Andhra Pradesh

Work in concert, human rights lawyers told

Photo: G.N. Rao

Supreme Court advocate Nandita Haksar addressing the workshop organised by the APCLC State committee in Khammam on Saturday. —

KHAMMAM: Human rights activist and Supreme Court advocate Nandita Haksar said here on Saturday that human rights lawyers should work together and help each other.

Addressing a workshop on ‘human rights lawyering’ organised by the APCLC State Committee at the Bishop House in Naidupeta, Ms. Nandita Haksar said she could find a group of human rights lawyers working together in England. It did happen in New Delhi, but in a limited way. She called for more coordinated work in this direction with the local lawyers coming forward.

She said that human rights lawyers command more respect in the court with the reputation being genuine. In the fact- finding missions “we do not tell lies.”

If you argue for a naxalite, you better say so and it would help break the ice. Honesty always counts. The intervention of human rights activists helped save many lives. But there would not be any proof to claim that you are so effective. There might be no body to congratulate you even. One who works on human rights should visualise what really caused human rights violation, she said.

“A different kind of human rights organisations have come in today and their agenda is different from us and one should be wary of such entities,” she said. They are the instruments to open the market. Such human rights come in the form of huge package. Funded by the western states, they were out to defeat what you were doing for years, she added.

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