The message forwarded below is self-explanatory. Citizens for Justice and Peace, along with victim-survivors, and social activists from Gujarat are planning a week-long Memorial to the 2002 genocide in Gujarat, 10 years later. Those
of you who could join in Gujarat are most welcome to do so. For those who cannot, the suggestion is that on February 28, you organise your own programmes in your own towns and cities and get connected with the Live Memorial in Ahmedabad. Please spread the word around.
*Gulberg Society, Ahmedabad*
*February 28, 2012*
*2 p.m. onwards*
How do we commemorate such a cataclysmic series of violences, lives torn as under, narratives of depth and despair, callousness and courage, struggle and hope?
Together we hope. As we near the Ten year mark of the genocidal carnage in Gujarat we appeal and call to all of you to join us on February 28, 2012 in the Live Memorial at Gulberg Society, Ahmedabad, physically or through countrywide protests and memorials all over India. From 2 p.m. onwards that day we shall be observing the Memorial. Through Reminiscences and recordings, Panels and Exhibits, Music and Words, Acknowledgements and Tears.
*Nationwide Resonance A Call and Appeal*
When we do so in Ahmedabad we hope that each and all of you in different parts of India will share the experience and in turn interact with us through a technologically linked endeavour. We shall be linking the Memorial through live web cam links and internet connections so that it can be viewed and shared at a few minutes gap in faraway Kerala, Kashmir, Manipur, Lucknow, Delhi, Mhow, Faizabad, Ayodhya, Malegaon, Mumbai.
*Requirements:*
All we ask is that you arrange Protest and Commemorations to mark this date. To enable an interactive sharing of the Live Memorial on February 28, 2012 at Gulberg Society, Communalism Combat and Citizens for Justice and Peace are in collective action, with individuals and groups, organizing a live relay of the Memorial by live Internet link. We request that each and all of you groups organize a Live Screening of this Memorial in different cities/locations all over the country on large projector screens. Participating in this memorial you organise your own special protest
commemorations in every location. We shall also make arrangements that over three thousand survivors and activists at Gulberg will also view over the evening the protests and commemorations that you are observing in different
locales.. Such an Interactive Live Memorial will be unique. It will ensure that there is a nationwide resonance to the Ten Year Commemoration of the Genocide.
The Ten Year Live Memorial will be up linked for permanent viewing on the Internet after February 28, 2012. The Memorial is part of week long observances *Insaf ke Dagar Pe, *also detailed below. The Citizens for Justice and Peace will also be organizing a Seminar Workshop on Lessons from Gujarat (Criminal Justice System and Accountability) at the Gujarat Vidyapeeth on February 27, 2012.
*Memorial to a Genocide Gujarat 2002 – 2012*
*Manifesto of the Gulberg Society, Ahmedabad*
Over the past ten years, as protests, testimonials and meet have observed the traumatic events in Gujarat in 2002, a traveling memorial to all the carnage sites was also attempted by us in 2008. Instead of peacefully allowing victim survivors to pay respects at the Coach S-6 in Godhra we were, one hundred of us, arrested and forced to bide time at the police station. The site of the burnt remains of the S-6 Sabarmti Express Coach has sadly become the sole mourning preserve of the government and organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Reconciliation and
Reparation appear a faraway dream when collective memorials are thus forbidden. It took time and energy to get ourselves released from the police station before we could reach the sites of brute violence at Pandharwada village, Panchmahals and then Ode, Anand before traversing Sardarpura. At each site, locales of the violence and sites where dear and near ones were unceremoniously dumped, were remembered. The next day when we walked in silence towards Teesra Kuan in the Maidan at Naroda Patiya, where Missing Persons Bodies had been dumped in 2002 and have not been recovered to date. A hostile neighbourhood and an edgy police barely allowed us to light candles there.
Given this painful past, we gave decided to collectively commemorate the 300 traumatic bouts of violence over 19 districts in a Live Memorial at Gulberg Society Ahmedabad. We earnestly appeal to each and all of you to participate in this endeavour.
Digital Installations and Exhibits in English, Gujarati and Hindustani
TIMELINE in content and chronology tracking the rehabilitation and justice
process with a
PHOTO RETRO of the lives of internally displaced persons in various transit
camps
STATISTICS of a human tragedy, an installation
MISSING PERSONS remembered through a ritualistic Wailing Wall
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS to Saviours of Lives, Activists, Jurists, Photographers and
Media People in wall panels
SURVIVOR’S LEAD US THROUGH THE MEMORIAL AND SPEAK
HIDDEN NARRATIVES brute targeting of women and children
DIGITALISED MEMORIALS News Coverage and Parzaania on large side screens
MUSIC IN MEMORIUM
Shubha Mudgal (vocal), Aneesh Pradhan (tabla), Sudhir Nayak (harmonium)
We shall be digitalizing the exhibit installations with text and photos and sending it out on CD to all of you to enable you to reproduce these in different cities. Do revert back to us on the nature of the protests and commemorations that you plan. Already, on youtube you may view Survivor lines link on YouTube
http://youtu.be/xcomQuyEHtM
Rupa Modi Tanvir Jafri Salim and Saira Sandhi, Teesta Setalvad, Javed Anand
*Javed Anand*
+919870402556
+91-22-26602288
Nirant, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu
Mumbai 400049