BENARASI DEATH NET

A report on suicide and malnutrition among weavers in Varanasi was prepared by the People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights in collaboration with ActionAid, an international anti-poverty agency. It said that about 175 weavers fell prey to financial hardships since 2002. The Economic Survey (2009-10) estimates that over 50 per cent weavers’ children are malnourished. There is a high prevalence of TB, particularly multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). The survey also said that while the human development index of India is steadily improving, weavers and their children in Varanasi continue to die either by committing suicide or succumbing to malnutrition.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/sunday-edition/sunday-pioneer/investigation/benarasi-death-net.html

National Consultation on Women Right

Dear Friends,

Greetings from PVCHR/JMN

National Alliance on Testimonial Therapy (NATT) in collaboration with the Dignity: Danish Institute Against Torture is organizing National Consultation for preparing the Alternate Reports to the IV and V Periodic Report for its review by the CEDAW Committee in July 2014. It is a part of a year for Stayagarha for Neo dalit.

http://www.pvchr.net/2012/03/women-folk-school-on-neo-dalit.html 

Therefore, NATT is inviting you to join in this National Consultation at Patna, Bihar on 12th April, and give your specific inputs and any other special concerns to the preparation of the IV and V Alternate Report. 

We are looking forward to highly engaging discussion and enthusiastic inputs from all of you. We will be able to provide Sleeper class Train or Bus fare. The detail of the venue and logistics will be shared shortly. 

• Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women by PVCHRhttp://www.pvchr.net/2013/04/submission-to-un-special-rapporteur-on_22.html
• Submission by PVCHR regarding India for the Universal Periodic Review: State of Impunity http://www.pvchr.net/2011/11/submission-by-pvchr-regarding-india-for.html

Please confirm your esteem presence at email pvchr.india@gmail.com

Thanking You
On the behalf of NATT secretariat 
Prof. Shahina Rizvi, Bindu Singh, Shruti Nagvanshi, Sandhya Jha, Sakuntala, Sandhya, Shirin Shabana Khan, Chhaya Kumari and Lenin Raghuvanshi


Event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/665217143542453/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

Fighting caste discrimination

http://www.informed-giving.org/story_details.php?id=Mjgz

Caste is one of India’s most enduring institutions and still retains its hold on Indian society. For those not fortunate to be born in the higher echelons of the caste hierarchy, life can be difficult indeed. Despite government efforts, caste discrimination is still rife, and low-caste Indians have to bear the brunt of poverty, illiteracy and violence. Lenin Raghuvanshi is in the forefront of the fight against caste discrimination, to ensure a just and equal society.

Raghuvanshi is the founder of the People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), which fights for the rights of marginalized people in several North Indian states, especially in the area around Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.

Raghuvanshi was born in an upper caste family, which he describes as “feudal”. He got a bachelor’s degree in ayurveda, modern medicine and surgery from the State Ayurvedic College in Haridwar. But the social inequities that faced India made him take up the cause of bonded labourers. This is when he noticed that not a single bonded labourer came from the upper caste, and realised that the problem was essentially caste.

In 1996, Raghuvanshi founded PVCHR to fight the caste system. He works to ensure basic rights to vulnerable groups like children, women, Dalits, tribes and minorities. Raghuvanshi and his team works at the grassroots level in Varanasi and around 200 villages in Uttar Pradesh and five other states. PVCHR works to eliminate situations that give rise to the exploitation of vulnerable and marginalized groups, and to start a movement for a people-friendly movement (Jan Mitra Samaj) through an inter-institutional approach.

Raghuvanshi has his task cut out for him since the lot of Dalits and other oppressed minorities continues to be dismal. “In the past, if anyone from the lower caste breached the unwritten law of caste hierarchy, the person would be beaten up in public. Now the person will be shot dead and the village burnt down and the women raped. A bridegroom riding a horse during his wedding, an enterprising peasant digging a well on his land, if a boy falls in love with a girl – do you kill them? Yet, if they belong to the Dalit caste they are killed. We still say that there is rule of law in India,” he said in his acceptance speech while receiving the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights.

He is also concerned about the plight of women and children in this country. “India is still very much a patriarchal and caste-based society with gender discrimination. The destructive effects of gender discrimination, patriarchal oppression and the semi-feudal society so prevalent in 21st century India are manifest in our 55 million children, employed at times in subhuman conditions,” he says in a newspaper interview.

Raghuvanshi received the Gwangju Human Rights Award in 2007. He was made an Ashoka Fellow in 2001 and was presented the International Human Rights Prize of the City of Weimar (Germany) in 2010. Raghuvanshi once said to a newspaper that caste discrimination is so rife in Bundelkhand that a Dalit has to take off his chappal and hold it in his hand if a person belonging to the Thakur caste approaches. It’s not something that would make us proud.

How can you Help?

Caste approaches is not something that would make us proud 

Contact details of the NGO/Institution

Name :  Lenin Raghuvanshi 

Email ID :  lenin@pvchr.asia

Contact Number :  9935599333

Website :  http://www.pvchr.asia

Address :  PVCHR Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh 

Lenin Raghuvanshi and his surrounding

Real face of police torture in India

Please support to child of lessor god: survivor of police torture

Please support for the medical treatment of Pramod Kumar Yadav 17 years old student of class 12 in Krishak Inter college, Harhuwa,Varanasi,UP in India. On 6th August, 2013 he was picked up by the four policemen from outside school premise. For three days he faced severe police torture in the custody for the confession of crime. Please watch his pathetic story of crime against humanity on the follows YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngU7CStYYXg&feature=youtu.be&a

PVCHR got this information from the newspaper clipping and immediately intervened with the concerned authorities and now admitted the child in Regional hospital Pandit Deen Dayal Hospital, Varanasi.

http://www.testimonialtherapy.org/2013/08/blog-post.html

Therefore if you want to support this child or cause please contribute one day salary or income.

Name of bank: UCO bank Address of Bank Pandeypur, Varanasi, U.P India

Bank account number:

(Foreign contribution): 20110100001170

 (Indian contribution):  20110100000768

Bank account name/beneficiary:   Jan Mitra Nyas

SWIFT No:   UCBAINBB106 (mention please transfer to account no. 1170,

UCO Bank Pandeypur, Varanasi)

IFSC No. :       UCBA0002011

Address of Bank: Pandeypur, Varanasi, U.P India

For more information please visit: www.pvchr.asia

http://issuu.com/elias.schmidt/docs/bruchure_pvchr

Malnutrition death of a girl in Varanasi,India

Documentary made by Rohit Kumar of PVCHR highlights the plight of weaver belong to Muslim community at Rahimpur, Lohta of Varanasi in India.

Attack on Journalist: Crisis of right to expression