The Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram has been visiting Raipur. When Binayak's wife Ilina paid him a visit recently, he was sympathetic to her plight but pleaded inability to do anything to hasten his release.
As might be expected, he has come out strongly against maoist extremism and violence. "Squarely, boldly, firmly and decisively we have to deal with Left wing extremism. There will be some damage to civilian lives during confrontation, but we have to minimize it," the minister is reported to have declared to journalists.
So is Dr. Binayak Sen one of those "civilian lives" that have been damaged in the confrontation? What about his family? His patients? The lives he could have saved?
And how does Chidambaram wish to minimize the damage in their case? Or has he written Binayak off in the cost-benefit calculation in the so-called "war against terror"? Is his continued imprisonment bringing greater security to the people of Chhattisgarh?
If the government wants to demonstrate that they can be tough on terrorists and still be fair in their administration of justice, it needs to release Binayak - and all other undertrials against whom a case has not been established - on bail. The trial has so far failed to establish his guilt, and so under normal principles of justice, he must be presumed to be innocent. What reason is there to suspend this presumption of innocence in his case?
Without this demonstration of justice, there is no assurance that the system can be anything other than what it is already widely perceived to be: corrupt and unfair.
Laws against terrorism that harm the innocent undermine the legitimacy of the state by allowing it to act with impunity. How does this make the non-terrorist population more secure? That is why they need proper safeguards against state abuse. Where are these safeguards in my brother's case?
It is in this spirit that Vinay Sitapati again argues:
Binayak Sen is only one of 192 charged under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act; the Act only one of a slew of Indian anti-terror laws; and Naxalism only one (though perhaps most dangerous) of India’s million mutinies. But Binayak Sen symbolises a larger point: tough times may need tough responses, but require tough monitoring as well. Just as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo battered America’s sense of self more than Osama Bin Laden ever thought conceivable, misusing laws destroys the very ideals for which we battle against Al Qaeda and Naxalites. Institutional acquiescence of the “war on terror” did America great disservice. Will we too tell ourselves a generation later: that when faced with a good fight, we fought it the wrong way. And lost."
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