Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Arundhati Roy: the dead begin to speak...

At about 3am, on 23 September, within hours of his arrival at the Delhi airport, the US radio-journalist David Barsamian was deported. This dangerous man, who produces independent, free-to-air programmes for public radio, has been visiting India for 40 years, doing such dangerous things as learning Urdu and playing the sitar.

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On his more recent trips to India he has done a series of radio interviews with activists, academics, film-makers, journalists and writers (including me). Barsamian's work has taken him to Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan. He has never been deported from any of these countries. So why does the world's largest democracy feel so threatened by this lone, sitar-playing, Urdu-speaking, left-leaning, radio producer? Here is how Barsamian himself explains it:

(...)

As the civil war grows deadlier, hundreds of villages have been burnt to the ground. Thousands of adivasis have fled as refugees into neighbouring states. Hundreds of thousands are living terrified lives hiding in the forests. Paramilitary forces have laid siege to the forest, making trips to the markets for essential provisions and medicines a nightmare for villagers. Untold numbers of nameless people are in jail, charged with sedition and waging war on the state, with no lawyers to defend them. Very little news comes out of those forests, and there are no body counts. Full story...

Don't miss:
  1. Don’t look away from Kashmir’s mass graves and people’s struggle... 
  2. 2000 bodies discovered in Kashmir in unmarked graves... 
  3. Helpless in Chitapur: the poor vs bulldozers in India... 
  4. Arundhati Roy: Walking with comrades 
  5. Horrific brutality in Kashmir...
  6. When the Indian army resorts to "fake killings" in Kashmir...
  7. Murder in plain sight in Manipur, India...(Graphic photo-essay) 
  8. WikiLeaks accuses India of systematic use of torture in Kashmir...
  9. Arundhati Roy: What have we done to democracy?
  10. India,11-year hunger strike against military violence largely ignored... 

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