Home Ministry’s Intimidatory Tactics Against Rights Activist
By Gladson Dungdung
06 May, 2010
Countercurrents.org
This is to inform you that the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Government of India has been monitoring my activities almost everyday, which I got to know from an officer of the Ministry who visited to my office at 11 AM on 29th of April 2010. He informed me that I was taken seriously by the Ministry in 2008 when I had started raising serious questions against the Arcelor Mittal Company, who has signed an MoU for 12 Mt Steel Plant with the investment of Rs. 40,000 crore. Mr. Arjun Munda then the Chief Minister of Jharkhand had shown it as the biggest achievement of his one-year tenure. We the Adivasi youth had protested under the banner of Jharkhand Indigenous People’s Forum against a tie-up between the DON BOSCO ITI and Arcelor Mittal Company. Consequently, they had to break the tie-up.
According to the officer, the Ministry’s monitoring was intensified against me when I had written a letter to Mr. P. Chidambaram the Home Minister of India on 19 March 2010 asking him to stop the Operation Green Hunt. I had also given him 10 points suggestions for dealing with the issue of Naxalism. When this letter reached to the Ministry, there was anxiety in the office and it was immediately sent back to it’s Ranchi unit and asked to submit a report immediately about me. Since, there was no any evidence against me related to so-called anti-national activities therefore no action was taken against me.
However, the officer has asked me to send him a copy of my writing whenever I write a piece in future. I should report him about the programme if I organize or participate especially related to the issues of land, forest, water, Adivasi and operation green hunt. I should also report him about all the major activities I do in daily basis. It is obvious that the Ministry of Home Affairs has been monitoring my activities under pressure from the corporate houses. Hence, the Ministry is promoting the acts of intimidation and seizing my right to freedom of thought and expression.
Therefore, I appeal to all the civil society organizations, people’s movements and individual to oppose the unconstitutional acts of the Ministry of Home Affairs for the protection of my rights, the democracy and the Indian constitution.
PS: My friends also informed me that there is an attempt to book me under the charge of Sedition or any other serious offence.
Gladson Dungdung
H R Activist and Writer
Convenor of Jharkhand Indigenous People's Forum
Email: [email protected]
To know more about Gladsun Dungdung Read his story here
Am I A Maoist?
By Gladson Dungdung
I’m neither a Maoist nor a Gandhian but I’m an Adivasi who is determined to fight for his own people, whom the Indian State has alienated, displaced and dispossessed from their resources and is continually doing it in the name of development, national security and national interest even today
