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Article

2 Jan 2006

Author:
People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Orissa [India]

[DOC] Police Firing at Kalinganagar [India]

By not conferring the tenancy rights upon the local people over the land, which has been in their possession at the time of Estate abolition in 1951, successive governments have deprived the people of their legal rights over land and livelihood...The massive deployment of forces to oversee mere land-leveling by a private company is not only unwarranted, it reveals a deep-seated bias of the govt. against the local people, predominantly tribal people...The way the incident of 2nd January was handled clearly reveals that the question of law and order was a ruse used by the govt. to teach a lesson to the agitators...PUCL...urges the people to question how the Tatas, Birlas, Jindals, Vedanta, and POSCO – whose only objective is to make profit by exploiting the mineral resources of the state – could be considered as insiders, and the tribal people, who have been living there for more than a century, and survive by tilling the land, could be called outsiders...Seeing the balance of force, it’s difficult to believe that an unprepared mass (none of them was carrying fire-arms, unlike the police), that included women and children, would dare to attack such a heavy deployment of trained policemen...PUCL believes that the allegation of the tribals having attacked first and the police having fired in self-defense is an afterthought intended to justify cold-blooded murder on their part...PUCL demands an inquiry by the NHRC into the allegation of mutilation of the dead bodies...PUCL team finds that the government’s own guidelines [on displacement & relocation] have been grossly violated on every front...[refers to Tata Iron and Steel (TISCO) (part of Tata Group), JINDAL, Nilachal Ispat Nigam, Mideast (MESCO), Zindal, VISA Industries, Maharashtra Seamless, Uttam Galva, Orion, Mithal, Rohit Ferrotech, Dinabandhu, Maithan Ispat]