CAMPAIGN FOR SURVIVAL AND DIGNITY
Forest Workers March to Delhi 20 May 2011. PHOTO/Mukul Dube
Call for End to Grabbing of Forests and Lands for Benefit of Government and Companies
Today, 3,000 adivasis and forest dwellers from across the country gathered at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, to protest against the blatant and criminal resource grab of the Central and State governments. Braving intense heat and traveling for days on end packed in trains, our people came to Delhi to condemn the blatant criminal looting of our resources by these governments. Joined by leaders of the the Gondwana Ganatantrak Party, the CPI, the CPI(M), the CPI(ML) Liberation as well as other organisations, the protesters rallied at Jantar Mantar till 3 pm and then marched towards Parliament, where they courted arrest and were detained by the police. Two delegations of the protesters then presented the demands to the President and to the Secretary of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.
Simultaneously, more than 3,000 people joined a protest called by the Campaign’s Odisha state federation in Bhubaneshwar, on the same issues, and presented a memorandum to the Governor.
The protesters had come to Delhi from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. They raised the fact that both the Central government and the State governments are brazenly violating the law and people’s rights in order to keep their control over forests and forest lands. The government’s entire agenda is dictated by the interests of capital – especially private industry – and the state machinery, particularly the Forest Department, and it will stoop to anything to grab more and more forests and lands for these interests. With every passing day, whether it is the POSCO project, so-called “afforestation” programs across forest areas or illegal eviction of forest dwellers in various States, the state machinery continues on its grossly illegal drive to seize control of our homelands.
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