Category: Wilderness Defence

There is some­what of a mys­tery sur­round­ing “the ash­es of Vedic village”—what remains of the upscale five star tourist resort near Kolkata, West Ben­gal, after it was set ablaze on August 23.

Most reports say an “irate mob” set the fire after a local soc­cer match between employ­ees of Vedic vil­lage and anoth­er resort. The two teams appar­ent­ly start­ed fight­ing each oth­er after the win­ner was declared.

The fight lit­er­al­ly turned into a war, with both teams shoot­ing guns and throw­ing “crude bombs” at each anoth­er.

Appar­ent­ly, the Vedic Vil­lage team sought refuge in the resort. Then, the mob set fire to it. “The entire 5,000 sqft club-house, includ­ing the recep­tion, the gam­ing room, library and two con­fer­ence halls… some farm­hous­es,” and dozens of sur­round­ing cot­tages were burned.

There is, how­ev­er, anoth­er side of this sto­ry that is get­ting almost no cov­er­age by the press.

It begins with a group of farm­ers being ter­ror­ized and forced into giv­ing up their land to a real­ty agency, Vedic Real­ty.

After they were dis­pos­sessed, some 30 years ago, the land was “tak­en back” by the gov­ern­ment. Appar­ent­ly, Vedic did not have legal “autho­riza­tion” to hold the land.

At this point, the gov­ern­ment should have redis­trib­uted to land to the farm­ers. How­ev­er, Vedic Real­ty took a bold step for­ward. They took the mat­ter to West Bengal’s high court. And then they won.

The gov­ern­ment quick­ly turned around and approached Vedic for an out-of-court set­tle­ment, offer­ing to sell them the land. They should have chal­lenged the rul­ing. Vedic was more than hap­py to accept the offer, after all, it meant they would have the land legal­ly from then on.

Over the years, Vedic Vil­lage made quite a name for itself. News agen­cies proud­ly inform us of its lux­u­ri­ous mar­vels, how it was “care­ful­ly designed for five-star ambi­ence, with­out com­pro­mis­ing the vil­lage ide­al;” how it pro­vides tourists and movie stars alike with all the won­ders of moder­ni­ty: “a bar, restau­rant, a lotus-shaped pool”. It even has games to enter­tain the kids while you play a nice round of golf. “It doesn’t get any bet­ter than this.”

How­ev­er, beneath the sur­face of Vedic Vil­lage, stood a seething mon­ster. It was “a den of crim­i­nal activ­i­ties rang­ing from pros­ti­tu­tion to bomb-mak­ing,” says Partho Sarathi Ray from the activist group, San­hati.

The last five years has been espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for the vil­lagers, because they were now forced to bear wit­ness to con­stant, dis­rup­tive forces. All the while through, hold­ing on to the mem­o­ry of how their land was ripped away from them, “sto­ries of what the rich and famous did in their leisure time fil­tered into the vil­lage, pro­vok­ing won­der and then, dis­gust,” adds the Times of India.

Acknowl­edg­ing this lega­cy of suffering—that ranged from vio­lence and dis­pos­ses­sion to seg­re­ga­tion, aur­al abuse and the con­stant dis­rup­tion of their every­day lives—it is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble that Vedic vil­lage was burnt to the ground because the law­ful own­ers of the land were final­ly com­pelled to take mat­ters into their own hands. What oth­er choice did they have?

If it is not the case well, then at least this sto­ry is final­ly out in the open. And maybe the vil­lagers will final­ly be able to live and sleep like they would before there land was tak­en. Peace­ful­ly.

24 August 2009
Protests by the Penan tribe in Bor­neo have esca­lat­ed, with twelve vil­lages com­ing togeth­er to mount new road block­ades against the log­ging and plan­ta­tion com­pa­nies that are destroy­ing their rain­for­est.

Jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing at the block­ades were inter­cept­ed by police with machine­guns and tak­en away for ques­tion­ing.

Hun­dreds of Penan have blocked roads at three new loca­tions in the inte­ri­or of Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of the island of Bor­neo. The pro­tes­tors are demand­ing an end to log­ging and plan­ta­tions on their land with­out their con­sent, and recog­ni­tion of their land own­er­ship rights.

BBC TV pre­sen­ter Bruce Par­ry vis­it­ed the Penan for his hit series, ‘Tribe’. One Penan told him, ‘It’s not true that we Penan do not want progress. Not the ‘progress’ where log­ging com­pa­nies move on to the land. What we want is real progress. What we need is land rights first of all.’

The new protests come only weeks after block­ades by two near­by Penan vil­lages. The destruc­tion of their for­est robs the hunter-gath­er­er Penan of the ani­mals and plants they eat and pol­lutes the rivers they fish in. With­out the for­est, many Penan have dif­fi­cul­ty feed­ing their fam­i­lies.

The Penan have been strug­gling for more than twen­ty years against the log­ging com­pa­nies that oper­ate on their land with full gov­ern­ment back­ing. In areas where the valu­able trees have been cut down, the com­pa­nies are clear­ing the for­est com­plete­ly to make way for oil palm plan­ta­tions.

The block­ades are aimed at forc­ing the Malaysian tim­ber com­pa­nies Sam­ling, Inter­hill, Rim­bunan Hijau and KTS to end their activ­i­ties on the Penan’s land with­out the tribe’s con­sent. One of the ear­li­er block­ades, mount­ed in June at the set­tle­ment of Ba Marong, result­ed in the with­draw­al of a KTS sub­sidiary from the area – but the Penan fear that the log­gers may return.

In anoth­er Penan area, the noto­ri­ous com­pa­ny Sam­ling is advanc­ing on an area of the tribe’s for­est that has nev­er been logged before. Observers say that the road built by the com­pa­ny is like­ly to reach the remote Ba Jawi area with­in weeks.

Survival’s direc­tor Stephen Cor­ry said today, ‘The log­ging and plan­ta­tion com­pa­nies are pre­vent­ing the Penan from being able to feed their chil­dren. It’s no won­der they’re tak­ing to the bar­ri­cades. Penan in some areas are cur­rent­ly receiv­ing food aid – before the log­gers arrived, they would nev­er have need­ed such hand-outs. The Malaysian gov­ern­ment must rec­og­nize that this land is theirs and stops sanc­tion­ing its destruc­tion.’

The Algo­nquins of Bar­riere lake have announced plans to set up an indef­i­nite road­block on their land—beginning today, Sep­tem­ber 1, 2009.

In a press state­ment (below), the north­ern Que­bec First Nation says the road­block, aimed at pre­vent­ing log­ging on their tra­di­tion­al lands, will con­tin­ue “until Que­bec imple­ments agree­ments cov­er­ing forestry on Bar­riere Lake’s lands, and the Que­bec and Cana­di­an government’s rec­og­nize the First Nation’s legit­i­mate lead­er­ship.”

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Chief Jean Mau­rice Matchewan at 819–435- 2136 – or, if the line is busy, 514–398-7432

Algo­nquins peace­ful­ly block log­ging until agree­ments and lead­er­ship respect­ed?

For Imme­di­ate Release
Sep­tem­ber 1, 2009

Algo­nquins place bod­ies in front of log­ging machines: pre­vent log­ging until Que­bec and Cana­da respect agree­ments and lead­er­ship

Kitiganik/Rapid Lake, Algo­nquin Ter­ri­to­ry /- This after­noon mem­bers of the Algo­nquins of Bar­riere Lake will peace­ful­ly block the machines of Abitibi-Bowa­ter forestry work­ers, pre­vent­ing log­ging in their ter­ri­to­ry until Que­bec imple­ments agree­ments cov­er­ing forestry on Bar­riere Lake’s lands, and the Que­bec and Cana­di­an government’s rec­og­nize the First Nation’s legit­i­mate lead­er­ship.

“Our com­mu­ni­ty has decid­ed there will be no forestry activ­i­ties or any new devel­op­ments in our Tri­lat­er­al Agree­ment Ter­ri­to­ry until the sta­tus of our lead­er­ship and the agree­ments we signed are resolved to our community’s sat­is­fac­tion,” says Jean Mau­rice Matchewan, Cus­tom­ary Chief of Bar­riere Lake. “The Que­bec gov­ern­ment has act­ed in bad faith, giv­ing com­pa­nies the go-ahead to log while they ignore their legal oblig­a­tions, leav­ing us with no choice but to stop forestry oper­a­tions until Que­bec com­plies with the agree­ment. We have wait­ed more than 3 years for Que­bec to imple­ment it.”

Matchewan received no response to a let­ter he sent to Man­ag­er Paul Grondin of Abitibi-Bowater’s Mani­wa­ki mill on August 25, request­ing that the com­pa­ny sus­pend log­ging oper­a­tions until the gov­ern­ments fol­low through on their oblig­a­tions.

“Our plan is to peace­ful­ly put our bod­ies in front of their machines until we get some results. We expect they may use the police, because we are used to such tac­tics. This is our ter­ri­to­ry and they can’t push us off our lands,” says Matchewan.

Cana­da and Que­bec have refused to acknowl­edge the results of a June 24, 2009 lead­er­ship selec­tion process that res­e­lect­ed Jean Mau­rice Matchewan as the legit­i­mate Cus­tom­ary Chief of Bar­riere Lake. Nation­al Chief Shawn Atleo of the Assem­bly of First Nations, how­ev­er, met with Chief Matchewan on August 19, to dis­cuss the Tri­lat­er­al agree­ment and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns. The
Algo­nquin Nation Sec­re­tari­at, a Trib­al Coun­cil rep­re­sent­ing three Algo­nquin com­mu­ni­ties includ­ing Bar­riere Lake, also recent­ly reit­er­at­ed their sup­port for Chief Matchewan.

“Instead of act­ing hon­ourably and coop­er­at­ing with our Cus­tom­ary Coun­cil to imple­ment these signed agree­ments, the fed­er­al and provin­cial gov­ern­ments have been work­ing in uni­son to try and install a minor­i­ty fac­tion whom they can use to sign off on the cut­ting of our for­est,” says Matchewan.

Bar­riere Lake wants Cana­da and Que­bec to uphold signed agree­ments dat­ing back to the 1991 Tri­lat­er­al Agree­ment, a land­mark sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and resource co-man­age­ment agree­ment praised by the Unit­ed Nations and the Roy­al Com­mis­sion on Abo­rig­i­nal Peo­ples. Cana­da has been in breach of the agree­ment since 2001. Que­bec signed a com­ple­men­tary Bilat­er­al Agree­ment in
1998, but has stalled despite the 2006 rec­om­men­da­tions of two for­mer Que­bec Cab­i­net Min­is­ters, Que­bec spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Ciac­cia and Bar­riere Lake spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive Clif­ford Lin­coln, that the agree­ment be imple­ment­ed. The agree­ment is intend­ed to allow log­ging to con­tin­ue while pro­tect­ing the Algonquin’s’ tra­di­tion­al way of life and giv­ing them a $1.5 mil­lion share of the $100 mil­lion in resource rev­enue that comes out of their ter­ri­to­ry every year.