All nuclear projects in India meet public opposition, despite govt’s terror tactics to silence critics

India’s Judiciary creates scam over Kudankulam The Canadian, 17 SEPTEMBER 2012 There is no reason why the judiciary, the conscience of the nation, should willingly play pro-regime roles by opposing people’s and humanity concerns……

as national support for the five-year-long campaign against the Jaitapur plant snowballed. The National Committee in Solidarity with the Jaitapur Struggle – comprising leaders like Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, Sitaram Yechury and Ram Vilas Paswan, independent experts and intellectuals – trenchantly criticised the project, based on French company Areva’s troubled European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs).

……..The Manmohan-Joyalalitha regime has not yet realized that it’s pointless to try and silence the masses by state terror techniques. The state frustration in not being able to impose nuclearism on people has led to repression, including lethal firing, unleashed on peaceful protesters against the Kudankulam nuclear plant , on top of FIRs over many months charging thousands with sedition. People are terrorized by the state which makes two things clear. Nuclear projects in India can only be thrust on unwilling citizens at gunpoint.

Extreme arrogance of Indian state terrocracy is in full display in Kudankulam. Erection of human chains in the Sea by the Jalsatyagraha shows, people will resist them tenaciously, because they are aware of their hazards. That’s true of every nuclear project, whether Jaitapur (Maharashtra), Gorakhpur (Haryana), Mithi-Virdi (Gujarat), Kovvada (Andhra Pradesh), Haripur (West Bengal), Chutka (Madhya Pradesh) or Banswada (Rajasthan). For instance, at Gorakhpur, there has been a daily dharna against four proposed reactors for two years, unbeknownst to Delhi, which lies in their potential radiation-fallout zone. Manmohan regime has decided that multiple reactors will be erected at Jaitapur, aggravating hazards, as in Fukushima.’

At the people’s hearing, activists vented their apprehensions about the safety hazards of nuclear power, heightened by the catastrophe at Fukushima and the poor safety record of India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL). They exchanged their experience of the nuclear establishment’s non-transparent and authoritarian ways, its refusal to share information of vital importance to public safety, and police vindictiveness. They also discussed how to develop common strategies. The NPCIL has no plans for long-term storage of nuclear wastes……http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/intrnational/2012/09/17/4465.html