If I die - you die too
In India, a British company is threatening the home and way of life of thousands of Kondh people. British company Vedanta Resources and its subsidiary Sterlite Industries have applied for permission to blast Niyamgiri mountain, home to thousands of people, in order to extract bauxite - the raw material for aluminium - despite the environmental and human rights violations this would entail.
The forests are a rich larder for the Khond. Forest fruits and vegetables — like Jackfruit sustain local families.
Image © Brendan O’Donnell/ActionAid
“You are destroying so much. Mining only makes profit for the rich. We will become beggars if the company destroys our mountain and our forest so that they can make money.”
Dongria Kondh spokesman Jitu Jakesika’s message to Vedanta’s shareholders
Bad news from India. Find out the latest news about the Supreme Court ruling here.
Thousands of Kondh people in Orissa, India are fighting to save themselves and their environment from destruction.
This short-term profit-making scheme would mean moving the Kondh people off the land on which they have lived sustainably since ancient times, making them vulnerable to hunger and poverty.
It would involve decapitating the Niyamgiri mountain that is sacred to them and ripping-up their forests - disrupting a unique, wildlife-rich ecosystem, drying up streams and polluting local water supplies.
Although financially poor, the Kondh people are rich in resources from the forests. Niyamgiri provides them with sustainable sources of food, water and livelihood - enabling them to live in balance with the environment they have protected for generations.
Deeply spiritual, they now report having disturbed dreams in which their sacred mountain speaks to them. It says, ‘If I die you die too’.”
Niyamgiri tests whether local, national and international protections on the environment, biodiversity and human rights are enforced - or not.
The background
Over the past three years, villagers claim to have been involuntarily displaced from their homes and refused compensation for their lost land. Their protests about the threat the project poses to the forests they depend upon for their livelihoods have been repeatedly ignored by officials and the company.
The problems began following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Government of Orissa and Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd, a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources plc, for establishing a bauxite mine on the plateau atop Niyamgiri, as well as an associated alumina refinery plant at the foot of the mountain, near the town of Lanjigarh.
The company plans to mine over 1 million tonnes of bauxite a year from reserves within Niyamgiri mountain. Official studies have suggested that this is likely to lead to massive deforestation on the slopes, the destruction of protected local ecosystems rich in biodiversity, and the disruption of key water sources that supply springs and streams on the surrounding hillsides and feed two rivers which irrigate large areas of farmland in southeast Orissa.
An investigation found that Vedanta had deliberately and consciously concealed that forest land would be involved in the refinery.
What we can do to challenge this corporate abuse:
Support the local community’s petition. Please join the Kondh people and local villagers in asking the Indian government to protect their environment and human rights by halting the go-head of mining, by signing their urgent online petition.
Ask your MP to support the campaign. Your MP can sign Early Day Motion calling for the government to sign up to ILO Convention 169 - the only international law for tribal peoples. If the UK signed up, British companies like Vedanta would be more accountable for their actions under international law. You can learn more, write to your MP and the Prime Minister, and sign an online petition on the Number Ten website, through Survival International’s website.
Write to the Indian government, asking them to prevent the mine going ahead. Address your letter to Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, Raisinha Hill, New Delhi, 110 001, India.
Put direct pressure on the company. Write to Vendanta at Anil Agarwal, Chairman, Vedanta Resources Plc, 16 Berkeley Street, London, W1J 8DZ. Ask Vendata’s PR company, Finsbury Limited, to stop supporting the destruction of the Dongria Kondh by writing to Roland Rudd, Senior Partner, Finsbury Limited, Tenter House, 45 Moorfields, London, EC2Y 9AE.
Target Vedanta’s shareholders. Survival is urging shareholders, including major British companies Coutts Bank, Standard Life, Barclays Bank, Abbey National and HSBC, as well as Middlesbrough and Wolverhampton Councils, to disinvest unless Vedanta abandons its plans. Norway has already excluded Vedanta from its national pension fund investments, “due to an unacceptable risk of complicity in present and future severe environmental damage and systematic human rights violations.”
International legislation is needed. ActionAid have been supporting the local community’s resistance. Campaigner Julian Oram said that “The protests at Niyamgiri highlight a problem which is mirrored in thousands of poor communities across the globe. Companies cannot ride roughshod over the rights of vulnerable people, and the global community has to play a part in reining in their actions.” They have been calling for global minimum human rights standards for companies to be developed within the United Nations, with mechanisms for communities to lodge complaints and seek justice at the UN Human Rights Council.
Case-study
Hrundanand Patra aged 21 sustained terrible injuries whilst working in the bauxite refinery in Lanjigarh, Orissa in India.
Image © Brendan O’Donnell/ActionAid
In addition to the proposed mine, Vedanta has already constructed a huge alumina refinery plant near the town of Lanjigarh, and is now digging ‘ponds’ to hold the toxic waste that the factory will produce. This plant and associated perimeter wall and feeder road has been the source of major conflict with local villagers, who claim that homes and farms have been bulldozed without due consultation or compensation.
ActionAid visited the local community to find out more.
“On our visit we also met Hrundyanand Patra, a good-looking, softly spoken 21 year old.
He showed us his left leg. It looks like someone has taken a blow-torch to it.
The flesh had melted and reformed into blobs like candlewax, and the surface of the skin was mottled and discoloured.
Hrundyanand was working as a temporary labourer on a night shift at the refinery at Lanjigarh when he had an accident. A graduate with a BA in Arts from Biswanathpur College in Orissa, he worked at the refinery for just 3 months whilst struggling to find a job more suited to his standard of education, getting paid 5000 Rupees (about £60) per month.
On 19th May 2007 he was asked to collect a sample of caustic soda from a pit. “The ground around the pit was wet and when I stepped onto it — whilst holding the caustic soda sample — my foot sank into the ground and the liquid spilled down my leg.” The boots he was wearing held the vitreous liquid exacerbating the impact of the spill.
The company took Hrundyanand to a nearby private hospital where he was treated for 19 days, during which his parents approached the company about compensation and were told not to worry — that Hrundyanand would be given a job after he recovered.
After 4 months of immobility Hrundyanand went back to the company but was told that there was no job for him and that they would not compensate him beyond paying for his medical treatment. His leg is highly infectious and he will need to take medicine for it indefinitely.
“When they say they will give us work this is the sort of thing they mean.”
Hrundyanand told us that he knew of at least 10 others who had had serious accidents and is now seeking compensation from the company through a sympathetic local lawyer.
Sitarem Kulesika, “I am prepared to sacrifice my life for Niyamgiri”
Image © Brendan O’Donnell/ActionAid
Find out more
ActionAid has been helping local groups come together to raise their collective voices against the project. Read their report, Vedanta cares?
Survival, the movement for tribal peoples, are supporting the Dongria Kondh
Independent article, Save our mountain, Indian tribe urges bank 2 May 2008