Goa has strongly joined the countrywide rising of voices against the trampling of constitutional rights of the people of the country.
A national campaign was launched called “If We Do Rise” to protest against the targeted attacks on the constitutional rights of the people of India. Advocate Dipti Arolkar was the core team representative of the Goa Campaign. The event was held on September 5 with representatives from 34 organisations taking part. This was commendable given the short time given to organize it.
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Adv Dipti Arolkar said the campaign was announced nationally on the 3rd anniversary of the death anniversary of firebrand journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was gunned down in Bangalore.
She said “We announced it late over here but it was important to give various organizations and people a platform. They used Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. We invited people from all walks of life. We had artists, poets and students basically ordinary people voicing their opinion on various issues. There were videos of workers rights. We had poetry recitals on Facebook, two rap songs, one about Mollem and the other about the campaign.” She said the people of Goa contributed to this cause and it was a totally non funded campaign.
Sabina Martins has been involved in fighting for women’s rights said they had a very good meeting on Saturday. She said “We have two pressing issues. We found out that women who had fought against their sexual predators were being repressed by the state machinery. This has happened in two cases. A girl had filed a case against a group of people who had gang-raped her. One of them was a cop. Her house was declared unlivable and marked for breaking down. The authorities alleged the girl tried to prevent eviction by attacking them”. She said another case where the case was not being field was around a man who would assault his wife and not feed the children. He took his 8-year-old daughter and refused to return her home because he wanted to evict the wife from the house.
Sabina Martins said cases were not being registered and the bodies that could address these problems were not functioning because they had no one on the top. She said the systems had collapsed with the State Commission for Women not having a head for a while.
Advocate Anamika Gode an environmental lawyer said the present problem was purely the non-implementation of environmental laws when there is a concept of development. She said “It is very sad that environmental interests are not looked as important for the public. The laws she said were very strict but were just not implemented”. This platform, she said, was a very good idea because it gave everyone an opportunity to voice their concerns.
Perhaps Francesca Cotta who has been involved in the save Mollem campaign put it best when she said “Currently the lack of transparency with regards to the due process followed for the three projects is quite disheartening. The government has against the benefits of the people and that is very discouraging. I was not involved in this campaign but it is very welcome”.
This is but a long battle that has to be fought and this campaign has aided and abetted that cause.
