Abhay Sahu’s interview after release

Dear Friends,

After 10 months of being imprisoned under false charges, anti POSCO leader Abhay Sahu was released from Choudwar on 21st (August) evening on bail. Please follow the below link to see an interview with him where he proves that his spirit is indomitable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8jjKG1WqVY

Regards
Surya

PPSS to intensify its movement

POSCO war zone – PPSS to intensify its movement
Sunday, 06 Sep 2009

Statesman News Service repoted that emboldened by the release of their leader, Mr Abhay Sahoo and empowered by the support of CPI MP from Jagatsinghpur, Mr Bibhuprasad Tarai, the activists of POSCO Pratirodha Sangram Samiti are all set to intensify their opposition to the steel project.

Abhaya Sahoo gets bail

Abhaya Sahoo gets bail

Express News Service
First Published : 21 Aug 2009 02:35:00 AM IST
Last Updated :

PARADIP: Anti-land acquisition leader and president of Posco Pratirodha Sangram Samiti (PPSS) Abhaya Sahoo, who has been languishing in jail for more than 10 months, was granted conditional bail in one case by the High Court today paving way for his release.

Police had filed 36 cases against Sahoo on the charges of murder, kidnapping , assault and preventing government officials from entering villages. Earlier, the High Court granted him bail in 10 cases and Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) of Kujang granted him bail in 25 cases. Sahoo will be released from the Choudwar jail tomorrow as he has been granted bail in all the 36 cases, said Sishir Mohapatra, general secretary of PPSS. A Division Bench of High Court comprising Justice Raghunath Biswal in his order granted bail to Sahoo. However, the court has barred Sahoo from entering Dhinkia village. His counsels Jagannath Patnaik and Gatikrushna Satapathy argued in the court that the police have lodged many false cases against Sahoo.

Police had arrested Sahoo on October 12 last year at Bhutmundei under Kujang block in Jagatsinghpur district while he was returning to Dhinkia, the bastion of anti-Posco movement, from Bhubaneswar in a car. After Sahoo’s arrest, Kujang police arrested anti-Posco leader Prakash Jena and five other anti-Posco activists.

The bail to Sahoo has brought joy among the anti-Posco activists in Dhinkia and Gobindpur villages. PPSS is opposing land acquisition in three gram panchayats – Gadakujang, Dhinkia and Nuagaon – for establishment of mega Posco steel project.

Anti-Posco stir gets panchayat seal

SUBRAT DAS

Bhubaneswar, May 7: Victory of a member of Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) in the recently concluded panchayat election has fuelled speculation regarding the fate of the proposed steel plant slated to come up in Jagatsinghpur. The proposed Posco project has been pending for over four years now. While pro-Posco groups have been left wondering, the anti-project group, PPSS, is now upbeat after its secretary, Sisir Mohapatra, was elected as the sarpanch of Dhinkia gram panchayat — at the epicentre of the anti-Posco agitation — yesterday. Another PPSS member Prakash Jena was also elected as the panchayat member from the same area.

Striking While the Iron is Hot

A case study of the Pohang Steel Company’s (POSCO) proposed project in Orissa

Published in February 2009, the case study documents the impacts of POSCO’s proposed iron ore mines, steel plant and port on local communities and their environment. The study describes the ongoing struggle against the project in the backdrop of Orissa government’s frenzied drive to industrialise the state and dispossess the local people of their resources.

Rising power of a collective – everything else looks so small…

The road to Dhinkia from Bhubaneswar was never so long as it was on 30 November 2008… or so I thought. The idea was to avoid the bad road, our friends advised us to take a longer route. Yes, the road was certainly much better but the journey could never be so eventful. As we were approaching Paradip, we saw hundreds of trucks lined up – I had never seen so many trucks in all of my life till now. They had stopped in protest against an accident that had taken place just that morning leaving one person severely injured. The matter was related to the Paradip Port Trust as the truck was ferrying the materials for the port and the truckers demanded interventions by the company to help the victim…Read more about the anti Posco convention at Dhinkia on 30th November 2008

People refuse to give in to POSCO

Down to Earth, December 2008

WHILE the Orissa government assured support to the South Korean steel giant posco to set up its 12-million-tonne steel project in the state, the communities likely to be affected staged a protest march in Delhi on November 15. The Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to the project on August 8 this year.

Even as the agitators in India demanded scrapping of the project on grounds of exploitation of tribals’ livelihood, Vietnam took a call to scrap a steel plant by posco on environmental grounds following protests.

HOW TO DESTROY INDIA’S COASTS AND AGGRAVATE CLIMATE CHANGE

History will judge India’s Central Government, the Orissa State Government and the Ministry of Environment and
Forests harshly. In their haste to curry favour with Foreign Direct Investors and powerful people, they have turned into
rubber stamps for the destruction of India. Principled officers are virtually hounded out of the MoEF, cronyism and
groupism is the order of the day and many believe that ignorance, avarice and arrogance are now its hallmarks. This
meticulous piece by Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon underscores just one of the many conspiracies hatched by the
leaders of our country and within the Ministry of Environment and Forests, which has proved unequal to the task of
protecting the ecological security of India

Read More…

When people are encumbrances and projects are a national necessity

When people are encumbrances and projects are a national necessity
By Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon
Though the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to the POSCO project in Orissa in August, community resistance continues, fuelled by the arrest of anti-POSCO activist Abhay Sahu
“The Government of Orissa agrees to acquire and transfer all the above-mentioned land required for the Overall Project, free from all encumbrances….” MoU between POSCO and Orissa state government
Abhay Sahu, the leader of the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), was arrested late-evening on October 12 2008 as he returned from a medical treatment in Vishakhapatnam. For the last three years he has led a strong community movement against the takeover of fertile coastal agricultural land for an integrated plant and captive port by South Korean steel giants, POSCO. For the state government and the company, the strong people’s movement under his leadership was one of the biggest roadblocks to entry into the proposed project area.

ABHAY SAHOO CHAINED TO A HOSPITAL BED BUT NOT GIVEN A BED

Abhay Sahoo, the firebrand leader of the anti POSCO farmers’ & fishermen’s
movement in Jagatsinpur district of Orissa was arrested on 12 October. He
had more than twenty falses cases registered against him and he had been
under the villagers protection for more than a year in Dhinkia. On the day
of his arrest he was returning o Dhinkia after a medical checkup. He is
diabetic and asthmatic. He was hospitalised on 3rd December after his blood
sugar levels shot up. But he has not been given a bed and has been illegally
chained to the leg of a bed as if he were a dangerous criminal. Such
treatment is usually meant for dangerous and notorious criminals, not for
those who are fighting for the democratic rights of the poor, oppressed and
marginalised people against the powerful nexus of politicians, corporations,
bureaucrats & mafia.
See online video reportage -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px3d52vTEuM

Letter to Forest Advisory Committee

24th November 2008

P.R.Mohanty,

Director General (Forests)

Chairman, Forest Advisory Committee

Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF)

New Delhi

Subject: Concerns over Forest Clearance to POSCO’s steel plant and port in Jagatsinghpur, Orissa

Sir,

We have learnt through newspaper reports that the Stage I forest clearance for the POSCO steel plant and port in Orissa has already been granted by the FAC (copy of newspaper report attached). We have no transparent way to confirm this as the website of the MoEF has and continues to miss uploading any information on the clearances of the proposed Steel Plant and captive port of M/s POSCO-India in Jagatsinghpur, Orissa.

If this is indeed true, following the Supreme Court returning the project to MoEF for final decision, we are deeply concerned and disturbed with this development. There is clear evidence that despite indicating that all the project components are inter-linked in the 2005 MoU with the State government (copy enclosed), the company has sought separate clearances for each component. This has been brought to the notice of the MoEF by civil society groups prior to the environment clearances were granted, and also to the Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court (copies enclosed).

Far from being over the hill

Hindustan Times, November 27, 2008

Far from being over the Hill

Manshi Asher

The Khandadhar Hill Range in Orissa is a major attraction among the state’s tourists for its two waterfalls. But for the local tribal community of the Paudi Bhuiyans, the repositories of high quality iron ore deposits in the region are a curse. With the state government now likely to clear the prospective mining licence for 600 million tonnes of iron ore to Posco, the world’s second largest steel making multinational, the traditional bonds between the saal forests and the Paudi Bhuiyans of the Khandadhar hills are in danger of being snapped.

According to Ashwin Mahanta, a resident from the area who has been working with the tribals for the last 10 years, eight gram panchayats of the Lunipada block, with more than 50 villages within a 10 kilometre radius of Khandadhar, will be directly and indirectly affected by the mining activity that Posco proposes to carry out in an area of 6,000 hectares.