SEZ WHO?

In mid-June the Indian government launched a massive operation in an adivasi (indigenous) region of West Bengal, where locals had been protesting against the state facilitated corporate land-grab for one of the notorious Special Economic Zones (SEZ). 

Since the mid-nineties the Indian government has seized thousands of acres of land, uprooting adivasis, dalits, small farmers and landless farm workers - affecting around 250 million. The land was handed over to multinationals – Indian and foreign – in the name of economic liberalisation. SEZs were created where industries are exempted from labour and environmental laws, granted complete tax exemption and are constitutionally to be treated as foreign territories on Indian soil, fully equipped with special courts to serve the purposes of the corporations. 

There was already local anger at torture and arbitrary arrests at the hands of the Lalgarh police when the state government of West Bengal seized 5000 acres of land for an SEZ to be handed over to Indian multinational steel company Jindal Steel. Last November, a convoy carrying the chief minister of West Bengal was targeted by a land mine on its way back from laying the foundation stone of the steel plant, injuring six policemen. The attack was claimed by India’s Maoists (CPIM) who had been active in cooperating with the adivasis until being recently driven out by federal forces. The police responded by beating and arresting locals, leading them to effectively seize control of the rural region. Road blockades were formed from felled trees and trenches, and locals stopped selling the police food, forcing them to withdraw.

The adivasis have distanced themselves from the Maoists, asserting their peaceful credentials whilst the Maoists have never claimed the adivasi movement to be under their control. The Maoists were recently declared a terrorist organisation.

As the press and independent monitors have been banned from the area, the extent of the abuses suffered by the adivasis at the hands of the military is unclear, although there have been reports of mass detentions and the displacement of entire villages.

The repression of resistance to land grabs for SEZs is commonplace in West Bengal. In protests against forced displacements in early 2007, 25 locals were killed by state police and over 20 women raped. An Amnesty report in January 2008 condemned widespread human rights abuses including killings and rapes carried out by West Bengal state forces.

A picket of the Indian Consulate in Birmingham has been called for 4pm on Friday 10th July to protest the Indian state aggression against the adivasis of West Bengal.

* See also http://antilandgrab.wordpress.com http://sanhati.com