Free barefoot doctor, say Nobel winners

Binayak Sen is a hero for global justice campaigners, and an example to all medical practitioners. Seeing the problem of rural communities cut off from healthcare services, he began offering basic services free of charge, taking on the role of “barefoot doctor” on his trips from village to village.

Unfortunately, Sen has become embroiled in the conflict between capital, ecology and forest communities that is convulsing areas like Chhattisgarh. As investors have sought to capitalize on the rich mineral resources of forest regions, so resistance has developed – sometimes violent – and government sanctioned paramilitary forces have completed a cycle of violence.

Those resisting mining projects, factories and dams have been labeled “Naxalites” and portrayed as public enemy number one of Indian society. Doctor Sen now languishes in prison accused of being a Naxal himself. It seems that treating the poor in Chhattisgarh has become a revolutionary act.

Twenty two Nobel laureates have called for the release of India’s best-known “barefoot doctor” from jail, where he has languished for almost a year on terrorism charges. If convicted he faces the death sentence.

Binayak Sen, 58, an award-winning paediatrician who shot to prominence a quarter of a century ago by treating tribal communities for free in the forest region of India’s Chhattisgarh state, was arrested last May charged with carrying notes from a member of a Naxalite Maoist rebel movement, who was his patient in prison.

Sen, a human-rights activist who frequently visited jails to treat inmates, protests his innocence. He is now accused of being a member of a terrorist organisation and conspiring to wage war against the government. He has been denied bail and his trial began last month.

Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.

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