[Reader-list] CNDP Statement: No to Government Crackdown at Koodankulam

[asit das]

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*March 20, 2012*

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*No to Government Crackdown at Koodankulam*


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The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), India strongly
condemns the arrests and repression in and around Koodankulam of the
activists involved in the entirely peaceful and non-violent mass agitation
against the installation of two Russian built nuclear reactors. That the
Tamil Nadu government has decided to collude with the Central government is
deeply disappointing and will destroy the hopes that were held by the
people of southern Tamil Nadu that the state government would respect their
democratic rights and their concerns.


 Earlier the Centre made untenable allegations of foreign funding against a
longstanding peoples’ movement that is based on genuine fears concerning
the safety and environmental hazards of nuclear power. It is now clear that
those allegations as well as the revocation of a visa to a Fukushima
survivor to visit India was done with the purpose of not only seeking to
divert attention away from the strong need for a prolonged public debate on
the pros and cons on nuclear energy towards a discourse of ‘foreign
conspiracies’, but also to lay the grounds for physically repressing and
assaulting an indigenous mass movement in order to assuage the concerns of
foreign suppliers of nuclear power equipment and materials.


Not only is such anti-democratic behaviour deeply shocking, it is also
extraordinary that this should happen at a time when over 80% of the
Japanese public have repudiated nuclear energy demanding that their
country’s nuclear plants be completely phased out, and when an official
German Ethics Commission on Nuclear Safety said “Fukushima has shaken
people’s confidence in expert’s assessments of the ‘safety’ of nuclear
power stations. This is also and particularly true of those citizens who
have until now relied on such assessments. Even citizens who do not reject
nuclear power categorically are no longer prepared to leave it to
committees of experts to decide how to deal with the fundamental
possibility of an uncontrollable, major accident.”


 The CNDP demands that those arrested be immediately released and that


a) before any commissioning of reactors takes place, the ‘Expert Committee’
set up by the Tamil Nadu government, which has so far refused to even meet
the public or their representatives and experts, do so and fully address to
their satisfaction their concerns and questions.


b) That the Central government, in the light of the worldwide
disillusionment with nuclear energy, put a moratorium on all nuclear power
plans, until a full and proper public debate without any intimidation on
its part is carried out on the pros and cons of nuclear energy in India.


*For CNDP*

Achin Vanaik

Anil Chaudhary

Amarjeet Kaur

Admiral L. Ramdas

Lalita Ramdas

Praful Bidwai

P K Sundaram

Sukla Sen




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Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)

A 124/6 Katwaria Sarai, New Delhi-16

Telefax: 011-26517814

Web : www.cndpindia.org