Source:
The GuardianQuash terror charges, 22 laureates urge Indian PM
Human rights activist gave medicine to rebels in jail
Randeep Ramesh in Delhi
Tuesday May 13 2008
Twenty two Nobel laureates have called for the release of India's best-known "barefoot doctor" from jail, where he has languished for almost a year on terrorism charges. If convicted he faces the death sentence.
Binayak Sen, 58, an award-winning paediatrician who shot to prominence a quarter of a century ago by treating tribal communities for free in the forest region of India's Chhattisgarh state, was arrested last May charged with carrying notes from a member of a Naxalite Maoist rebel movement, who was his patient in prison.
Sen, a human-rights activist who frequently visited jails to treat inmates, protests his innocence. He is now accused of being a member of a terrorist organisation and conspiring to wage war against the government. He has been denied bail and his trial began last month ...
Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/13/india.humanrights
Nobel laureates appeal for jailed doctor
Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, May 12: Twenty-two Nobel Laureates .. have written to the President, the Prime Minister and the chief minister of Chhattisgarh with the request that Dr Binayak Sen, in Raipur jail for the past one year, be allowed to visit Washington to receive the 2008 Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. The ceremony is scheduled to be held on 29 May .... This is the first time that the award is being given to an Indian citizen by the Global Health Council (GHC), the world’s largest alliance of public health organisations and professionals.
The Nobel Laureates have expressed concern over the fact that Dr Sen "appears to be incarcerated solely for peacefully exercising his fundamental human rights, in contravention of Articles 19 (freedom of opinion and expression) and 22 (freedom of association) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which India is a state party" ...
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=2&theme=&usrsess=1&id=203590 Nobel laureates seek release of Binayak Sen
... The signatories to the appeal are: Peter Agre, Kenneth J. Arrow, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Robert Curl, Johann Deisenhofer, Paul Greengard, Roger Guillemin, Francois Jacob, Eric Kandel, Harald Kroto, Finn Kydland, Yuan T. Lee, Craig C. Mello, Johan Polanyi, Richard J. Roberts, F. Sherwood Rowland, Jens C.Skou, Phillip A. Sharp, Charles Townes, Harold Varmus, John E. Walker and Torsten Wiesel ...
http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/13/stories/2008051353981000.htm