Repression of anti nuclear protestors in India

………The state has unleashed savage repression on Jaitapur’s people. It routinely arrests and serves externment notices to peaceful protesters, and promulgates prohibitory orders, under which eminent citizens like former Navy chief L. Ramdas and former Supreme Court judge P.B. Sawant were barred from Jaitapur, and former Bombay High Court judge B.G. Kolse-Patil was detained for five days without being produced before a magistrate within 24 hours.

Others have had false charges framed against them,

Nuclear trouble in Maharashtra, The Daily Star, 3 Feb 2011, Praful Bidwai “……….

Jaitapur will become the world’s largest nuclear power station, generating 9,900 MW, or more than double India’s current nuclear capacity (4,780 MW). It will also wreck 40,000 people’s livelihoods and generate electricity that” three to five times costlier than power from other sources, thus magnifying the economic disaster called Enron, also located in Ratnagiri.

However, Jaitapur will be a nuclear Enron

Others have had false charges framed against them, including attempt to murder. The higher judiciary has refused them anticipatory bail. This unprecedented repression resembles the police raj in Maharashtra’s Naxalite-affected areas.

In what has become a massive assault on democracy, the government lies to, ignores, or beats the local people at will……

The people oppose the project because it will destroy their livelihoods, just as the Tarapur reactors nearby have done.

They know of the hazards of radiation and the DAE’s poor safety performance, including the exposure of hundreds in Tarapur to radiation exceeding permissible limits, genetic deformities from uranium mining in Jaduguda, and higher-than-normal incidence of cancers near reactors.