PRESS INVITE
People's Hearing on Nuclear Energy
Date and Time:
August 22nd, 2012
11 am - 6pm
Venue:
Gandhi Peace Foundation,
221-223, Deendayal Upadhyay Marg
New Delhi-110002
A
people’s hearing will be held on August 22nd in New Delhi on nuclear
power in India to discuss grassroots concerns and people’s experiences, and to
take note of violations of their human rights.
People from all the sites will
make presentations with a special emphasis on Koodankulam and Gorakhpur. Also,
experts will present their testimonies to a panel of judges consisting of
eminent citizens, who will examine this evidence and give their verdict.
Background:
The Government of India is
pushing through a massive expansion of nuclear energy in the most undemocratic
manner, overlooking its dangerous impacts on the health, safety and livelihoods
of local communities, the larger perspective of energy security for India, the
economic and environmental costs of nuclear energy, and the global decline in
the salience of nuclear energy after the Fukushima catastrophe.
There has been an upsurge of
strong grassroots struggles against nuclear power projects and other
installations in the recent past. At Koodankulam, for instance, a mass
agitation involving tens of thousands of people has been sustained for a year
since August 16, 2011. At Gorakhpur, in Haryana’s Fatehabad district, farmers
have sat on a dharna every day for 2 years in protest against the planned
nuclear power station. They are particularly agitated over a fraudulent public
hearing which was held on 17th July without giving copies of the
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report to the people, as is mandatory.
Strong agitations have been
launched in Jaitapur in Maharashtra, where the world’s biggest nuclear power
park has been planned. Similar protests have broken out at other planned sites
all over India.
The government has vilified
these movements as “misguided” instigated by “outsiders”, has criminalized them
and has filed hundreds of police cases against them. It has studiedly ignored
their concerns about nuclear safety heightened after Fukushima and refused to
part with basic documents such as Environmental Impact Assessment and Safety Evaluation Reports (SERs) and the
inter-governmental contracts etc.
The repression has led to
blatant violations of basic rights at different sites – for instance, nearly
7000 people in Koodankulam who have led consistently peaceful protest face
charges of sedition and war against the Indian state. Similar repression and
undermining of democratic norms is under way at the other nuclear sites such as
Jaitapur, Chutka in Madhya Pradesh, Mithi Virdi in Gujarat, Kovvada in Andhra
Pradesh, Kota in Rajasthan, etc. More recently, a fresh protest broke out at
Rawatbhata in Rajasthan where a nuclear fuel complex has been planned. The
recent tritium leak in the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station exposing 38 casual
workers to dangerous radiation has also put a question mark over the safety of
existing nuclear facilities.
The Jury: Justice A P Shah, Usha
Ramanathan, General V K Singh and others
Independent Experts: Praful Bidwai, Soumya Dutta, Surendra
Gadekar, M G Devasahayam and others
We cordially invite you to this public hearing. Please also circulate this invitation to your friends.
With best regards,
Sundaram (CNDP) – 9810556134, cndpindia@gmail.com
Bhargavi (Delhi Forum) – 9582452343, bhargavi@delhiforum.net
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