From 28 October 2009, over ten thousand men and women affected by the Narmada Dams Projects, have been protesting in different parts of Madhya Pradesh. Among the protestors, a group with more than a thousand adivasis had been protesting in front of the Khandwa Collectorate, since the Madhya Pradesh government refused to fulfill the Jabalpur High Court order directing allotment of five acres of land to the elder son of each of the evictee family who lost their land in the project.

To suppress the peaceful protest, police arrested the key activists of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA, Save the Narmada Movement), from their offices and protest site but the protest continued. To expand their suppression, on 30 October, the police came and locked NBA’s office alleging anti-state activities without provocation and arrested six activists, including senior activist Mr. Alok Agarwal. Afterwards, five police officers came to the NBA office, without any search warrant, and copied files from the computer and took some documents from the office.

Although five persons were released later and the NBA’s office was re-opened, Mr. Agarwal is still remained in custody without any official charges.

The civil society denounced the suppressive actions of the government. For example, a delegation from Jan Pehal, met the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) on 31 October to provide the latest information of the persecution of the state. The SHRC assured that it would initiate action based on the Reports received from the district administration by 4 November.

People’s organization stated that the Government‘s action is not only violated people’s fundamental rights but shattered the faith of common citizens in the democratic values.

Large scale infrastructure project has been common in developing countries and always turn out to be human rights catastrophe. To support villagers who fight against the unjust project, ACPP issued SUA000821(2) in August 2000. For more details on Narmada Project, please refer to UA990827(14), UA000131(15), SUA020903(10).

Sources:
Asian Human Rights Commission, Friends of River Narmada (www.narmada.org)