LRO approaches NIA to move contempt of court against Church leaders who claim Stan Swamy's death as Murder; asks to prove murder point
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The latest editorial of Sathyadeepam, the weekly published by the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese of the Syro-Malabar Church, said the death of rights activist Fr Stan Swamy was a judicial murder. "Fr Stan, who died on Monday after remaining in detention in a Mumbai jail since October 2020 in the Elgar Parishad case, was martyred due to the justice system’s slow pace", said the editorial blatantly.
The editorial of the weekly dated July 14, which was published online on Thursday, also criticises the Church leadership alleging that there was no active effort from its side to either build pressure over the issue or to keep it active in international media. The editorial further says that Fr Stan is the victim of the thought process that being an activist is being an anti-national.
And the controversy began! For those who do not know who Stan Swamy is, he was a key conspirator in the Elgar Parishad Bhima Koregaon violence case. NIA Court had said that Swamy had conspired with Maoists to overthrow the Indian government. Further the article in Sathyadeepam read, “Though he died in a hospital, his death was a custodial murder. It is only technical to say that Stan Swamy died. He was murdered. It was also a judicial murder. The court was extending the decision on his bail plea endlessly, ignoring the elderly man’s appeal to consider the intensity of his Parkinson’s disease, his age and Covid situation and to hear his complaint through video conferencing".
The death of the Jesuit priest was a shame on democratic India, said the article. “When ‘Modi Bharatham’ (India led by Modi) incarcerated the priest who dedicated his life for the tribals of Jharkhand, what really got jailed were the rights of the common man,” it said.“There is an allegation that bodies of the Catholic Church like the KCBC and CBCI did not intervene enough in the case of Fr Stan Swamy,” the editorial said.
To counter, remember that Stan Swamy was arrested in the wake of the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence. And remember that this violence stems from the attempt to show the fall of the Peshwa rule and the coming of the British as triumph of Dalits, through a Christian Western power, against a decadent cruel Brahminical rule. But also remember that it was the Peshwas, who employed Lampadas in their army in large numbers and in a respectful way while it was the British who declared them as 'criminal tribes'. These simple facts should make us understand the real theological fundamentalism that animated the life and work of Stan Swamy.
Where was Stan Swamy protesting against the powerful and mighty in getting justice for Sister Abhaya? Where was Stan Swamy protesting against the reinstatement in India of priests punished for child abuse in the United States? Where was Stan Swamy asking for reservation of 'Dalits' converted to Christianity in Catholic-run institutions, on par with the reservations given to them by Indian state in the government sector? So, what should the Indian government do?
The Legal Rights Observatory has approached the special NIA court to move contempt of court against journalists, politicians, Catholic Church leaders who claimed undertrial Naxal Catholic Father Stan Swami's death as Murder. "Will also request the court to record their statements to prove murder point", the LRO tweeted.
The Indian government should clearly convey to the Catholic fundamentalist organisation, the Catholic Bishops Council of India (CBCI), that any attempt to create a false narrative around Stan Swamy's death would be met with Indian government taking the extraordinary step of announcing Sister Abhaya as the Catholic saint-martyr of India at the hands of a misogynist church. If indeed Rev Stan Swamy was an activist for the marginalised, then the government of India should install a commission in his name to bring out a white paper on the status of the employment of the converted 'Dalits' in institutions, including government-aided institutions run by the Catholic church. Following this, the reservation of converted Dalits in Catholic-run institutions should be implemented strictly.
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