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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH++ – Weekly Newspaper On Web Spreading The Light Of Humanity & Freedom Editor : NAGARAJ.M.R. VOL.1 ISSUE.35 05/11/2005
EDITORIAL : CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY
In india, & many other 3rd world countries , the larger corporations , MNCs & industry lobby is literally running the governments. They are grossly abusing human rights of people. Hereby, HRW calls upon GOI to rein in those corporations. Jai hind. Vande mataram.
Your’s sincerely,
Nagaraj.m.r.
Eliminate A Dangerous Chemical LINDANE
Lindane is an old, dangerous pesticide—it sticks around in people’s bodies and builds up in the environment. Children are often exposed to lindane through its use in lice shampoo, and are particularly vulnerable to the health problems it can cause, such as brain and nervous system damage, hormone disruption and cancer.
Lindane is also used in agriculture to treat seeds, and it can travel on wind and air currents to colder regions where is a serious problem in the Arctic. Food supplies of many indigenous peoples are highly contaminated.
KILLER COCA-COLA
Since April 22, 2002, residents of Plachimada, Kerala have been on vigil—24 chours a day, 7 days a week—outside the gates of Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in their village. The panchayat (village council) has refused Coca-Cola the license to operate and the bottling facility, the largest Coca-Cola bottling facility in India, has been ‘temporarily’ shut down and the struggle is continuing make it permanent. Local residents in Mehdiganj, near the holy city of Varanasi, are also leading a struggle against Coca-Cola and over 1,500 members demonstrated against Coca-Cola in November 2004. Protesters were met at Coca-Cola’s factory gates by ARMED police, sent to “protect’ the plant. This was no mere threat, the protesters were severely beaten up. At Coca-Cola’s bottling facility in Kala Dera, near Jaipur, Rajasthan, the sinking water table has created water shortages for over 50 villages. Over 2,000 people marched in August 2004 to protest Coca- Cola’s practices. In Kudus village in Thane district in Maharashtra, villagers are forced to travel long distances in search of water which has dried up in their area as a result of Coca- Cola’s bottling operations. Coca-Cola has built a pipeline to transport water from a river to its plant, and activists opposing the pipeline and the facility are regularly harassed by local police. Sensing a pattern, more than 7,000 people in Sivaganga, Tamil Nadu, mostly women, turned out in April 2003 to protest a proposed Coca- Cola factory in their village. Residents are justifiably worried that Coca-Cola’s joint operations with a sugar mill in the area will lead to water scarcity and contamination. GRASSROOTS STRUGGLE...
THOUSANDS of people all across India are protesting Coca-Cola’s operations in India. Led primarily by women, Adivasis (Indigenous Peoples), Dalits (lower castes), agricultural laborers and farmers, a significant grassroots movement has emerged in India to hold Coca- Cola accountable for its crimes in India and internationally. The campaign is growing and winning extremely important battles in the quest for justice. ...AGAINST CRIMES A PATTERN of ABUSE has emerged for Coca- Cola’s bottling operations in India. Coca-Cola is Guilty of: Causing Severe Water Shortages in Communities Across India Polluting Groundwater and Soil Around its Bottling Facilities Distributing its Toxic Waste as ‘Fertilizer’ to Farmers Selling Drinks with High Levels of Pesticides in India, including DDT— sometimes 30 times higher than EU standards ...OF HUMANITY Communities living around Coca-Cola’s bottling facilities are facing severe hardships. A majority of the community members affected by Coca-Cola’s indiscriminate practices are also some of the most marginalized communities in India- Indigenous Peoples, lower castes, low-income and agricultural day-laborers. COLOMBIA: KILLER COLA!
Coca-Cola’s main Latin American bottler, Panamco, is on trial in the US for hiring right-wing paramilitaries to kill and intimidate union leaders in Colombia. SINALTRAINAL union leaders and organizers have been subject to a gruesome cycle of violence unleashed by Colombian paramilitary forces in complicity with the Coca- Cola’s Colombian bottling subsidiary. Since 1989, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants have been murdered by paramilitary forces, some of them even attacked within their factory’s gates. Workers have also reported being intimidated with threats of violence, kidnapped, tortured, and unlawfully detained by members of the paramilitary working with the blessing of, or in collaboration with, company management.
Water and land is central to agriculture and over 70% of Indians make a living related to agriculture.Water scarcity and polluted soil and water created by Coca-Cola has directly resulted in crop failures—leading to a LOSS of LIVELIHOOD
for thousands of people in India. More than half of India’s population lives BELOW THE POVERTY LINE, and disrupting farming is a matter of LIFE AND DEATH for many in India. Ironically, communities most impacted by Coca- Cola’s bottling operations cannot even afford to buy Coca-Cola products. Coca-Cola’s indiscriminate pollution of the common groundwater source is a major long-term problem. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to clean the groundwater resource through technology, and future generations are now subjected to drinking polluted waters courtesy Coca-Cola. Or they can install water pipes to their homes and pay for clean drinking water, which most CANNOT afford to do. Distribution of toxic waste as fertilizer to farmers around its bottling facilities has created a PUBLIC HEALTH NIGHTMARE. The long term consequences of exposure to the toxic waste is not yet known and the worst is yet to come. Coca-Cola is committing crimes against humanity in India. But a more powerful force has emerged to challenge Coca-Cola.
Real India needs real answers – Sunita Narayan Pali is a textile town deep in water-scarce Rajasthan. It is well known for the cloth it produces. But it is even better known for the filth it also produces, best seen in the colours in its mostly dry river, the Bandi. Pali’s pollution, and the protest of residents and neighbouring farmers, is part of the environmental movements of this country. The protests resulted in the setting up of a common effluent treatment plant, one of the first in India. This town has reinvented the polluter pays principle. It charges a ‘pollution cess’ on every bale of cloth to pay for its water treatment costs. It should have been the story of successful pollution management. It should have taught us how small textile dying units, located in water-scarce areas, can mitigate environmental stress. Pali should have been textbook material. But this is not the case. Farmers continue to cry for clean water, demanding their right to cultivate. So what is the problem? Visiting the town I learnt that Pali is still textbook material. It is a case study of how pollution by small factories, owned by the relatively less rich, using technologies that aren’t state-of-the-art, can destroy the homes and livelihoods of the even lesser rich. How the poor can become the enemies of the poorer. Pali, ultimately, is about the poverty of India where answers to pollution will have to be reinvented. Small-scale units are vastly superior to their powerful competitors in the large-scale and organised sector because they provide jobs. But they are relatively poor: in technology, in money to invest in efficiency and pollution control. They all operate in the unorganized sector. Some operate illegally. The problem is these units vastly pollute. Pali is in a region that, even in the best of times, is starved of water. Its only river is a seasonal drain. But the little water it gets in the monsoon is critical since the aquifer gets recharged. Wells fill up. Farmers have some water to grow crops. In this region, there is no scope for pollution. There is no water here that will wash away colour and chemical sins. Here, the chemical becomes the river. It becomes the irrigation water. It fills up the seasonal river with poison, which then seeps into underground aquifers and into the wells. This is the challenge of pollution by the relatively poorer, in the land of the poor. What about pollution control? Hardware exists: Pali has three common effluent treatment plants that can treat 22.4 million litres of wastewater daily. The local administration told me they have asked industry to build more plants to treat waste. They also plan to relocate illegal units to an industrial estate. I was told of plans - without deadlines - to build, repair and renovate town drains. The industry association says, in turn, existing plants are efficient, meeting standards. But the industry needs to find better technologies to further reduce pollution. The association says little research exists on cost-effective ways to rid water of colour and chemicals. It says they are doing their best. Farmers of the region do not believe this. They say their river is poison, and this has, in turn, destroyed their fields. They wanted me to see. We drove for an hour along the river, downstream of the town, for 50 kilometres. What I saw shook even the experienced drain-inspector in me. The river was only chemical. The water smelt toxic. Its banks were caked with sludge. A farmer whose field adjoined the river said he could not use his well anymore. To test, I took a little sample. My hands soon smelt of a chemical and began to itch. Clearly there was something in this water. In a 2004 survey of pollution in Pali, the Central Groundwater Board found that pollution has seeped into the underground lifelines of the region; that chemicals have invaded wells. Remember, this is a region where farmers will kill for a little water. Consider, then, what happens when water cannot be used because it is contaminated. It breaks the economy of the region. It drives farmers to desperation. Pollution anywhere is terrible. But in Pali, pollution is deadly and shattering. The pollution control game can never come true. Drains are never completed and even as illegal units are relocated or closed down, more come up in its place. All this while, the river shrinks. The factories use groundwater. The river gets lesser recharge. It only gets the chemicals the factories discharge. In other words, it cannot assimilate any more waste. Pali needs a plan that can work fast. First, it must estimate the quantum of pollution. Even today, after years of investment and planning in pollution control, nobody really knows how much waste the town generates, and so, how much pollution it must treat. Second, Pali must map the drains that bring the waste to the river, so that it can be intercepted and taken to the effluent treatment plants. All the waste should be trapped - official or illegal. Currently, no one knows how much waste the main drain - the Gandhi Nagar drain; surely an ironic reference to the Father of the Nation - carries, and how to treat its effluents before it joins the river. Instead, all plans focus on refurbishing the drain upstream - until the drain is picture-perfect, pollution cannot be controlled. The difficult part is to completely treat the effluents so that the dry river gets water and not waste. This is the real challenge. This is where new technology is desperately needed. This is where we need science, not rocket science but real science: to find answers for poor industries, in poor areas, to combat pollution cheaply. Pali is not just about rogue industry and wretched farmers. It is about the failure of modern society to find answers for the real India. Sunita Narain < editor@downtoearth.org.in >
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