Arundhati Roy

Indian novelist and social justice activist, Arundhati Roy, was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize on 3rd November at a function in Sydney where she delivered an address, Peace & the new Corporate Liberation Theology' (or read the corporate media sanitised version).

Roy has been an articulate critic of the war in Iraq and the neo-liberal agenda of 'free trade' and investment regimes. Conservative commentators have attacked the awarding of the Peace prize due to her support for resistance in Iraq against the invasion and occupation by the USA 'Coalition of the Killing'. Arundhati Roy told an ABC reporter "One wasn't urging them to join the Mehdi Army, you know, but to become the resistance, to become part of what ought to be a non-violent resistance against a very violent occupation. So that is to redefine what resistance means, you know, we can't just assume that resistance means terrorism, because that would be playing right into the hands of the occupation."

[Sydney IMC | Melbourne IMC]

The Sydney Peace Prize citation reads : "In recognition of her courage in campaigning for human rights and for advocacy of non-violence as in her demands for justice for the poor, for the victims of communal violence (in India), for the millions displaced by the Narmada dam projects and for her opposition to nuclear weapons."

Arundhati Roy has proposed donating the $50,000 prize to Australian aboriginal activists campaigning for Land Rights and social justice in Australia.

Some recent internet writings of Arundhati Roy:

• Melbourne IMC: Confronting Empire
• Melbourne IMC: Arundhati Roys anti-authoritarian politics
• Democracy Now: Public Power in the Age of Empire
• India IMC: Seize the Time

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