Stop GREEN HUNT, withdraw UAPA

Why this war against Indians?

The central government of India has launched a terrible war called Operation Green Hunt. Why this war against Indians? The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced at the Parliament on June 19, 2009 that the rise of extreme leftist outfits in the regions rich in minerals has badly affected investments.

Since 2005 many small and big multinational corporations have signed MOUs. The Memorandum of Understandings were signed with the intention of mining bauxite, uranium, iron ore, tin, limestone, granite, diamond, gold etc from the forest region covering the states of west Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Maharastra. Among the owners of these mines are stalwarts like Jindal, Mittal, Tata, Essar, Posco, BHP and Vedant.

Mr. Chidambaram, the central home minister was the director of Vedant till one day before he joined the central ministry.

So it is not surprising that Chidambaram would want to clear the path for a MOUist corridor a well-connected region for those investors who signed the memoranda of understanding. During his career as a legal advisor many of these mining companies were his clients. To woo more investments he cleverly announced these regions as the Red corridor, infested with Maoists and Naxalites. Unless the local inhabitants are ousted from the area how would the mines come up?

So tens of millions of original inhabitants of these forest regions are to be banished, to be rendered landless and homeless as the forest is their home, their source of livelihood. In order to do that the home minister has decided to free the land of Maoists. The large corporate houses, with the help of the media are ready to invest millions of rupees to project this area as the as home of dangerous terrorists called Maoists. According to them the poorest original inhabitants, the ill-fed, neglected and cornered masses of tribes living in the jungles are launching a terrible armed warfare against the state. After this, police and military have jointly started the ousting operation and any protest against this state-sponsored terror is being crushed by branding the protestors as maoists. It would be easy to shoot and burn down village after village and to detain anyone in the name of investigation.

The atrocious law UAPAUnlawful Activities Prevention Act (amendment) 2008 has been freshly introduced to arrest anybody without warrant on mere suspicion and detain indefinitely. Arrests are going on; leaders of protest groups are being arrested and detained with numerous charges.

We condemn this unlawful fascist approach.

Withdraw UAPA
Stop Operation Green Hunt

Signed

Prabir Ghosh, G.S., Science and Rationalists Association of India

Sumitra Padmanabhan, G.S., Humanists Association