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Campaign to Free Dr. Binayak Sen: Dr Binayak Sen is a paediatrician, public health specialist and national Vice-President of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) based in Chhattisgarh state, India. Dr Sen is noted for extending health care to the poorest people, monitoring the health and nutrition status of the people of Chhattisgarh, and defending the human rights of indigenous tribal and other poor people. In May 2007, he was detained in connection with his human rights work, raising global concern about his welfare. He remains in prison. In December 2007 Dr. Sen was awarded the prestigious R. R. Keithan Gold Medal of the Indian Academy of Social Sciences. The citation stated that "the Academy recognizes the resonance between the work of Dr. Binayak Sen in all its aspects with the values promoted by the Father of the Nation" Mahatma Gandhi.
In a statement immediately preceding his arrest, Dr. Sen said, "For the past several years, we are seeing all over India - and as part of that in the state of Chhattisgarh as well - a concerted programme to expropriate from the poorest people in the Indian nation, their access to essentials, common property resources and to natural resources including land and water... The campaign called the Salwa Judoom in Chhattisgarh is a part of this process in which hundreds of villages have been denuded of the people living in them and hundreds of people - men and women - have been killed."
Noam Chomsky headed a list of prominent persons issuing the following statement on 16 June 2007: "Dr Sen has been detained under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2006 and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2004 on charges that are completely baseless. Both these extraordinary laws have been criticized by numerous civil rights groups for being extremely vague and subjective in what is deemed unlawful, and for giving arbitrary powers to the State to silence all manner of dissent."