<p>A law-abiding citizen, <a href="http://www.ibnlive.com/news/doctor-who-treated-a-naxalite-is-now-behind-bars/46880-3.html"><strong><font color="#4088b8">Dr. Binayak Sen</font></strong></a> who was actively involved in community service in Chattisgarh has been put behind bars. His crime? He investigated a few fake encounter cases in the Naxalite hit districts of the state. Sen used to teach community health workers, ways of treating common ailments like, malaria and cholera. He was an integral part of backward Chhatisgarh’s rural health care scheme</p>
<p>A 750-page charge sheet was slapped on him in which he was charged with having links with Naxalites. Prima facie, the charge sheet does not have enough incriminating evidence against Sen. It simply insists on implicating Dr Sen for having visited a Maoist functionary, Narayan Sanyal in the Raipur jail 33 times. Dr Sen says he was treating the ailing 70-year old prisoner Sanyal. But the government thinks otherwise. Sen has been charged with “criminal offense” for visiting the ailing terrorist in the jail. </p>
<p>Again in Chattisgarh, Government supposedly asked <a href="http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/6875"><strong><font color="#4088b8">Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)</font></strong></a>, Nobel Peace prize winning humanitarian agency to stop its medical aid in the conflict hit rural villages of Chhattisgarh, a central tribal state of India. There are allegations that MSF is providing health services to Maoists rebels. MSF (Doctors without borders) is an international, medical, humanitarian aid movement. The organization provides urgently needed medical assistance without discrimination. By stopping the MSF to work in the remote villages affected by the Maoist insurgency, the government denies the right to life to thousands of indigenous people. The government itself is not present in these villages and is not providing any medical health services. </p>
<p>Hundreds of people living with HIV/<a href="http://www.medindia.net/news/Manipur-Faces-Acute-Drug-Shortage-Following-Rebel-Threat-25077-1.htm"><strong><font color="#4088b8">AIDS</font></strong></a> in Manipur are hit by an acute drug shortage after pharmaceutical companies stopped medicine supplies following a huge extortion demand by separatists. Stocks of life saving drugs in government <a href="http://www.medindia.net/news/Manipur-Faces-Acute-Drug-Shortage-Following-Rebel-Threat-25077-1.htm"><strong><font color="#4088b8">hospitals</font></strong></a> and chemists have dried up after leading <a href="http://www.medindia.net/news/Manipur-Faces-Acute-Drug-Shortage-Following-Rebel-Threat-25077-1.htm"><strong><font color="#4088b8">pharmaceutical</font></strong></a> firms like Glaxo, Cipla and Ranbaxy stopped supplying drugs to Manipur after a separatist group demanded Rs.1 million in extortion money from the pharmaceutical association. </p>
<p>There was a time when provide relief to the sick was considered an act demonstrating one’s very humanity but as the above cases prove, denial of medical treatment to the sick and the critically ill is now just one more extortion tool and this seems to be an instance where the government and the insurgents have found a common weapon to beat the most defenseless and the vulnerable with. </p>
<p>This is a bit of news which can leave one at a loss for words. There are no words to condemn the act of extortionist groups in Manipur for whom extortion demands are a way of life. Masquerading as ideology driven movements, most of Manipur’s underground are nothing but bunches of lumpen goons living of extortion though that they should resort to a tactic that leaves their own people totally defenseless against sickness and especially HIV & AIDS must be a new low for them even by their own abysmal standards. </p>
<p>No one expected any ethics from underground groups. But one expected better from an elected government. By stopping MSF or even restricting their movements in an area where the state itself has been unable to provide for its citizens when nothing else is available as an option, it is really denying health care to the huge tribal population that lives in districts like Dantewada. I am sure that the government is not saying that each and every one in that area is a Naxalite accused of a crime. And for those who are actually Naxalites, no law of the country in force a moment says that those believing in Naxalite ideology should be left to die without medical aid or treatment. Both democratic governments in Chattisgarh or gun toting militants in Manipur, by using denial of medical aid to the sick, they have set new norms in abhorrent behavior against humanity. </p>