30 organisations and networks including LMN have signed a solidarity statement condemning the escalating state violence on the Adivasi Communities in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. The statement can be signed individually or as an organisation:
LMN’s engagement with resistance to mining in India started over two decades ago. LMN members were involved in campaigns to free Dr Binayak Sen and Indigenous school teacher Soni Sori, who both work with communities resisting mining and had been arrested on false charges of terrorism. Over the past years, LMN members were involved in producing two reports into the high prevalence of TB in coalmining areas. We have engaged with Indian activists, and co-organised meetings and education events, film shows and storytelling events to raise awareness.
In 2021 LMN and Survival International collaborated to highlight concerns around coal-mining in the protected Hasdeo Arand Forest in the state of Chhattisgarh, where the lives and livelihoods of large number of Adivasi peoples is being threatened. The Adani Group, who is the world’s third largest producer of coal and has London-based finance and insurance is the main corporate involved in the violations in Hasdeo. In 2021, the group announced that they would be sponsoring a green “Energy Revolution” gallery at the London Science Museum. LMN produced education materials about the resistance to coal mining in the Hasdeo Forest, which are used by geography teachers in schools in the UK. A video of the materials in use by our education coordinator can be viewed here. We also helped set up the Fossil Free Science Museum Coalition involving numerous organisations including Survival International, South Asia Solidarity Group, International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India, Culture Unstained, UK Student Climate Network, Coal Action Network, Tipping Point, XR Hammersmith, XR Scientists and India Labour Solidarity (UK). The campaign focuses on drawing attention to the unsuitability of Adani as a sponsor for a gallery on green alternatives at the Science Museum. Among other actions, in 2023, LMN facilitated arranging for the impactful photographs from India featured in the coffee table book, An Unravelling Tragedy to draw SM trustees attention to their own due diligence report on Adani.
Today, the state-military/security-corporate nexus in India is deeper than ever, and the speed at which its pushing for mining activity with escalating violence on and displacement and dispossession of entire Adivasi communities, this work has expanded to collaborating with Indian diaspora and domestic groups on advocacy work with the United Nations and establishing an India Working Group comprising of LMN network members to oversee and take forward all the efforts to raise global awareness and strengthen international solidarities against militarisation and mining in a more focused way.
As part of the groundwork for this, LMN co-authored with India Justice Project, Germany, a submission on the violations of human, fundamental and constitutional rights of Adivasis in Chhattisgarh for India’s 2022 Universal Periodic Review by the Human Rights Council. In 2023, at the request of the Delhi-based civil society platform, the Forum Against Corporatization and Militarization (FACAM), LMN signed the statement against the fourth drone attacks in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. In June 2024, FACAM and three diasporic Indian organisations, the Foundation The London Story, International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India and India Justice Project, Germany collaborated with LMN on the report Violation of Civil and Political Rights of Indigenous Peoples in India for India’s ICCPR Review by the UN Human Rights Council. Since then the groups continue to work together to produce further documentation on these violations. In October 2024, the Special Rapporteurs for Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights Defenders together wrote to the Government of India regarding concerns about the incarceration of woman Adivasi HRD, Suneeta Pottam.
Besides the ICCPR report on Bastar, we also signpost two complementary reports produced by civil society organisations and legal advocacy work in India. Together, these reports provide a comprehensive picture of the not only the challenges presented by militarisation and mining for India’s Adivasi peoples, but also their tremendous and steadfast resistance to state-corporate nexus. A photo-story of this resistance, produced with the support of LMN, is available to see below.
It is salutary to note that as of now, it has not been possible for a single mega corporation to establish itself in the region of Bastar.
Reports:
Violation of Civil and Political Rights of Indigenous Peoples in India. A submission to the UN Human Rights Committee, ICCPR Review Cycle, July 2024.
Citizens’ Report on Security and Insecurity, Bastar Division, Chhattisgarh, August 2024
Under The Surface: Human Rights and Environmental Implications of the Proposed Sijimali Bauxite Mine in Odisha, Human Rights Lawyering Clinic, Bangalore, April 2024
Photo-story: