On 19th March I along with Ananta , social activist, Advocate Pradosh Mohanty and Adv. Gaiendra Pradhan visited the villages like Kandadhuda, Beleimunda and Ratanpur in Hemagiri Block of Sundargarh District severally affected by acute pollution by MCL coal transport since 2012. We met with villagers including women who were ill treated, beaten by the police as well as school going girls who have been sitting on the road to protest the illegal and harmful transport of coal by 3000 trucks daily polluting air, water, soil as well as causing sound pollution.
On last 9th February the State Human Rights Commission had directed the Sundargarh District Collector not to allow coal loaded Tracks on the road across the villages and the commission had also directed the District Collector to submit a report on actions taken to meet the local affected people’s plights till 5th April 2021 to which date there would be no transporting of coal on road. After this order the agitating people also withheld their strike, sitting on the road till said date.
Meanwhile hearing a writ petition of truck owners, the High Court of Odisha stayed the execution of the direction of the State Human Rights Commission without listening the affected people who had already filed a caviat earlier though no industry, as user of coal supplied by the MCL was a party to the petition but the interim order of stay mentioned shortage of coal as one of causes. This is very much unfortunate that the stay order deprived the affected people from natural justice and police used it as an opportunity to repress the people who again protested the reappearance of coal loaded trucks run on the road. The people have constitutional right to protest peacefully. The state fails to protect their right to clean air, clean water and healthy soil but the police’s inhuman treatment to arrested women and children is deplorable and condemable. People including woman along with children of Anganwadi Centre of Kandadhuda, Ratanpur and Beleimunda villages were forcefully taken to police station when for thirty hours all including children were kept without food. After a huge hue and cry 24 villagers including 12 women were sent to jail on false charges of criminal offence like attempt to murder and dacoiti.
Some women were beaten by the police, this happened under district police administration of a lady superintendent of police. There should be an inquiry either by the house committee of the state assembly to punish the unruly police officers. Even a social activist Sura Mishra has been locked under docoiti case as he supported the villagers to protest against acute pollution caused by the MCL who is not following the environmental clearance by the ministry of MOEF. There was direction of the High Court earlier to MCL to construct coal transport corridor to avoid public road through villages till 2018 but neither the construction has been started nor any no preventive measures have been taken for safety of the villagers.
I urge the Odisha Government to force the MCL to adhere the guide lines and environmental laws as well as protect the rights of people who need to be free from agony and painful lives being suffered by air, noise, water and soil pollution. The MCL be asked to provide compensation for the loss of crops due to coal dust. My appeal to the Chief Minister to intervene to release to 25 people including elected Lady Zilla Parishad and Samiti Member from Jail.
Prafulla Samantara, National Adviser, NAPM, Lohia Academy, Bhubaneswar
Few nations in recent decades have been targeted by a superpower the way the United States of America has subjected Syria to various forms of attack. Apart from military assaults and acts of political subversion aimed at overthrowing the government in Damascus, the US has also imposed crippling economic sanctions upon Syria, sometimes regarded as the crucible of human civilisation. These sanctions which intensified in the last few years have impacted adversely upon a huge segment of the population. They culminated in the Caesar Act of 2020 which prohibits any country or entity from engaging in any economic activity with any firm or institution in Syria. For transgressing the Act, the violating party can also be subjected to punitive action by the US.
The wide-ranging sanctions would be one of the primary causes of the humanitarian crisis confronting the Syrian people today. Many of them are in dire need of the essentials of life. Making ends meet has become a major challenge for even the middle-class. It must be emphasised that before the mainly orchestrated unrest beginning in 2011, the government was able to provide for the basic needs of the population and managed one of the best-run health services in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) that provided free medical care to the poor and marginalised.
Yet the mainstream Western media which is echoed by the media in most parts of the world has created the erroneous impression that the humanitarian crisis in Syria is due entirely to the mismanagement and corruption of the Bashar Assad government. While there are acts of omission and commission for which the government should be held responsible, they pale into insignificance compared to the intervention and manipulation by the US elite, Israel and their allies, such as Britain and France and those in WANA. The unjust imposition of sanctions aside, these actors from the West and WANA are also guilty of engineering a sectarian war between the Sunni majority and the Shia minority which failed miserably and of sponsoring terrorist groups such as ISIS that caused death and destruction on a massive scale between 2011 and 2017. These organised and well-funded terrorist groups were defeated by the cohesive strength of the Bashar government and its security forces buttressed by the determined support provided by the Hezbollah, Iran and Russia. On top of all this, Syria’s economy has also been robbed of millions of dollars by the systematic US theft of its oil in the north east of the country which is under opposition control. The truth about this theft, or about how sanctions, war and terrorism have contributed to the immense suffering of the Syrian people and the current humanitarian crisis has not been highlighted in the media but it is a reality that the Syrians a are painfully aware of.
The media has also distorted the first bombing of the Biden administration on 25th February 2021 against a militia in Syria allegedly backed by Iran. Most newspapers and television networks claimed that the bombing was in retaliation to a February 15th rocket attack in northern Iraq by that Syrian militia which killed a contractor working with the US military. Since the US bombing took place on Syrian territory, the Syrian government rightly condemned it as a violation of its territorial integrity. China and Russia also condemned it from the perspective of national sovereignty. The western media as a whole side-stepped the sovereignty issue and instead presented the US bombing as a response to Syrian-Iranian aggression. Both Syria and Iran denied any involvement in the February 15 rocket attack arguing that they sought a period of calm to encourage as it were the Biden administration to restore the earlier nuclear deal with Iran which president Trump had unilaterally aborted.
But the Western media’s agenda against Syria is so heavily skewed that it will not entertain any other interpretation of the US’s military action. The power of this biased agenda became even more blatant recently when the media ignored completely a huge scandal involving the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) investigation into the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria in 2018. When the OPCW published its final report in March 2019, some OPCW inspectors involved in the actual investigation raised fundamental and substantive questions about the report’s conclusions. These questions cast doubt about the claims of Western governments and the Western media of Syrian government involvement in the chemical attack. The inspectors wanted their views heard by the OPCW management which refused to grant them a hearing. Instead it chose to publicly condemn the inspectors for speaking out.
It is because of the unbecoming conduct of the OPCW leadership that five of its former inspectors and the first Director-General of the OPCW Jose Bustani decided to express their deep concern in a public statement recently. The statement has also been endorsed by outstanding public figures such as Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk and John Avery Scales. It is telling that the statement has received so little attention from the media.
If news that is favourable to Syria within the context of the geopolitics of WANA is blocked out of the media, it is because those who dominate the region want it that way. The US, Israel and their allies do not want the truth about the interplay of politics and power in WANA to be known to the people. It is because Syria which is linked to Hezbollah and Iran has been consistent in opposing the hegemonic power of the US, Israel and their allies in WANA that it has had to pay such a high price. It is a price that the triumvirate of resistance is prepared to pay because it cherishes the independence and integrity of the citizens of WANA and the people of the world.
Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). Malaysia.
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