India

[Image: Dongria Kondh protest against Vedanta Resources, Niyamgiri, India. Credit: © Survival.]
From Intercontinental Cry
August 26, 2010 -- After eight long years of protests and legal battles, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests has rejected Vedanta Resources' controversial plan to mine for Bauxite on the Dongria Kondh's Sacred Mountain in Orissa, India.
Environment minister Jairam Ramesh announced on August 24 that the proposal was being dropped was because the UK-based company and their partner, the state-owned Orissa Mining Corporation, has extensively violated state and federal laws including the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), the Forest Rights Act (FRA), the Environment Protection Act (EPA) and the Orissa Forest Act.

Press statement by the International Campaign for Justice for Bhopal
August 18, 2010 -- At a time when the world is focused on corporate accountability in the wake of the BP's Gulf Oil Spill, a leaked email from the Obama administration shows that it values profit over people, when the profit benefits American corporations. The victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster were disappointed to see today that the White House is not pursuing the same levels of accountability from American Dow Chemical as it has from BP. When Dow purchased Union Carbide in 2001, the corporation acquired outstanding liability for the ongoing disaster in Bhopal, which has led to the deaths of an estimated 25,000 people in Bhopal, India following the 1984 Gas Disaster.

[Image: Construction Workers. ©Mehar Jyrwa.]
From ML Update August 3-9 -- The Commonwealth Games, touted as the Country’s pride, is shaping to become the symbol of national shame in more ways than one. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has in a preliminary investigation of Commonwealth Games works in the Capital, found indications of pervasive corruption by virtually all the government organisations involved in executing the works. As we go to press there are reports of the CWG Organising Committee Chairman Suresh Kalmadi’s direct involvement in doctoring an email to cover up irregular financial transactions with a London based firm.

Hundreds of activists representing seven Bhopal survivor orgnaisations are taking part in an indefinite dharna (sit-in) in Delhi. The protesters are demanding compensation, medical care, legal action, and site remediation.
Report from Students for Bhopal.
Delhi Dharna Week 1: A Summary
“What the Government did not achieve in 26 years was sought to be achieved by a Group of Ministers in four sessions spread over four days. Naturally, their recommendations like before fall far short of addressing the real issues facing the survivors. Seasoned by experience, the Bhopalis know that this promise too like other promises will vanish in thin air unless they do something to remain in public sight long enough to win the real demands and see them fulfilled.” - Dharna Blog, Day 1

[The following is from Studentsforbhopal.org, about the latest protests calling for justice and compensation for victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas explosion, which killed more than 20,000 people and left another 100,000 with severe health problems. Visit the protest blog for daily updates.]

July 26 -- More than 150 Bhopal survivors and people from water-affected areas began an indefinite dharna in Jantar Mantar that will last through the parliamentary session. The agitation intends to pressure the Central Government to revisit its recent decisions on issues of compensation, health care and rehabilitation, legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, and hazardous waste clean-up.
Simultaneously, a Bhopal survivor has filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court asking the court to strike down the Delhi Police's arbitrary order prohibiting overnight stay at Jantar Mantar. “The Police order violates our fundamental right to express ourselves,” the five organisations coordinating the dharna said.

By Kavita Krishnan, Liberation
July 2010 -- More than 25 years after the infamous Bhopal gas disaster, the verdict of a trial court in Bhopal is nothing but a cruel mockery of justice. With charges already diluted by the Supreme Court of India, the June 7 trial court verdict could only be a formal burial of justice. Not only does the verdict insult the victims of one of the world’s worst industrial disasters by letting off, either scot-free or with a ridiculously light sentence, the mighty CEOs who were the chief perpetrators, it amounts to an assurance to multinational corporations that they will enjoy total impunity in India even when their negligence and violations of regulations leads to the loss of thousands of Indian lives and injury to several thousand more.

India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has confirmed in a new study that the abandoned site of the massive 1984 gas leak that caused the deaths of at least 20,000 people contains large quantities of deadly chemicals. The Hindustan Times reported on February 7 that the board found high levels of chloroform and benzene in underground water close to residential areas around the site. The report stated that “In some cases, the toxins were found to be several hundred times more than the permissible limits in drinking water”.

Report from www.cpiml.org
Activists of the All India Students' Association (AISA) were arrested for organising a protest demonstration at the Australian High Commission on 12 January against the recent spate of racist attacks on Indian students and workers in Australia.

Narendra Mohan Kommalapati, Green Left Weekly

The plains of peninsular India are ringed by two rows of hill ranges with their bases in the south, spreading up the coastlines in two great arcs west and east. The eastern ranges, “eastern ghats”, start in the state of Tamil Nadu and cross the states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and trail off into Bengal.
The forested regions are home to some of the oldest communities of India, described variously as adivasi (aboriginal), vanvasi (forest dwellers), girijan (people of the hills) and, in the sanitised language of the Indian constitution, under the collective name of “Scheduled Tribes”.

Kerryn Williams, Green Left Weekly

Twenty-five years after the worst industrial disaster in history, the people of Bhopal, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, are still fighting for justice.

On December 3, 1984, a leak at Union Carbide's Bhopal factory sent a barrage of toxic gases through the city. The streets were flooded with people desperately trying to flee the clouds of poison, choking, convulsing, vomiting and writhing in pain.