Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Blatant omission of the Amnesty International report

Amnesty international releases annual reports detailing the human rights situation in most countries across the globe. For most part, the report is a scathing indictment of the practices followed by the various law and order functionaries and other groups. The report details the human rights abuses in various parts of India as well as detailed in its India report here.
Chindu has been an outspoken critic of the human rights abuses that happen in NDA ruled states and often quotes the Amnesty report to buttress its points but has chosen to remain silent.
This current report focuses on the issues like the bomb blasts,
Hundreds of people were killed in bomb attacks, including 66 passengers on a train to Pakistan in February, 42 in Hyderabad in August and 10 in Uttar Pradesh in November.

Issues like the Nandigram incidents,
In Nandigram in West Bengal, private militias owing allegiance to the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist – CPI-M) and armed supporters of local organizations battled for territorial control. The authorities failed to persuade farmers protesting against the decision to relocate an industrial project to the area to lift their blockades. A range of human rights violations followed, including unlawful killings, forced evictions, excessive police force, violence against women, denial of access and information to the media and human rights organizations, harassment of human rights defenders and denial of justice to victims of violations.

There were statistics detailed including the headcount of people affected,
In January and March, at least 25 people, mostly local residents, were killed in Nandigram, more than 100 were injured and at least 20 women were sexually assaulted by private militias allied to the ruling CPI-M.

The release of the report has been widely covered by the leading media including Hindustan Times, Times Of India, India Daily etc. However Chindu using its journalistic principles has decided to turn a blind eye to the report. This is another clear example of how Chindu uses human rights and civil liberties as slogans and selectively refers to certain human rights incidents to serve its narrow left leaning principles.

No comments: