Civil society bodies pledge to put up unified fight

By: Mohit Behl

Dharamsala: A workshop on ‘Human rights & the law’ organised by Human Rights Law Network, (HRLN) concluded on Saturday at Jagori Grameen’s convention centre here. All participants including human rights activists, representatives of  NGOs, RTI activists, and media persons expressed their views on various legal and technical issues related to human rights issues during the workshop.

The participants included KK Roy, Colin Gonsalves, Jitender Rana, Nitika Sharma from HRLN; Guman Singh, Kulbhushan Upmanyu from Himalayan Niti Abhiyan; Lavan Thakur, Vinod Bhavuk from RTI Bureau, Mandi; Narender Paul, Sunil Kumar from CORD; Abha Bhaiya from Jagori. Dr Rajesh Sood, Ashwani Awasthy, Narinder Parmar, advocate Dhruv Shaunak and Tenzin.

Some of the topics covered included displacement due to power projects, SEZ problem in Himachal, disability rights, disaster management, Tibet issue, forest rights & land acquisitions, environment issues and how to file PIL, RTI applications, etc. Most interesting part of the workshop was that there was a very healthy discussion on all the topics with excellent suggestions and ideas coming up from people of all walks of life, different backgrounds & different organisations.

One more interest building factor of the workshop was participants sharing real experiences of outcomes of standing up for their rights & facing the wrath of administration and the police, braving all odds, pressures from the mighty ones but getting the justice delivered at all costs.
At the end of the day, all the participants formed a consensus on building a district-wise network in Himachal consisting of representatives from NGOs, RTI organisations, lawyers & people from media fraternity where they can voice their concern against the violation of human rights & make proper and wise use of the law to counter such violations.