Last Saturday, the British-listed mining company, Vedanta Resources, faced overwhelming local opposition for their plans to expand their refinery in Orissa, India. The sacred Niyamgiri Hills in India are the home to and source of livelihood for the Kondh tribal people.  Now they are also the proposed site for a huge open-cast bauxite (a raw form of aluminium) mine that threatens to destroy the Kondh’s way of life. At the base of these pristine hills, Vedanta has built a huge refinery capable of processing one million tons of bauxite a year.  Vedanta are currently putting forward proposals to expand this refinery five-fold, despite the lack of final permissions for the bauxite mine on Niyamgiri itself. On Saturday, over 500 members of the Kondh tribal community from 20 of the villages affected by the refinery expansion attended an official hearing with Vedanta.  Waving banners they protested on both the refinery and mining plans.  They asked Vedanta to ‘Quit Niyamgiri’ and to ‘Stop abusing the indigenous community’.
See http://www.actionaid.org.uk/101834/a_public_hearing__but_is_anyone_listening.html