India police arrest dozens of villagers for protesting against new toxic dump

4th Feb 2012

A total of 47 indige­nous peo­ple were arrest­ed and anoth­er 5 need­ed hos­pi­tal treat­ment after hun­dreds of Indi­an police and Vedan­ta secu­ri­ty guards con­front­ed a peace­ful demon­stra­tion two weeks ago in the state of Oris­sa, India.

On Jan­u­ary 21, a group of vil­lagers came togeth­er to protest against a new tox­ic mine waste dump that threat­ens to dis­rupt their way of life.

Despite the peace­ful nature of the pro­test­ers, as seen in the fol­low­ing video by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, the 47 vil­lagers were sub­se­quent­ly charged with “attempt­ed mur­der” and “riot­ing”.

Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al is call­ing for the obvi­ous­ly-false charges to be dropped. They’re also urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to release the pro­test­ers; and to prop­er­ly take their needs and rights into account before let­ting the com­pa­ny pro­ceed with the new waste dump.

Just pri­or to the arrests, Amnesty alleged that the Uk-based min­ing giant has­n’t done any­thing to clean up exist­ing pol­lu­tion at the site of its Lan­ji­garh alu­minum refin­ery beside Niyam­giri moun­tain in Oris­sa.

Sim­i­lar­ly, “The Indi­an author­i­ties have remained silent on the issues of clean­ing up the refin­ery and mon­i­tor­ing the health of local com­mu­ni­ties. They must act on this now,” said Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al’s India researcher Ramesh Gopalakr­ish­nan.

“The red mud pond, which col­lects tox­ic waste by-prod­ucts from the refin­ery, cov­ers an area of approx­i­mate­ly 38 hectares. The pond is full to the brim and suf­fered seri­ous leaks dur­ing last year’s mon­soons,” explains Amnesty.

Two weeks ago, the High Court of Oris­sa reject­ed the com­pa­ny’s plan to expand the Lan­ji­garh refin­ery after find­ing that the project is in vio­la­tion of Indi­a’s envi­ron­men­tal laws.

The wel­comed deci­sion is the lat­est in a long line of legal set­backs for the com­pa­ny.