VARANASI: The Peoples' Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), in collaboration with the US-based Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA), is going to organise a two-day peace camp in the city on January 10 and 11.
Talking to reporters on Tuesday, PVCHR president Lenin Raghuvanshi said chairman, National Commission for SC/ST, PL Punia would come to attend a public hearing on dalit harassment at Paradkar Bhawan on January 11 and would also attend the peace camp. Around 20 persons from different communities would take part in the peace camp, he said and added the basic objective of the peace camp was to instil a sense of communal harmony and responsibility in youth. The PVCHR would also hold a discussion on the problems of madarsas on January 5.
Lenin was recently honoured with the 2010 Human Rights Award of the city of Weimar (Germany) on the occasion of the International Human Rights Day on December 10. He said PVCHR was going to begin a three-year programme to minimise police torture of those belonging to minority community from January 1. Four districts viz Varanasi, Aligarh, Moradabad and Meerut had been selected for the programme, he said and added during the period of three years, 1,500 cases of police torture would be documented.
According to him, the PVCHR and Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture victims (RCT) in Copenhagen, Denmark, had undertaken a pilot training project of testimonial therapy on torture victims in the past in Varanasi to investigate the usefulness of the testimonial method. The project involved the development of a community-based testimonial method, training of community workers, development of a manual and a monitoring and evaluation system comparing results of measures before the intervention and two to three months after the intervention. Twenty-three victims gave their testimonies under supervision. In the two first sessions, the testimony was written and in the third session survivors participated in a delivery ceremony. The human rights activists and community workers interviewed the survivors about how they felt after the intervention. After testimonial therapy, almost all survivors expressed satisfaction with the process, especially the public delivery ceremony. Besides Varanasi, the programme of testimonial therapy was also conducted in 50 villages on Sonebhadra, Ambedkar Nagar districts of UP and Nainital of Uttarakhand, he said.
In July last, the PVCHR and RCT organised a function to honour the victims of torture and organised violence. The testimony of 12 victims was read to the public. Though it was a small pilot study of testimonial method, it helped improve the well being in survivors of torture, he said and added a national alliance on testimonial therapy (NATT) had been constituted to expand it across the country. Around 100 organisations and individuals in 17 states joined hands to put a check on torture and organised violence, he said.
http://m.timesofindia.com/city/varanasi/Peace-camp-to-instil-communal-harmony/articleshow/7180353.cms
