Call to free Hidme Markam

Over 1,000 activists, teachers and anxious residents from throughout the globe have petitioned Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel demanding that Hidme Markam, an adivasi human rights defender and environmental activist, be freed and all expenses in opposition to her, together with UAPA, be dropped.

Hidme Markam, in jail for over 40 days, was arrested on March 9 by police and paramilitary forces from Dantewada’s Sameli village, the place a programme was underneath method to keep in mind and mourn the rapes and murders of adivasi girls. Markam, together with different advisasis, additionally organised the Nandraj Pahad Bachao Andolan, to protest the mining of a sacred indigenous hill by firms like Adani Pvt Ltd.

“Like many others, Hidme is clearly being targeted for her political work in defence of adivasi lands and lives and standing up against the might of the State and profit-making corporations. Not only was the manner of the arrest illegal and highly objectionable, but the charges were obviously concocted post-facto; as time passes, they suddenly seem to have found more cases against her,” says the letter signed by adivasi rights activists like Aloka Kujur, Elina Horo, Lingram Kodopi, feminist activists corresponding to Syeda Hamid, Aruna Roy, Meera Sanghamitra, and teams like National Alliance for People’s Movement, Saheli, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Adivasi Ekta Manch, Adani Watch and Stop Adani.

The signatories have demanded that the Chhattisgarh authorities additionally cease the clamp down on environmental, adivasi and different human rights activists, in addition to adivasi villagers in Chhattisgarh, particularly girls, within the garb of ‘combating Naxalism’. They have sought an impartial and high-level inquiry into rapes and homicide of younger girls in Bastar allegedly by the police.