The fight against POSCO, forced evictions and other human rights abuses
For the past eight years communities in the Eastern Indian state of Odisha, mobilized by POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS, The People’s Movement Against POSCO), have managed to resist the establishment of a project by the South Korean steel giant POSCO which threatens to forcibly displace as many as 22,000 people. As detailed last year in a report, The Price of Steel, by ESCR-Net and the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law, these communities which include betel leaf farmers, fisher folk and Dalits, have been subjected to continuing violence, arbitrary arrests, and detentions. As the report documents, “local police have barricaded villages, occupied schools, leveled thousands of homes, allegedly fabricated criminal charges against individuals opposing the project, and refused to protect individuals from consistent and sometimes fatal attacks from private actors….”
Watch this video on the fight against the POSCO project (click the “CC” button for English subtitles)
[aesop_video align=”center” src=”youtube” id=”ww02c2_5g_o” caption=”The People’s Movement Against POSCO” loop=”on” autoplay=”on” controls=”on” viewstart=”on” viewend=”on”]
PPSS reports that these abuses are continuing. They have asked people of conscience to stand in solidarity with these communities fighting for the homes and lands. You can do this in other ways by signing the petition asking one of POSCO’s main institutional investors, Warren Buffet, to divest.