British mining company threatens sacred mountain
Vedanta Resources, a British company, intends to dig an open-pit bauxite mine on Niyamgiri mountain in India.
The mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area.
India’s Supreme Court has given the go ahead for the mine, but the Kondh peoples are determined to prevent the destruction of their most sacred site.
Vedanta built a bauxite refinery near the Dongria’s mountain before getting legal clearance to mine, but they need the bauxite from Niyamgiri to make the refinery profitable.
The refinery destroyed fields and forests. Over a hundred families lost their homes, including Majhi Kondh families who also worship Niyamgiri and are as determined as the Dongria to defend the mountain.
Red mud, a toxic slurry, is the refinery’s main waste product. It dries in the sun to become a fine dust that villagers say engulfs and suffocates their crops.
Government pollution inspectors have described ‘ground water contamination’ caused by ‘alarming’ and ‘continuous’ seepage of red mud.
Locals also report sores developing on their bodies after washing in rivers close to the refinery. Cattle have died after drinking the same water.
Kinari village was completely destroyed to make way for the refinery. Over one hundred families were moved to a settlement known locally as the ‘rehab colony’.
It is a walled compound of two-room concrete houses, circled with barbed wire. Residents have no farmland and although some work as labourers for Vedanta, most survive on handouts.
A Kondh woman living in the rehab colony told Survival, ‘All I can do all day is sit on this concrete. We are only sitting here and getting rice. What life is that?’
In October 2008 Dino Majhi was found hanging from the neck inside his rehab colony house. His throat had been slit. He was well known locally as an activist against Vedanta. Local police arrested a suspect, and declared the attack was borne out of personal grievance. But many believe Dino’s murder was politically motivated.
Vedanta is building roads from the refinery to the top of the Dongria’s mountain. They now have an access road to the mountain-top, which has been widened to several metres without permission, even though that involved cutting down hundreds of trees.
Vedanta will carve through the forested hills and open up some of the most remote parts of Niyamgiri to illegal loggers. The Indian Supreme Court’s environmental experts were clear about this: ‘the use of the forest land in … the Niyamgiri Hills should not be permitted.’
Niyamgiri is sacred to all local Kondhs, not just the Dongria. Many have already lost their land and livelihood to Vedanta’s refinery; they are determined not to lose their mountain as well.
Together, local Kondh communities have been blockading roads and holding protests. Their fight continues.
A village of a neighbouring Kondh tribe in the Niyamgiri foothills is bulldozed to make way for the refinery.
India's Supreme Court denies Vedanta permission to mine Niyamgiri, but invites its subsidiary, Sterlite, to apply for a licence.
The Dongria Kondh stage regular large-scale protests against the mine.
UK government condemns Vedanta's treatment of the Dongria, demands change
Victory: India's Environment Minister blocks Vedanta's proposed mine.
