Shafiq Ur Rahman Khan

Fight for the repeal of the fascist Chhattisgarh Public Safety Act and other fascist laws! Fight for dismantling Salwa Judum and the release of all prisoners of conscience! Dr Binayak Sen, a well known medical doctor and paediatrician and human rights activist, will be completing two years in jail on May 14, after being arrested on false and trumped up charges under the draconian laws – Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (2005) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (2004). The continued incarceration of Dr Sen is a grim reminder of the manner in which the Indian state uses fascist laws and repression against those who raise their voices for justice in this country and the struggle which needs to be waged in order to secure human rights. It shows that the Indian state holds the right to conscience o f the Indian people in utter contempt and is willing to torture, incarcerate and even murder people for merely having a different viewpoint from that of the ruling circles...

1. Causes of Child Prostitution 1.1 Poverty: Absolute and Relative The respondents of this study { A Situational Analysis of Child Sex Tourism in India (Kerala and Goa } have voiced poverty as the prime reason for being in the situation that makes them vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Around 70% of the children shared that the situation at home is not conducive for them. The poor economic condition was raised several times by the children interviewed as a reason for running away from home or taking up jobs in hotels or any other establishments. They mentioned that there is no other way to live their life other than earning in some way or other. The case study below illustrates this fact: I know what can happen to me but I can’t help it – I go out only with foreign tourists, since I get good pay from them. They also give me food, clothes and sometimes gifts”. On further questioning, he said, “Tourists are very good – for one night they pay me Rs. 200/-. Sometimes they take ...

On the 152 th anniversary of the First War of Independence of Indian people against colonial rule it is both relevant and necessary to discuss some aspects connected with the struggle. Despite their differences with each other, the common opinion of the parties of ruling classes is that the First War of Independence of 1857 reached its logical conclusion with the transfer of power in 1947 (which they hold to be “independence”.) Here they conveniently ignore that in 1947 the British colonial rulers transferred power to those very classes who had sided with the colonial aggressors in the War of independence of 1857-59 or those the colonial rulers had nurtured after crushing the peoples revolt. In a sense the transfer of power of 1947 was not the completion of the War of Independence of 1857 but the continuing in modified form of the colonial rule victorious in the war of 1857-59. The independence struggle of the people continues even now in today’s concrete conditions. At the root of...

the Naxalbari Uprising , the Spring Thunder Over Indian Horizon was a revolutionary effort to continue the Telengana struggle’s experience in the new situation of 1967. Immediately after the 1947 transfer of power, the Congress government which took over had intensified the onslaught on the Telengana agrarian struggle, while the Tebhaga movement in Bengal had weakened due to the division of Bengal and major struggle areas becoming part of then East Pakistan. The Indian military which was send to crush Nizam’s resistance to the integration of the Hyderabad kingdom to Indian union, was unleashed for a reign of terror against the agrarian movement against feudal oppression led by the Communist Party with land to the tiller slogan. The movement had liberated more than three thousand villages of Telengana region, driving out the feudal lords and their goonda forces, capturing their land and distributing to the landless-poor peasant and agricultural workers. Peasant committees with people’s...

Human Trafficking Defined The United Nations’ definition of human trafficking is “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation". Put into simpler words, human trafficking is modern-day slavery. Through an American’s eyes this concept is more than hard to grasp. Does this really happen? Yes, sadly it does, not in just poor, undeveloped nations but all around the world. The United Nations agency named International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there are 12.3 million people held against their will in servitude at any given point in time. Other organizations estimate the number to be as high as 27 million. The ...