Goan Anti-Mining Activists Cry Foul as Old and Innocent Arrested Police action to arrest an 85-year-old and 8-year-old child raises a storm
By Armstrong Vaz This is the time for solidarity. This type of harassment of innocent people fighting for their lives, their forests, their fields, for Goa, simply cannot go on. Those arrested included an 85-year-old woman Dora D'Souza, her daughter-in-law Sheryl D'Souza and her eight-year-old daughter. What is Goa coming to Goa, questions noted environmentalist and rights campaigner Claude Alvares. His reaction was to the arrest of the three along with a five others in Maina, village in Quepem Taluka in South Goa. The three along with their domestic help have been arrested by Quepem Police on Saturday afternoon while exercising their democratic right of protesting the destruction of the environment. Noted researcher, an avid environmentalist and a nature lover Sebastian Rodrigues has also been arrested. The group has been protesting the terror tactics of the men owing allegiance to the congress party which heads the coalition government in the state, on the villagers who are fighting for their "Right To Life" as guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. The "Right to Life" includes the right to clean air and water. But then arresting the old and the young innocent minds is not a new tactic employed by the Goa police. "Those who attended the historic Dec. 18, 2006, public meeting of the Goa Bachao Andolan will remember the little children who were brought on stage. We were shocked to learn that the police had registered (at the behest of the Mining Mafia) Chapter-Cases against the minor children," recalls Pravin Sabnis, who has been following the mining agitation and environmental issues in the state. Accompanying the children and the villagers from Sulcorna was a thin priest with resolute determination writ on his face. Brother Philip Neri gave a purpose to the people's movements in Sulcorna, Colamb and elsewhere. Though away from Goa, his heart bleeds at the excesses and injustice committed against people. Through an email message he says "Goa's local Congress which includes a Minister in the state government, a leader of the Goa Youth Congress, and a member of the Zilla Parishad who are in the business of (mining) destroying the environment in the talukas of Sanguem and Quepem in South Goa have unleashed terror on the villagers of Maina -- Quepem using government machinery." Meanwhile, the manhandling and the arrest and detaining of Sebastian Rodrigues, a dedicated anti-mining activists along with other co-activist of Colamb by the Goa police, has been condemned by various sections of the people. Earlier, Rodrigues had expressed fears that his telephone has being tapped and his conversations with his friends having been eaves-dropped upon. A Ph. D. student he has been involved nationally and internationally in bringing awareness to the world about the ill-effects of unplanned, un-controlled, un-organized and/or illegal mining in India, more specifically in his home state of Goa. He has been a source of enlightenment to various villages and its hapless people who are doomed by the threat of entire their villages being destroyed by un-ethical and random mining through destruction of flora and fauna, the hills, the ground water resources and the green cover indigenous to Goa. Rodrigues had earlier been branded a 'Naxalite' by the Leader of the Opposition, Manohar Parrikar, who has been seen to openly connive with the vested interests, in order to discourage the growing resistance to the malafide and opportunistic mining operations in Goa. The Goa Su-Raj Party has sternly warned the Goa Police and the Goa Government to tread very carefully with the Party's member activist Rodrigues, if they do not want to see the hitherto smoldering Goa's anti-mining activism breaking loose to erupt and engulf every corner of Goa. The Goa Su-Raj Party warns the Goa Government to ensure that Rodrigues and his activist colleagues are not bodily harmed and that those persons and/or the goons on the payroll of the mine operators who have inflicted injuries on the persons of these activists be thoroughly investigated and brought to book. "The Goa Su-Raj Party is of the belief that if the God given mineral wealth of Goa does not benefit the people of Goa, and on the contrary if it threatens their very existence, the it must remain where it is, untouched and undisturbed, irrespective of the Government of Goa or the Central Government, for that matter, likes it or not." http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=435648&; no=383877&rel_no=1 ~(^^)~ Avelino
