The star Online
Thursday, November 30, 2006
New Delhi - Thousands of India's poorest and most marginalised people have gathered in the heart of New Delhi and other cities, demanding rights over the remote forest land where they have lived for centuries.
Women in brightly coloured saris and men in turbans from far-flung rural areas yesterday waved banners and punched their fists in the air, calling on the government to pass a law recognising their rights.
"Who will look after the forests? We will. We will," they chanted. "Who do the forests belong to? They belong to us."
More than 40-million people live in India's resource-rich forest areas, including protected wildlife reserves and dense woodland, eking out a meagre living from simple farming, picking fruit and collecting honey.
For generations they have had no legal right to the land or the use of forest resources.
They say they have been treated as "encroachers" and "criminals" on their own land and forced to leave it by forestry officials and mining and logging companies.
Shankar Gopalakrishnan, from the Campaign for Dignity and Survival, a union of forest community groups, said: "Every year, hundreds of thousands are evicted, beaten, tortured and their homes demolished by officials and busi- nessmen who want to use the land for their own purposes."
Similar protests took place in the eastern cities of Bhubaneswar and Ranchi, where thousands of forest dwellers gathered, beating drums and chanting slogans.
Rambati Bai said that despite spending more than 60 years living in the Sunabeda Wildlife Sanctuary in the eastern state of Orissa, she and her family were not allowed to call the forest home.
"Last year the forest officials came to my village and told us to leave the forest. Is it that easy? How can we live in another place?" she said.
Others said they had been jailed for months for refusing to leave the land that they and their forefathers had cultivated for generations.
The government is expected to pass a new law - the Recognition of Forest Rights Bill 2005 - before the end of the year. It would, for the first time, give forest dwellers the right to own the land they have been using.
But some wildlife groups have voiced concern about the bill, saying it would give too much protection to forest people and would threaten efforts to save endangered tigers.
Activists for the forest dwellers say the bill has already been watered down to give people little power after pressure by green groups and powerful mining companies.
"The government is using conservation as an excuse not to give us rights," said S R Hiremath of Samaj Parivartana Samudaya, a charity that works with forest communities in the southern state of Karnataka.
"We are not a threat to the environment and not a threat to animals. For centuries we have lived in coexistence with the environment, and its destruction is because of the mining and paper companies." - Reuters