Antinuclear

Prominent Indian citizens appeal to Australian Prime Minister against selling uranium to India

CNDP Appeals To The Australian PM Against Uranium Export to India http://www.countercurrents.org/cndp161012.htm 16 October, 2012

Dear Prime Minister,

We urge you to reconsider the decision to supply uranium to India. This uranium will fuel the massive expansion of nuclear power programme that the Indian government is undemocratically pushing on poor people of India, criminally overlooking the concerns of safety, environment, livelihoods of surrounding populations and the financial implications.

Supplying uranium to India also amounts to legitimizing its status as a nuclear weapons state. At a time when people’s aspirations for
comprehensive nuclear disarmament have heightened globally, any such
dilution of disarmament norms would be unfortunate.

As the struggles of common people, farmers, fisherfolk, women and
children in places like Koodankulam, Jaitapur(Maharashtra), Mithivirdi
(Gujaratat), Fatehabad (Haryana), Chutka (Madhya Pradesh), Kovvada
(Andhra Pradesh) etc have highlighted, the nuclear expansion is in no
way helping the poor, as it was claimed by you while reversing the
Australian Labour Party’s policy of not supplying uranium to India. In
fact, under the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Indian elite offered the
lives and livelihoods of its poor people, India’s huge consumer market
and rehabilitating global nuclear corporates in return for an elusive
seat on the nuclear high table.

In Koodankulam 2 fishermen have died recently in a brutal police
repression while large numbers of protesters are languishing in jail.
Charges of sedition and ‘war against the Indian state’ have been
leveled against thousands of non-violent protesters in past few
months. In the pursuit of this nuclear insanity, the government has
brushed aside the voices of its own secretaries, the Chief Information
Commissioner, members of the National Advisory Council and voices of
independent experts and eminent citizens. We reiterate our demand to
drop all fictitious charges against the Koodankulam protesters and
initiate a broad-based public consultation on nuclear energy.

Parliamentarians from UK and Australia, human rights organizations
like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, and citizens groups from more
than 165 countries have condemned the police brutalities on the
anti-nuclear protesters in India. We urge you to take a principled
stand and reconsider supplying fuel to the Indian government’s nuclear
insanity.

For CNDP,

Achin Vanaik
Admiral L. Ramdas
Amarjeet Kaur
N D Jayaprakash
Praful Bidwai
Sukla Sen
Anil Chaudhary
Lalita Ramdas

October 16, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international