by DGR News Service | Mar 2, 2020 | Movement Building & Support
Deep Green Resistance (DGR) is an aboveground radical ecological and social justice organization, that seeks to deprive the powerful of their ability to exploit the powerless. We have been working in building local communities and taking direct action against structures of power across different areas. We are seeking to expand our organization to South Asia.
DGR is a volunteer based organization. We (the volunteers) are driven by our love for the natural world, and our commitment towards building a just community. We have the flexibility to decide the amount of time we are comfortable contributing to the cause given our other obligations and commitments. We can also choose the types of activities we participate in, based on our unique set of interests.
Getting Involved in DGR South Asia
Running an organization is a collective process. It requires completion of a wide variety of works. No matter what our talents or interests are, we can each contribute to the cause in our own unique way. Some ways that you can show your support are:
Connecting to the local communities: DGR is a grassroots organization. We believe that empowering the local communities is imperative for any movement. You can inform us about the situation of ecological and social justice in your area, any movements in the area, and local organizations working on these issues.
Organizing events: If you are interested in organizing any events that reflect the goals of DGR, or inviting us to your events, we would love to hear more about it and show our support in any way.
Writing articles: We encourage our volunteers to write articles related to ecological justice, social justice, resistance movements, etc.
Legal information & support: Every state has different rules and laws related to environmental and social issues, political movements, activism, etc. If you are well-informed about the laws in your area, please do share it. It would highly bolster the effectiveness of any organization.
Translation: We want to make our materials accessible to all. For that, we are seeking to translate our materials to as much of the local languages as we can. You can help us translate the materials to your local language.
The above list is not exhaustive. Even if you do not yet know how you can contribute to the cause, please do connect to us. We would love to hear from anyone who cares about the Earth.
How to contact us
If you are want to get involved in the chapter in any way, or are interested in knowing more about Deep Green Resistance,, please do contact us at southasia@deepgreenresistance.org or visit www.deepgreenresistance.org. We would love to hear from you!!
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 18, 2018 | Colonialism & Conquest
Featured image: The Marma, like other tribes of the CHT, have faced years of violence, land-grabbing and intimidation. © Mark McEvoy/Survival International
by Survival International
Two sisters from the Marma indigenous tribe of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh are being held against their will after being raped and sexually assaulted at gun point, allegedly by members of the Bangladesh security forces.
The Jummas, a collective name for the tribes living in the CHT, continue to face endemic violence, land-grabbing and intimidation on their ancestral land. Jumma women and girls are frequently subjected to rape and sexual assault at the hands of Bengali settlers and the armed forces.
The Marma girls, aged 19 and 14, describe men in army uniforms entering their house during a raid in the early hours of January 22. They report that the older sister was raped and the younger was sexually assaulted during an attempted rape.
The army and other security forces have denied the attacks took place, and the authorities are now not allowing the girls to be released from hospital. Their room is being guarded by police who are refusing to allow human rights activists or journalists to talk to the victims.
The sisters fear for their own, and their family’s, safety. Those who have been able to speak to the girls report that they are traumatised, not only by the initial brutal attacks but also by the numerous interrogations by male police officers and the entry of male security personnel into their hospital room throughout the day and night.
The girls speak only their tribal Marma language and have been refused access to familiar indigenous food brought to the hospital by well wishers.
Raja Devasish Roy, the Chakma king, Survival and other human rights activists have called for the girls to be released from the hospital and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 3, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
by Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) via Cultural Survival
A massive communal and arson attack on four Jumma localities was carried by the Bengali Muslim settlers with the support of army and police in Longadu under Rangamati hill district of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) on 2 June 2017. This organized and army-police-backed arson and communal attack claimed more than 300 Jumma houses burnt to ashes, of which it counts more than 200 houses and shops in Tintila of Longadu upazila headquarters and more 120 houses (around 40 houses in each of the three villages) in Manikjorchara, Battya Para and Baradom villages to have been completely burnt down. It is reported that at least an aged woman named Guna Mala Chakma (75) w/o late Rabichan Chakma was killed in this arson attack. Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) expresses strong protest and condemnation over the setting fire and looting in the houses of indigenous Jumma peoples and massive communal attack.
It is learnt that centering recovery of a dead body identified to be of a driver of motor cycle Nurul Islam Nayon in Khagrachari, a belligerent procession of the Bengali Muslim settlers from Battya Para of Longadu upazila took to street under coverage of the army and police forces around 9:00 am. When the procession reached at Longadu upazila headquarters around 10:00 am, the settlers from within the procession began looting and setting fire in the Jumma houses and shops including the PCJSS office without any provocation. At this, 200 houses and shops belonging Jumma people got burnt down. Afterward, the Bengali Muslim settlers left for nearby Manikjorchara to attack the village under army and police force protection. At this, around 40 houses of the village were completely reduced to ashes.
The local administration promulgated Section 144 around 12:00 noon. But it was learnt that despite being so, the settlers moved ahead under army-police guard and set fire in the villages of South Manikjorechara, Battya Para, Boradam, etc. Jumma localities and these were being carried out at the time of origination of this report. In this attack, 30/35 houses in Battya Para and 40 houses in Boradom villages were burnt to ashes.
On receipt of the news of setting out a procession with the dead body last night, the local Jumma public representatives and leaders called on Longadu army zone and Longadu police station authorities to apprise their sense of danger and lacking of security. This morning, the 2nd-in-Command (2IC) Major Rafique of Longadu army zone assured on behalf of the army zone saying: “Staging procession is a democratic right of the settlers. They will exercise their right peacefully. No untoward incident will be allowed to happen. Hence, there is nothing to be worried.” Saying so, the commander assured the local Jumma public representatives and leaders, but it is a great irony that the settlers carried out organized attacks, looted and set fire in the Jumma houses and shops in all time presence of Longadu Zone Commander Lt. Col. Abdul Alim Choudhury psc, 2IC Major Rafique and Officer-In-Charge (OC) of Longadu police station Mominul Islam along with the joint forces.
It is learnt that the militant procession of the settlers was also participated by the national parties irrespective of their ideologies and differences, such as, ruling Awami League, BNP, Jatiya Party, Jamat-E-Islam etc. including the so-called Parbatya Chattagram Samo Odhikar Andolan (CHT Equal Rights Movement) and other upstarts organizations of the settlers. As part of their solidarity, Juba League, youth wing of the ruling party, organized a procession at 11:00 am today in Rangamati town in protest against killing of the said motor bike driver. It has been reported that anti-Jumma communal slogans were shouted during the demonstration.
Despite assurance given on part of the army and police authorities, the unabated looting and arson attack in the Jumma houses in the very presence of the authorities who ensured verbal assurance, it can safely be concluded that the Bengali Muslim settlers procession with the dead body has been a deliberate one in orchestration of the army-police forces and local leadership of the ruling party.
PCJSS considers this sort of organized communal and arson attack that happened today, has been conducted with the support of state machineries and local leadership of the ruling party to evict the Jumma people from their ancestral lands, to obstruct the implementation process of the CHT Accord, and over all to achieve their mean objective of turning the CHT region into a Muslim-dominated region.
The PCJSS, calls upon all the parties concerned to stop the army-police-backed communal and arson attacks by the Bengali Muslim settlers and to step up legal measures to bring all those army-police personnel and settlers responsible for the attack, looting and arson in the Jumma houses and shops, on an emergency basis.
Illegal search in the house of PCJSS leader & harassment of family members by the BGB in Kaptai
In a press release signed by Assistant Information and Publicity Secretary of Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) Sajib Chakma dated 1 June 2017, PCJSS strongly protested against illegal search in the house of Areise Marma, President of PCJSS Raikhali Union Branch and and ill-attempt of planting explosive materials inside the house, beating and undue harassment upon his family members.
PCJSS says, a BGB troop of 19 Battalion from Wagga BGB Zone and Dongchari BGB camp entered the No.1 Para of Narangirimukh under Kaptai Upazila of Rangamati Hill District and conducted a thorough search in the house of Areise Marma (55), President Mv Raikhali Union Branch of PCJSS at the wee hours of today, 1 June 2017. It was learnt that the BGB searching party handcuffed Mathuiching Marma, wife of Areise Marma and slapped their daughter Unuching Marma.
As per the statement on the occurrence, the BGB personnel surrounded Areise Marma’s house at 01:30 am and having waken up the inmates of the house, began their search and this continued till 4:00 am. The BGB searching party were looking for Areise Marma who was not at home by then. At certain point of their search, Unuching Marama, daughter of Areise Marma noticed the BGB personnel digging the inside floor by theft and planting some explosive materials taken out from their bag that they carried along with and soon she offered challenge saying that it was they who brought in those articles, which were never part of their household objects. The BGB person concerned, for being unsuccessful, got tempered and slapped Unuching Marma with might.
At certain phase of searching, the BGB personnel locked Mathuiching Marma, wife of Areise Marma with handcuff. They entered into the bedroom of Areise Marma’s son and daughter-in-law and muddled the household articles including the wears and all. They snatched the mobile phones from the family members and mounted heavy pressure upon them seeking to know whereabouts of the arms and show the cached arms to them. The BGB kept them under threatening of sending to jail and filing up cases against them, if they did not show the location of the arms. The BGB personnel did not let them go to bed and harassed all the family members outside their house till 4:00 am. While leaving around 4.00 am they BGB wrote a note in a piece of white paper stating that nothing was done to the family members and made Unuching put her signature in the paper.
The PCJSS strongly protests against such conspiring and ill-attempt of planting explosive materials inside the house of Areise Marma, President of PCJSS Raikhali Union Branch, beating and undue harassment upon his family members and demands immediate stop to such conspiring and illegal searching.
It is worthy to be cited here that a group of BGB personnel from Wagga BGB Zone arrested No.4 Raikhali Union Council member and also Vice-President of PCJSS Raikhali Union Committee and his son Kyawhing Hla Marma, President of Kaptai Thana Branch of Pahari Chhatra Parishad by unknowingly planting explosive materials inside their house on 31 March 2017. They were taken to Rangamati Amy Zone and brought out heavy inhuman torture upon them. The BGB and Army Zone authorities made the severely wounded father and son say what they were taught to confess to the local press media.
In recent days, searching operation elsewhere by army and BGB, filing up false-based and fabricated cases entangling the Jumma people including the PCJSS members engaged in the movement for rights and implementation of the CHT Accord, taking the arrested by secretly planting fire arms and sending to jail, meting out physical torture and harassment have become a very common scenario with intensity. The PCJSS has the ground to believe all this design to have been being directed to achieve mean objectives of identifying the just movement for implementation of the CHT Accord as an act of terrorism, destroying the dynamic leadership of PCJSS and over all, to obstruct the implementation process of the CHT Accord and to utter surprise to note that the atrocities upon the members of PCJSS and its associate organizations are being meted out by the army-BGB-police forces with the support of the ruling party, the misdeeds of which can never yield in wellbeing to the national interest.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 23, 2016 | Mining & Drilling, Repression at Home
By Cultural Survival
At least four people were killed after police opened fire at a massive protest of several thousand villagers in Bangladesh Monday, April 4th, reported the Phulbari Solidarity Group.
“This is a terrible tragedy and major news. It is the largest loss of life at an anti-coal protest in Bangladesh since the tragic deaths in the August 26, 2006 killings at Phulbari, Bangladesh, where three people were killed and 200 injured by paramilitaries. It is the worst overall loss of life in anti-coal protests worldwide since the killings of six people in Jharkhand, India, at two protests in April 2011,” noted Ted Nace, the editor of Coal Swarm.
Professor Anu Muhammd, the Member Secretary of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Port in Bangladesh, noted: “The villagers in Bashkhali have been loud against the destructive plans of S. Alam Group for months because the company wants to build two coal-fired power plants in the area by evicting thousands of villagers and landowners. The coal-businessmen of S. Alam Group, financed by two Chinese firms — SEPCOIII Electric Power and HTG, were fully aware of the strong opposition to the coal-power plant.”
According to the Daily Star, in December 2013, S Alam Group, struck an agreement with SEPCO3 Electric Power Construction Corporation of China to set up a coal-fired power plant in Banshkhali district of Chittagong, Bangladesh. On February 16 this year, the government signed power purchase agreements with two private joint ventures led by S Alam Group to buy electricity at Tk 6.61 per kilowatt-hour from two projects with power generation capacity of 1,224MW. S Alam Group and their Chinese backers plan to initiate the power plant by November 2019 across a 600-acre site. No consultation has taken place with communities members who would be affected. The project will require an investment of $2.4 billion of which $1.75 billion will come from Chinese lenders.
Abu Ahmed was a witness to the police violence, himself being shot in his leg. He said that the villagers had been holding peaceful protests for days after S. Alam, the local conglomerate behind the project, started purchasing land for the plants in the village, which lies on the edge of the Bay of Bengal. But the government did not pay attention to the village protests and the district administration remained silent for months. This led the villagers to stage a mass protest which turned into the worst tragedy in the history of coal in Bangladesh. The government of Bangaldesh announced on April 9 that work at the $2.4 billion power plant would be suspended for 15 days, while it carries out an assessment of the plant’s environmental impact, led by Bangladeshi and foreign scientists.
The plans for coal mine join a laundry list of other planned coal projects being pursued by the government of Bangladesh and foreign investors, despite huge opposition from communities, international coalitions, human rights experts, and environmentalists. Phulbari coal project, in Northeastern Bangladesh, is one infamous case that has lead to massive protests over the 8 years since it was first proposed by GCM resources, a British-based company. Ongoing mobilizations by communities on the ground have been successful in preventing the licensing of the coal mine, and resulted in plummeting financial loss for GCM, who failed to conduct adequate social and environmental impact studies and gain the free, prior, informed consent of the communities at various stages of the project’s life.
As a rapidly developing country, Bangaldesh has a strong demand for electricity, but communities are not willing to accept development at the cost of losing their lands and livelihoods.
In an op-ed in the Dhaka Tribune, Professor Muhammed argued, “Tension and resistance will be certainties if a so-called development projects like this are implemented forcefully and through fraudulent activities and corruption. People will not accept any project that goes against the locals’ interests or may harm the national interests or is taken up without maintaining transparency.”
Bangladesh has made plans to ramp up its coal production, with the goal of setting up 25 coal-fired power plants by 2022. However this lies in conflict with its goals to curb carbon emissions in line with the climate treaty negotiations agreed to in Paris in 2015 known was the COP 21 agreement, to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
An analysis by the Climate Action Tracker presented at the COP 21 found that attempts to keep global warming to 2 degrees will be wildly off course if existing plans for coal-fire plants are carried out, as coal is the world’s single biggest contributor to global warming. Just by allowing the 2,440 coal-fired power stations that are currently planned would cause emissions rates four times higher than the 2-degree target by 2030. Without a single new coal plant, allowing existing coal plants to continue operating would lead to emissions rates 150 percent higher than what is consistent with a 2-degree target.
Bangladesh was part of a coalition of developing countries who argued for rich countries, who carry more responsibility for climate change, to carry more of the financial burden that developing countries would incur in order to leapfrog past dirty fossil fuels like coal.
Read more: After the COP21: How Bangladesh Can Move Past Coal and Why Rich Countries Must Help
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 25, 2012 | Worker Exploitation
By Agence France-Presse
At least 109 people died when fire swept through a factory in the worst-ever blaze to hit Bangladesh’s garment industry, officials said Sunday, as witnesses told of desperate workers jumping from upper floors.
Firefighters battled for several hours to contain the blaze, which broke out on the ground floor of the nine-storey Tazreen Fashion plant 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital Dhaka late on Saturday.
Survivors told how panicked staff, most of them women, tried to escape the burning factory, which made clothes for international brands including the European chain C&A and the Hong Kong-based Li & Fung company.
“I smelt smoke and ran downstairs and found that the place was already full with black fumes,” Rabiul Islam told AFP as he surveyed the gutted ruins of the building where many of his colleagues had died.
“With another worker, I broke open an exhaust fan in the second floor and jumped to the roof of a shed next to the factory,” he said. “I broke my hand but survived somehow.”
Bangladesh is a global centre for clothes manufacturing due to cheap labour, with many popular brands using huge factories to produce items for export to Western markets. But work conditions are often basic and safety standards low.
Dhaka district commissioner Yusuf Harun told AFP the death toll was 109, including several workers who died while jumping from windows or the roof. About 100 people were injured.
“We laid the bodies out in the grounds of a nearby school and have now started handing them over to relatives,” Harun said.
The director of the fire brigade, Major Mahbub, who uses one name, said many victims died of suffocation as the blaze started in the ground-floor warehouse, trapping staff working on the night shift.
“The factory had three exits but since the fire was on the ground floor, workers could not come downstairs,” he said, adding that most victims were women.
Kalpona Akter, director of the Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity, said the blaze was the worst that the nation’s garment industry had ever suffered.
The owner of the factory, Delwar Hossain, told AFP by telephone the cause of the fire was not yet known but he denied his premises were unsafe.
“It is a huge loss for my staff and my factory. This is the first time we have ever had a fire at one of my seven factories,” he said, confirming that the plant made clothes for C&A and Li & Fung.
Thorsten Rolfes, C&A spokesman in Berlin, said the company had commissioned the factory to make 220,000 sweaters to be delivered to Brazil.
“The victims and their families are in our thoughts and prayers,” he said.
Li & Fung was not immediately available for comment.
Tuba Group, the parent company of Tazreen Fashion, said on its website that the factory opened in 2009 and employed 1,630 workers making polo shirts, T-shirts and jackets.
It also said its factories make clothes for Walmart, Carrefour and IKEA, and added that the Tazreen plant had 60 smoke detectors and more than 200 fire extinguishers.
Relatives of the workers made phone calls to those inside the factory as it burned, local residents told AFP, and one witness said firefighters were helpless as the blaze took hold.
“I came to the factory premises and found workers crying for help,” Mohammad Ratan said. “I saw many jumping from windows.”
A police investigation was underway and no cause had been identified, but fires as a result of short-circuits and shoddy electrical wiring are common in South Asian factories.
A blaze in a Pakistan garment factory in September killed 289 workers and injured 110 more. Two of the owners are facing murder charges.
According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, a Amsterdam-based textile rights group, at least 500 Bangladeshi garment workers have died since 2006 in factory fires.
“These brands have known for years that many of the factories they choose to work with are death traps,” said its spokeswoman Ineke Zeldenrust. “Their failure to take action amounts to criminal negligence.”
Bangladesh has recently emerged as the world’s second-largest clothes exporter with overseas garment sales topping $19 billion last year, or 80 percent of national exports.
The sector is the mainstay of the poverty-stricken country’s economy, employing 40 percent of its industrial workforce.
From The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/25/garment-factory-blaze-kills-109-in-bangladesh/
