[Reader-list] Orissa Crisis (forwarded from Felix Padel)

[Rana Dasgupta]

Dear Friends

 

It's hard to summarise the crises hitting Orissa all at oince. The bare 
statistics is: 180,000 people displaced by floods 'cos of dams, and at 
least 50,000 Christian refugees from Hindutva hate killings, squatting 
terrified in camps. But much worse still (& related), is the drive to 
force through a number of key industrial projects, which are just going 
to devastate Orissa's environment as well as its villages & farmers 
if they're allowed to happen. But Orissa’s farmers are putting up a 
Non-violent fight that should really be seen as an example to the whiole 
world. The 3 biggest companies involved are Vedanta (most of you know 
about the sacred mountain they're after for its aluminium content), 
Tata, and *Posco: the Pohang steel company of S.Korea.*

 

The anti-Posco movement has faced off titanic odds in the last 3 years, 
and managed to delay this insane steel project, construction of a vast 
size steel plant + new port on Orissa's coast. The main aim is to get 
Iron ore form a magnificent Mt in N.Orissa called Kandadhara (Sword 
Holder), which has an extraordinary peak, and one of India's highest 
waterfalls, that falls right down a cliff face, visible from miles away 
- but the Mt has top quality iron ore. The fact that so much tribal & 
elephant forest has been devastated by mining in N.Orissa doesn't count....

 

ANYWAY the great inspiring leader of the anti-Posco movement has 
suddenly been arrested. PLEASE PLEASE if you can, write a letter to 
Orissa's Chief Minister to ask for his release. You can do this by email 
or post - probably good if people do both, so do whichever is easiest. 
It'd be good to send a lot of mails from abroad to let the Orissa Govt 
know that people abroad as well as in India are really watching their 
behaviour on the humnan rights & environment fronts, since basically the 
Govt of Naveen Patnaik is selling Orissa for a song, & it's totally 
outrageous.

 

Below are 2 drafts of letters, one by me, one drafted by Indian 
activists who are close friends. I think, esp for people writing from 
abroad, a politer less confrontational tone'd be better, but this gives 
you a choice. Make your own or use either.

 

Just to explain, Naveen Patnaik is Orissa’s Chief Minister because his 
Dad was; he was educated in Briatin & US, and doesn't speak Oriya, but 
magazine articles say he "knows everybody worth knowing in Britain's 
modern aristocracy". When he speaks on TV he sounds like colonel Blimp, 
and I remember him saying "No-one - I repeat no-one - will be allowed to 
stand in the way of Orissa's progress". Thousands of small-scale farmers 
have never stopped standing up to his brutal tactics though, and 
no-one's been braver than ABAHAYA SAHU, the leader who's just been 
arrested. He's a communist, (member of the CPI - Communist Party of 
India, which on the whole is good), but the movement has been 
scrupulously non-violent, despite appalling violence used by goondas 
(hired thugs) against them. You can find out lots more from the 
internet. It's shocking though how this movement has been virtually 
censored from the western media. The Independent carried one article 
about how the project wd have a catastrophic effect on Orissa's famous 
turtles - without one word mentioning this movement, that is among the 
strongest & best known in India, truly carrying on the spirit that moved 
Gandhi.

 

So please write!!! I'll draft a suggested letter now, quoting a 
beautiful book that Naveen wrote when he was a dilettante in the US, 
about India's healing plants.....

 

To explain one other thing: *THIS IS VERY CLOSELY LINKED WITH THE 
PRESENT FINANCIAL CRISIS*. To explain this in a few words: No-one I've 
heard is asking *WHY ICELAND? *The answer is: ALUMINIUM. Iceland's 
Govt's sold the country to set up a series of the world's biggest 
smelters, powered by massive dams that have already drowned vast areas 
of very special wilderness. As a result (as always happens with 
aluminium) the country borrowed 50 times what they had, so people there 
have been rolling in new money, while a minority have been strongly 
protesting at the rape of the environment. This is why the credit 
ratings agencies recommended investing in Iceland till 10 days ago! 
Actually, Iceland was selling itself into a slavery of debt (which is 
what the aluminium industry does to a country). This is why Greenpeace, 
Friends of the Earth, WWF etc didn't touch the Iceland issue or support 
the acitivists - too much at stake; too much money. Even charities have 
invested heavily in Icelandic banks, without asking WHAT'S THIS MONEY 
FOR? WHERE'S IT GOING? Basically, with steel and aluminium where it's 
going (as well as the car industry, planes, food/transport/construction 
boom)  is* the arms industry: feeding the world's wars with a 
military-industrial complex based on profligate overuse of the earth's 
minerals*. People barely seem to notice this connection now! But the 
Icelandic situation does imply that ethical investment may prove now to 
be wiser investment too.

 

And basically, the same thing's happening in Orissa: offers of colossal 
foreign investment, but the farmers not willing to get displaced, 
holding the projects up. And in the present crisis, the tycoons are 
losing money so the projects are absolutely at stake now: Vedanta's lost 
2 billion$ in last few days, Mittal 20b$. This is why Vedanta and Posco 
are suddenly being more aggressive right now - just as Orissa's reeling 
from the horrendous ethnic cleansing of Christians, who are being hunted 
down like animals in the forests of central Orissa.

 

So now is the critical time to stop these insane mega-projects. Tata's 
car factory has just been stopped by a heroic farmers' movement in 
Bengal, and I believe the movements against these titans in Orissa too 
will succeed. But *the farmers need all the support they can get*, and 
people outside India need to know what's happening, 'cos the newspapers 
are barely saying it, and I'd say this is among the most important news 
nywhere in the world. Please B a part of it & *write*.......There are 3 
people to write to (& if for some reason you can't write this yourself, 
please forward it to contacts who will):-

 

 

To:

Shri Naveen Patnaik
Chief Minister of Orissa
Naveen Nivas, Aerodrome Road, P.O. Bhubaneswar
Distt. Khurda, Pin - 751 001
E-mail  cmo at ori.nic. in 
<http://us.mc385.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=cmo@ori.nic.in>
Office Phone    0674-2531100, 2535100, 2531500
Office Fax      0674-2400100
Residence Phone 0674-2590299

Principal Secretary to the CM, BK Patnaik: 2536682, 2322164
Email: cmo at ori.nic. in 
<http://us.mc385.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=cmo@ori.nic.in>

Shri M.C. Bhandare
Governor of Orissa
Raj Bhavan
Bhubaneshwar
Phone: 0674-2536111, 0674-2536582




DRAFT APPEAL

To:
Shri Naveen Patnaik
Chief Minister of Orissa
Secretariat
Bhubaneshwar

 

Dear Naveen/Honourable Sir (choose how you address the gentleman)

 

We are horrified to hear of the arrest of Abhaya Sahu. From all we 
understand, his opposition to the Posco project has been scrupulously 
non-violent, while the villagers involved have faced considerable 
harrassment by goondas, who have used bombs and other weapons against 
protesting villagers. *Abhaya has shown himself as a man of the greatest 
integrity and highest principles. Please release him. Holding him would 
reflect poorly on your administration.*

 

Many people remember Dula Mandal, who was murdered by pro-Posco goons in 
his village of Govindpur on 21.6.08. He was an ordinary villager, 
kjilled after a day’s hard work alongside hundreds of others, dredging 
the Jetadhari river mouth. Villagers had alerted the authorities to the 
importance of this task to avert floods, but after huge delays, and talk 
of a multimillion rupee contract for the job, the villagers had decided 
to do it themselves, which angered businessmen who had hoped to get this 
contract. After completing the dredging on 30^th June, the villagers 
held a memorial for Dula attended by several thousand villagers and 
supporters. A few days later, as you must recall, villagers captured 
several goondas who had used violence against them, along with six boxes 
of home-made bombs and other weapons, from the school in Govindpur, 
handing these over to the police. When serious violence erupted before 
this, on 29^th November 2007, and bombs had been thrown by goondas at a 
crowd consisting largely of women, Priyabrat Patnaik was heard to make a 
statement on TV that “those people have been taught a lesson”.       

 

Naveen – Orissa’s environment is in greatest jeopardy from the Posco 
project. Kandadhara Mountain is one of the State’s real treasures. 
Meanwhile the inhabitants of Dhinkia and the other villagers on the 
coast are standing up for the world’s Conscience. You must be aware by 
now, from financial events as well as a stream of environmental reports, 
that the vast majority of Orissa’s villagers will not benefit from this 
type of project. It repeats precisely the worst mistakes of the West’s 
history, and the very reason that the world is in such financial and 
environmental crisis now.

 

Your own words written some years ago expressed this most eloquently in 
the beautiful introduction you wrote to your book on Ayurvedic plants: 
*“/The man who recognizes how he is linked with universal life is a man 
who possesses a sound soul because he is not isolated from his own 
energies, nor from the energies of nature. But as the highest form of 
life, man also becomes its guardian, recognizing his very survival 
depends on seeing that the fragile balance of nature, and living 
organisms, is not disturbed… If a man wilfully disturbs the balance of 
living things he inevitably damages himself…/”* (“The Garden of Life/” 
/1993)//

 

Please act now.. FREE ABHAYA. Either cancel the Posco project if this is 
in your power, or at least allow open debate and dissent on the subject. 
This is the hallmark of a civilised society. When non-violent dissent is 
crushed by repression, this is the absolute antithesis of real 
development, and nothing good can come of it for your State or yourself. 
*We call on you to make a stand for civilised values here and order 
Abhaya's release*.

 

Sincerely.

 

 

 

 

 DRAFT BY  ACTIVISTS IN INDIA: 

 

       Sub: Condemning continued repression of protests against POSCO 
project and recent arrest of Shri Abhay Sahoo, POSCO Pratirodh Sangram 
Samiti leader

To Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister of Orissa

To the Principal Secretary to the CM, BK Patnaik

To the Governor of Orissa, MC Bhandare

(addresses above)

Dear Sir,

We are writing to condemn the arrest of Shri Abhay Sahoo, leader of the
POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, and the continued repression of the
protests against the proposed POSCO project in Jagatsinghpur District.
On the evening of Sunday, October 12th, Abhay Sahoo was arrested near
Paradip.  It is not yet known what Shri Sahoo is being charged with.
However the police had earlier filed numerous false cases against him,
while taking no action against those responsible for the violent attacks
on the people of the area.  We fear that these false cases will now be
used to unjustly detain Shri Sahoo in order to silence him and to
intimidate those opposed to the project.

The POSCO project is a gigantic corporate crime, an attempt by a
multinational corporation to seize the land and resources of the
affected people and of the nation.  The POSCO project will benefit no
one except POSCO itself.  Moreover, the State government's moves
to hand over the land are illegal and a criminal offence under the
Forest Rights Act, 2006. Despite these facts, for the last three years
the State government has been brutally repressing the people's
protests, including through killings, bomb attacks and siege tactics.
Much of the area is under de facto occupation by the police.

We therefore call upon you to ensure:

* The immediate cancellation of the POSCO project and the withdrawal of
all police from the area;
* The immediate release of Shri Sahoo and all other arrested PPSS
leaders;
* Prosecution of all those responsible for violence against the people
of the area and compensation to the people for the repression that they
have suffered.

Sincerely,

 

 

 

 

 

Covering letter:

Dear All,

As you might be aware by now, Shri Abhaya Sahu, leader of POSCO 
Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) was arrested earlier this evening in 
Orissa and was kept in the Circuit House in Paradip. Pasted below as 
well as attached is an appeal letter for immediate release. Please feel 
free to modify it and send it to the Chief Minister and the Governor at 
the earliest.

The arrest is yet another measure of repression by the state and must be 
severely condemned. This is an appeal to one and all to write to all 
concerned for immediate and unconditional release of Shri Abhaya Sahu.