August 26, 2024
Today marks the 18th day of our movement for justice. A mass convention was held at the Medical College, Kolkata today by WBJDF, focusing on our five specific demands. The broad presence of people from all sections of society demonstrates that the fire of our movement cannot be extinguished. Today’s convention saw participation from prominent educators and social activists like Dr. Binayak Sen, Miratun Nahar, Bolan Ganguly; well-known figures from the entertainment world such as Jitu Kamal, Sohini Sarkar, Debolina Dutta, Mir Afsar Ali, as well as numerous distinguished individuals and senior doctors’ organisations including IMA, JPD and various departmental doctors’ associations. We have received support from everyone since the beginning of the movement and seek continuous support in the days ahead.
Additionally, we would like to highlight two incidents that occurred today.
The first incident took place at the Manicktala boys Hostel of RG Kar Hospital. Senior students suddenly compelled first-year MBBS students of the hostel to sign a blank paper, threatening that these signatures would be used to file false police complaints against protesting students. Although the other protesting students managed to stop this attempt, it is clear that this incident was meant to break the movement and instill fear from authority among students. The above incident proves that the threat culture is still prevalent at RG Kar Hospital despite the current authority being made aware repeatedly.
The second incident occurred at the Outpatient Department of NRS Medical College, where a planned attack was made on a female worker in the ENT OPD. Although the situation was controlled shortly after with the intervention of junior doctors and the police, we are concerned that such incidents may recur. Repeated attacks on duty doctors and health workers show that we are not safe in our workplaces.Hence for justice and for safety in our workplace our cease-work will continue in the same form.
We have heard from various media about a Nabanna march scheduled for tomorrow, the 27th AUGUST . We would like to clarify on behalf of WBJDF that this march is NOT part of our planned activities and we are NOT participating in it.
From today’s public convention, we have called for a mass rally on 28/08/2024. In the past, people from all sections of society have joined our movement and rallies overwhelmingly. For the first time, we are calling upon people from all sections to join this mass rally collectively. We call upon everyone to think about our future generations and join us in this rally. We urge everyone to make this rally successful, to solidify the ground for our movement, and to ensure that our collective demands are heard by those who may still be pretending not to listen to us.”
