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Published: April 10th 2007
Henri & Cynthia Tiphagne
The executive director of People's Watch and his wife. This man works incredible hours and has so much energy, he never sits still while at his desk, the centre of the operation Dear Friends
Just Chas here as Ana has unfortunately won the race to get sick first. She has come down with a sinus/throat infection that has knocked her for six, but she has seen a doctor and hopefully all the thousands of drugs we bought before leaving Australia will help.
Anyway, despite Ana being upset that I am writing this by myself, I am so excited that I have to share news with you. I am at my first day of work with People’s Watch of Tamil Nadu. This organization is absolutely amazing! They started in 1995 just trying to monitor torture in police stations. This is because the official stance is that torture in police stations does not happen in India. This is despite people in India never calling the police and fearing arrest as much as death.
Arrests in India are often arbitrary; based on flawed information or on none at all, just because someone is badly dressed, poor, etc. This is especially true of the Dalits, the ‘untouchable’ Hindu caste: the completely powerless, poor and almost innumerable demographic of Indian society. Beatings and psychological abuse are common for almost all arrests, but torture methods
Keith
The good man who looks after our every need, SIM cards, water, bicycles. He has got into trouble because we have not yet eaten the cornflakes they got for our breakfast and rape and custodial deaths are frighteningly common. Almost everyday in fact.
Yet none of it is reported because, simply put, who do you report to? The National Human Rights Committee is petitioned almost daily by People’s Watch but to little avail. One founder, Henri Tiphagne, won an appeal three days ago compensating a wife whose husband was murder by a policeman. He started the action in the 1980s. Not only that, the policeman in question was allowed to continue work until conclusion of the case (i.e. 20 years) and has achieved the rank of superintendent. He has also charged Henri with sexual assault of 60 imaginary girls. Such is life in India.
But this organisation that started monitoring only the enormous state of Tamil Nadu, now monitors 11 states. It has received a three year grant from the EU to try and prove the Indian government liars, simply by documenting incidences of custodial torture, beatings, rape and death.
However, as very few incidences ever get reported, people like me have to go and read newspapers, search the internet, talk to lawyers and bar associations to try and find a tiny percentage of all abuses by police.
Lunch at People's Watch
Always rice, vegatable curry, pickle, curd and poppadoms. But free and always very tasty (although once or twice too spicy for Ana) The exciting news is that while I will be spending most of my time in Madurai in an office trawling the internet, I will also be going on investigative trips through Kerala and Karnataka with Ana. By the end of my two months here I will have helped find figures that will be used as leverage against the government to crack down on its armed forces.
We will be visiting amazing places and contributing to this incredible effort that started off being a well-intentioned group of professional volunteers and now performs legal aid for tsunami victims, has developed a human rights curriculum in schools, has created an access to justice website, created an organization of trained HR monitors called Citizens of Human Rights… If I were talking I would have run out of breath.
Anyway, Ana and I will be in touch again soon regaling you all with stories of living in India but I just had to tell you about these amazing people. To find out more about the organization, go to www.pwtn.org.
Lots of love
Ana and Chas
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dad
non-member comment
welcome
It has been wonderful for Leigh and I to have the newly weds here for a couple of days. Also nice to see the way that they are approaching the new challenges that they face. I am looking forward to following the blog through the year.