Stop Evicting Adivasis from thier habitat
The Supreme Court has
ordered the forced eviction of more
than one million Adivasi and other
forest-dwelling households from
forest lands across 16 states. The
final country-wide numbers of
forced evictions are likely to rise
substantially as other states are
forced to comply with the court
orders. The court’s orders came in
a case filed by wildlife groups
questioning the validity of the
Forest Rights Act. The petitioners
had also demanded that all those
whose claims over traditional
forestlands are rejected under the
law should be evicted by state
governments as a consequence.
The Union government had not
sent its lawyers to appear before
the court and defend the law
passed by the Parliament. A three-
judge bench passed orders giving
states till July 27 to evict tribals
whose claims had been rejected
and submit a report on it to the
Supreme Court. It clearly shows
that the government led by the BJP
is hand in glove with the so-called
wild life organization.
The Scheduled Tribes and
Other Traditional Forest Dwellers
(Recognition of Forest Rights) Act,
2006 also known as Forest Rights
Act was enacted, after protracted
mass movements across the
country, with a view to address the
widespread alienation of the forest
dwelling communities in the country
from their lands, forest and its
resources since the colonial period.
The Forest Rights Act, which was
passed during the first tenure of
UPA government requires the
government to hand back
traditional forestlands to adivasis
and other forest-dwellers. It is the
experience of the adivasis during
the last one and a half decade that
FRA was never implemented in its
spirit and letter. Every attempt has
been made to scuttle it taking
Feb, March - 2019
excuse after excuse. In numerous
places (such as in Polavaram in
Andhra Pradesh) forest lands are
being ‘acquired’ on a massive scale
and sought to be submerged
without settlement of claims or
arbitrary ‘rejections’, all in the name
of development.
The last time country-wide
evictions took place was in 2002-
2004, again triggered by a
Supreme Court order. This order
of the Supreme Court, if imple-
mented, will take us to the situation
of almost 2 decades ago. Any
forceful implementation of this
order will only cause unpre-
cedented chaos, suffering and
misery and set the forests on fire.
Between May 2002 and March
2004 alone, evictions were carried
out from 1,52,400 hectares of
forest land. About 3,00,000 forest
dwellers were evicted from their
habitat and deprived of their
livelihood during this period. Their
houses were burnt, crops and food
were destroyed, women were
raped, and men were shot at and
killed. Hundreds of villages were set
on fire or demolished, which led to
clashes and deaths in police
firings.
CPI (ML) demands that Union
government to immediately stop
this massive eviction across the
country by stopping the execution
of this order.
We stand in solidarity with the
struggling adivasis and forest
based people of this land, who
continue to face an onslaught on
their lives and livelihoods at the
hands of the successive anti-
people governments. The three
organ of the state – the law makers,
the bureaucracy and judiciary - are
working in tandem to deprive the
adivasis of their legitimate right in
order to serve the exploitative
imperialist finance capital and
Indian big bourgeoisie.
CPI (ML) demands implemen-
tation of the Forest Rights Act
without diluting it and strictly
observing the constitutional rights
of Gram Sabhas.
We call upon all democratic,
patriotic, anti-imperialist and
revolutionary forces to demand the
implementation of FRA, Gram
Sabhas and protection of rights of
forest peoples and support the
struggles of adivasis.
George Mathew Fernandes
Born on 3 June 1930 in Mangalore, Fernandes was sent
to Bangalore in 1946 to be trained as a priest. In 1949, he moved
to Bombay, where he joined the socialist trade union movement.
Becoming a trade union leader, Fernandes organised many strikes
and bandhs in Bombay in the 1950s and 1960s while working with the
Indian Railways. The most notable strike organised by Fernandes,
when he was President of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation, was
the All India Railway strike of 1974, where the entire nation was brought
to a halt. The strike was the result of grievances by railway workers
that had been built up over two decades before the strike. The strike
was suppressed by the government.
Fernandes went underground during the Emergency in 1975. In
1977, after the Emergency had been lifted, Fernandes won the
Muzafarpur seat in Bihar in absentia and was appointed as Union
Minister for Industries. The “Class Struggle” pays homage to the
socialist TU leader.
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