Massacre in West Bengal

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice Saturday December 15, 2007 12:12 by Margaretta D'Arcy - Women in Media & Entertainment

Notice of 24-hour Awareness Vigil at the Indian Embassy

The West Bengal government is violently attempting to crush village resistance to the seizure of land by a multi-national company under cover of colonial-era legislation.

Announcing a 24-hour Awareness Vigil
from Monday 17th December 10 am, until 10 am Tuesday 18th December.
outside the Indian Embassy, 6 Leeson Park, Dublin 6
to demand an end to the violent coercion of villagers in West Bengal.
The West Bengal government is mounting a terror campaign to quash peasant unrest in the remote rural area of Nandigram, 70 km south-west of Kolkata.

In early January 2007 the people of Nandigram rose up in revolt after learning of government plans to seize 10,000 acres of land for a Special Economic Zone to be operated as a ‘chemical hub’ by the Indonesian-based Salim Group. The government had invoked the colonial Land Acquisition Act, thereby threatening the people’s right to survive with dignity, which is the most sacred of the rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

· On January 6th – 7th, vigilante thugs invaded Nandigram (with the tacit support of the police) to terrorize the populace. 6 people died in the confrontation.
· On March 14th, 14 people were killed and 75 injured by police.
· In a week of violence beginning November 6th, 8 persons were killed and scores injured in another attack by armed vigilantes.
· The Irish Times reported that the Indian army was called out to quell protests that had spread to the streets of Kolkata.
· At least 10,000 villagers have fled the Nandigram area.
· According to a report by the All-India Fact Finding Team (consisting of academics, trade unionists, human rights advocates), “women have been raped and molested, many families have faced death & devastation, and all the communities in the area have suffered. Women, screaming in pain and anguish, were emphatic in their demand that the W. Bengal Home Minister should be held responsible and punished for the cold-blooded murder of women and children.”
· Outside the 13th Kolkata Film Festival in November, protestors (including film directors, artists and writers) demanded the “immediate stoppage of mass killing” by state-government vigilantes in Nandigram: police used baton charges and arrests to break up this peaceful protest.

We in Ireland are only too familiar with the way big multi-nationals (like Shell) can occupy tracts of countryside, with collusion of government, and attempt to trample the people’s rights in the name of economic progress.

WE INVITE ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE NANDIGRAM OUTRAGE TO JOIN US ON OUR VIGIL.

PRO Margaretta D’Arcy, Contact Number 0879 675 750.