Indian activists to stage drama on Palestine in UAE
Feb 09, 2009
Source: Gulf Today

Indian activist to stage drama on Palestine In UAE 

A PROMINENT Indian activist and supporter of the Palestinian cause has announced plans to produce adance drama depicting the recent Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip and stage it in India as well as the Gulf countries.
The planned play will be the fourth such production by CVM Vanimel, who has written numerous articles and poems about Palestine in his mother tongue, Malayalam. The earlier plays he scripted, produced, directed and staged in the UAE include Intifada, Palestininte Novukal (the Pains of Palestine), and Palestine Vilikkumu (Call of Palestine). The works -all of them in Malayalam and produced between 2001 and 2008 drew wide acclaim from audiences in the UAE. Salim Abu Sultan, the then Palestinian consul general in Dubai, said
he saw the plays with tearful eyes and was prompted to suggest that the works be translated into Arabic. I have been following the Palestinian freedom struggle since my school days, some 25 years ago," said Vanimel, 44, a journalist who lived in the UAE for more than 15 years before moving back to his native  Kerala in southern India in 2005. From day one, I was moved by the justness and legitimacy of the Palestinian cause and the brutality with which Israel was dealing with the issue," Vanimel told the Gulf Today in an interview. In my works I always sought to portray the agony, suffering and hopes of the people of Palestine in a manner that is easily understood by the ordinary people," said Vanimel, who hopes to have his new dance drama ready for audience by mid-2009."With the 22-day carnage and destruction in Gaza, Israel  has established that it is a
country of barbarians who  believe in nothing but bloodshed and violence," said Vabimel, who has also organised radio programmes on the Palestinian struggle. "I am only doihg what I feel is my duty by producing a stage reproduction of the Israeli brutality and how the people of Gaza were subiected to such a level of agony, pain and misery that the world had not seen in recent history,"  Vanimel added. The play will be staged first in Kerala before moving to the Gulf countries, including the UAE, said Vanimel who is a leading activists of the Indian Unian Muslim League.

Union Muslim League. Vanimel aspires to portray the agony and suffering of the Palestinians through his work.