI, India, Aug 5 2003 (IPS) - It was nine months ago that Aroyga Mary Lucia, a lawyer and ‘dalit’ (low-caste Hindu) activist, was assaulted by goons in her own house as she was preparing to take a 19-year-old rape victim for medical test.

But Lucy, as she prefers to be called, still vividly remembers the trauma of being was stripped of her ‘sari’, the single length of unstitched cloth traditionally worn by women in South Asia, abused with obscene language, pushed around and pummelled. Even the driver of the autorickshaw that she had hired was not spared.

“I was mentally and physically paralysed. My skin still crawls when I think about it,” she says of the assault at her home in Avalurpet village, Villupuram district of southern Tamil Nadu state.

Entreaties to the police were useless and the officer who responded to her call openly promised her attackers that he would take care of her, saying ‘she is always a troublemaker’.

The ultimate irony was that Lucy had a non-bailable police charge foisted on her for ”making threats” under laws designed to protect ‘dalits’ – the very laws she had relied on to help rape victims who came to her.

It took sit-ins, demonstrations and support from a host of non-government organisations (NGOs) to fix the charge sheet. Death threats, obscene phone calls and public notices pasted on walls accusing Lucy of running a brothel continued.

Speaking in Chennai recently at a meeting of non-government groups called to discuss escalating violence against activists and social workers, she said: “Barring a few sincere officers, the police are nothing but brokers. They extract bribes from both sides – the victim, to proceed with the case and the accused, to stall matters. The side that pays more succeeds.”

In May, V Santhanam, president of the Federation of Civic and Welfare Associations of Pallavaram, a suburb, was hacked by four men in broad daylight. Bleeding profusely from wounds in his legs, shoulders and head, he barely survived.

“Indians have a great ability to look the other way. The maximum they will attempt is armchair criticism. People don’t know their rights and are afraid to ask,” Santhanam said. ”I asked the large numbers of people who came to visit me after the attack where they were when I needed support. >From a councillor to the prime minister, petitions pile up with no action taken.”

Santhanam believes that the attackers could have been ‘upset’ by any of his activist work: seeking accountability for funds for the desilting of an ‘eri’ (tank) in a village, trying to get compensation for a child who died after falling into an open septic tank, protesting against a petroleum dealer selling liquified petroleum cylinders hazardously on the road, exposing corruption at a crematorium.

“Where there are vested interests, there is danger. NGO workers cannot operate in a vacuum,” he explained.

Particularly vulnerable are NGOs working for the rights of commercial sex workers in the field of HIV/AIDS.

In 2002, Sangram, which has been training ‘peer educators’ to advocate condom use by female sex workers and had succeeded in devising the distribution of 350,000 condoms every month in 12 districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka, had to shut down its efforts partially because of violence, threats and abuse.

Said founder-activist Meena Saraswathi Seshu: “Actually, verbal abuse is a great method of inflicting violence. It is difficult to prove and is also used with caste, class and gender arrogance. It hurts like hell. Also, verbal abuse almost always preludes a stronger physical act.”

Dr Manorama, founder of the Chennai-based Community Health Education Society that reaches some 7,000 female sex workers in Chennai, says the issuance of identity cards has helped protect peer educators. But ”it is the lower-level police staff that need to be sensitised – we often see recourse from higher authorities who are far more proactive,” he said.

“That we must fear to speak says a great many things. There is a deep disillusionment with the processes of justice. The relevant checks in the system become instruments of harassment,” mused Seetha Ravi, editor of the leading Tamil magazine ‘Kalki’. ”Many times, in the end, it only boils down to the media bringing about justice by highlighting the issue.”

But then, Santhanam said: “The media only sensationalises. When 28 photos are splashed of 14 wounds, the real issue gets obliterated.”

D Nagasaila of the Chennai branch of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties said, “The problems of assault and harassment faced by NGO workers is largely like that of marginalised peoples – there is very little awareness about their reality.”

There are three ways in which activists are harassed: by direct physical assault, by foisting false cases and through oppressive legislation. Said Nagasaila, “It’s easy to target NGO workers and say, oh they are naxalites (left extremists), communists, terrorists, ‘dalits’ or missionaries.”

Activists say they have to monitor state machinery every step of the way when seeking justice in attacks against them. Through the investigation, prosecution and deposition, witnesses have to be protected, appeals made, higher authorities approached, and the lobbying kept constant.

For the last decade, Sahodaran (brother), an NGO that runs an outreach programme and drop-in centre for men who have sex with men in Chennai, has had its staff humiliated publicly, sniggered at, hauled to the police station, locked up and mugged – often by the police themselves.

The NGO has 10 full-time and 20 part-time field workers working with 20 to 25 male sex workers each week. Said Sahodaran founder-director Sunil Menon, “We are surely the most vulnerable.”

”The police know our haunts – some suburban rail routes at particular times, bars and beaches. Also, we are easy to identify. They wait for us. I have a huge volume of documented evidence that records some sort of violence that happens to us everyday,” he added.

”We try to talk our way out – say we are poor or something,” said Menon. ”Or else we simply give them what they want (bribes, sexual favours). The local thugs who target us are worse – far more vicious. There is no point in getting caught and beaten. We simply give them whatever they want. Anyway, we don’t have a choice.”