DO SOMETHING: Collect signatures in your community to support Indigenous Lotha Nagas tribals to save their villages from oil spills in Nagaland, India!
Our friends at AIPP and NEPA are collecting signatures to support Indigenous Lotha Nagas*! They’ve asked the APYN through the APYN Indigenous Rights Campaign Team to help? Will you?
What happened?
Oil spills from well sites to farmlands ©NEPA
Over 2,000 Lotha Naga indigenous people’s rights as an indigenous community to water, food, health, work, their cultural values and identity are being violated!
Their villages in Wokha district of Nagaland, India, have been severely affected by extensive oil spills from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) well sites in their villages for almost twenty years now! (Click here if you want to know more about the history)
How are they being affected?
The oil spillage has contaminated the farmlands, forests and water sources the community relies on for their survival. It has even tainted their spiritual sites.
Health problems in the district have also increased a lot in this area since the spills, with higher rates of water-borne diseases, malnutrition, miscarriages, cancer, kidney failure and nerve problems.
Got 3 seconds?
Recently, a case has been filed on behalf of the community at Guwahati High Court against the ONGC, Government of Nagaland and its affiliated departments.
Let’s pressure the authorities to protect the rights of Lotha Nagas with voices from young people in Asia Pacific!
Our friends at AIPP and NEPA are collecting signatures to support Indigenous Lotha Nagas online – add your name here or http://chn.ge/zXxNSN by 30 April 2012. Don’t forget to share it with your friends!
Got 3 hours?
Sign up here to organize an activity in your local community and get your friends to take action too! Send scanned or photographed copies of the petitions back to apyncampaigns@gmail.com by 15 April 2012 and we will deliver the petitions to the authorities via our friends at AIPP and NEPA. Here is how it will work:
- Sign up below
- We will send you the petition papers – print and make copies
- Organize an activity (remember to take photos!) or bring the petition papers with you where you go and ask your friends to sign the petition!
- Scan or take a photo of the petition papers, and email it to apyncampaigns@gmail.com
- Done!
Sign up NOW! |
Background
The ONGC began extraction in 1981 after acquiring permission from the Nagaland government to explore oil and natural gas in Changpang and Tsorri villages of the district. The government issued permission without obtaining consent of the community. Only after continued protests by numerous civil society groups for over a decade, did the government withdraw permission in 1994.
However, because of improper and negligent capping of the oil well sites by the ONGC, the spillage has continued for over 17 years now and continues to affect the lives of the peoples in the villages. Before the extraction was stopped, the ONGC is estimated to have produced more than 1.2 million metric tons of oil from this area; yet the company appears not to have used even a portion of the profit it made to ensure the sites were properly secured, so the environment and people in it has suffered terribly.
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this activity represent our friends at AIPP and NEPA and individuals in the APYN Indigenous Youth Campaign Team and do not necessarily reflect those of the Asia Pacific Youth Network, all APYN partners or its members.
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Take action now!
The idea is noteworthy as the extraction and spillage has brought misery to a section of the indigenous Nagas.
However, the petition should have been more clear as to how Nagaland government figures in the whole scheme of things. Nagaland is a state within India and the petition does not explain where exactly is the location.
The oil spills are affecting lives of Lotha Nagas in Changpang and Tsorri villages in Wokha district of Nagaland. Nagaland state government of India gave permission for oil extraction in the villages in 1973 without consultation and consent from local indigenous Naga communities in violation Article 371 (A) of Constitution of India 1949. And the continuing oil spillage that affects lands and resources of Naga people violates their rights under UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Click the link http://chn.ge/zXxNSN for more details and sign the petition to support the struggle of Naga people to protect their villages.
Should you have any further question, don’t hesitate to post it here.