TISS Guwahati commemorates Human Rights Day
Guwahati, December 11 (MExN): The 70th International Human Rights Day was commemorated at NEthing (Everything North East), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Guwahati on December 10.
The event brought together academicians, activists and theatre artists together to discuss and deliberate on issues of sexual violence and impunity in North East India. The event was hosted by NEThing in collaboration with ‘Lal Poster’
The event engaged on physical and psychological dimensions of gendered violence and impunity, and the event closed with a 40-minute long theatre performance on the same theme.
A panel discussion on “(En gendering human rights: Violations and Impunity” was moderated by Dr Dolly Kikon, author and academician at the University of Melbourne.
The panelists: Parvin Sultana, Banamallika Chaudhary, Silsila Das and Juri Baruah dwelled on the experiences in the realms of migration and displacement, sexuality and justice, caste and family, and the tea plantation industry and female labour force.
A theatrical ‘Requiem for Dead Sisters’ was performed by Lapdiang Syiem and RÕzumarÌ Samsãra (Rosemary Kikon).
Cuing from the WHO definition on femicide, which says that femicide includes any killings of women or girls and not just intentional murder of the woman, the play focused on issues of sexual violence and impunity in the North-East. It was conceptualized by the trained physical theatre performers Rosemary, who is currently based in Ohio and Shillong-based Lapdiang, over a period of two years from 2016.
All the projections in the theatrical were accounts of killings of women from the northeast India. Thongjam Manorama’s brutal rape and murder by the Indian Army, armed insurgents carrying out the murder suspecting the girl of being an informer, and a northeastern female migrant to Delhi being murdered in Munirka, were incorporated. The play was narrated by Dr Dolly Kikon, a press release from TISS informed.
