Sunday, 22 September 2024, 3:12 pm
Press Release: Survival International
September 20, 2024
Adivasi (Indigenous)
people have organized mass protests across India to denounce
forced evictions from their forests to make way for tiger
reserves.
Thousands of people facing eviction
from their villages, and some already evicted, joined the
protests last week and this week at several of the
country’s most famous tiger reserves – including
Nagarhole, Udanti-Sitanadi, Kaziranga, Rajaji, and
Indravati. Many more protests are planned.
The
director of India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority
(NTCA) sparked outrage among Indigenous communities in July
when letters published after a Right to Information request
revealed that he had written to Chief Wildlife Wardens in 19
states urging them to evict more Adivasis from tiger
reserves.
Almost 700 Adivasi people from 25 villages
protested at the entrance gates of Nagarhole in Karnataka
state, one of India’s best-known tiger reserves. Close to
400,000 Adivasis face eviction from tiger reserves across
India.
Leading Adivasi activist JK Thimma said at the
protest: “Declaration of tiger reserves on our lands
is a violation of the law as our people neither consented to
it nor were consulted in the process. Today they have put up
signs on our lands declaring them national parks and tiger
reserves. NTCA is a trespasser on our lands. This violation
of Indigenous rights must immediately stop and the
conservationist cartels (including NGOs like WWF, WCS &
WTI) who are involved in doing this must be punished
according to the law.”
The lives of hundreds of
thousands of Adivasis in Indian tiger reserves are being
destroyed in the name of tiger conservation. The Indian
government is illegally evicting them from the land where
they have always lived, land which they have always
protected.
The big conservation organizations such as
WWF and WCS never speak out against the evictions, and claim
that “relocations” of tribal people are “voluntary.”
But the “relocations” are almost always, in fact, forced
evictions.
Survival International’s Director
Caroline Pearce said today: “The Indian authorities seem
hellbent on sticking with a totally outdated and discredited
colonial model of conservation, one still backed by the
likes of WWF and WCS, which views Indigenous peoples as
trespassers on their own lands, and brutally evicts
them.
“There’s a deep-seated racism at work here
– the government and conservation organizations view the
Adivasis as second-class citizens at best.
“These
evictions are unlawful according to both national and
international law, and don’t work – the forest, the
Indigenous people and the tigers can’t survive without one
another. Conservation organizations and tour operators are
complicit in this scandal – once the people have been
cleared out of their ancestral forests, tiger reserve
tourism is big
business.”
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
Are you licensed for Scoop?
Scoop is free for personal use, but you’ll need a licence for work use. This is part of our Ethical Paywall and how we fund Scoop without a regular paywall. Join today with plans starting from just $11 per month, and start using Scoop like a Pro.
Join Pro Individual
Find out more
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their original owners.
Comments are closed.