Millions of forest-dwelling indigenous people in India to be evicted | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/22/millions-of-forest-dwelling-indigenous-people-in-india-to-be-evicted
Millions of Indians face eviction after the country’s supreme court ruled that indigenous people illegally living on forest land should move.
Campaigners for the rights of tribal and forest-dwelling people have called the court’s decision on Wednesday “an unprecedented disaster” and “the biggest mass eviction in the name of conservation, ever”.
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The ruling came in response to petitions filed by various wildlife conservation groups, which wanted the court to declare the 2006 Forest Rights Act invalid. The act gives forest dwelling people the right to their ancestral lands, including those in specially “protected” areas that contain sanctuaries and wildlife parks to conserve wild life. The groups told the court that “tribal” people in 20 states had encroached illegally on these protected areas, jeopardising efforts to protect wildlife and forests.
The conservation groups said state governments should see if families could prove their claim under the act and, if they could, they should be allowed to live and work on the land. If they failed to prove their claim, they should be evicted by the state government.
The supreme court has ordered the 20 state governments – where claims were considered by special committees – to act on about 1.1m claims now rejected as bogus and evict the families. Depending on the size of the families, more than 1m claims could translate to about 5-7 million people being evicted by 27 July.
Survival International’s director, Stephen Corry, said: “This judgment is a death sentence for millions of tribal people in India, land theft on an epic scale and a monumental injustice. It will lead to wholesale misery, impoverishment, disease and death, an urgent humanitarian crisis, and it will do nothing to save the forests which these tribespeople have protected for generations.”
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▻https://countercurrents.org/2019/02/21/supreme-court-of-india-orders-forced-eviction-of-1-million-adivasis
#Inde #forêt #peuples_des_forêts #intouchables #évictions_forcées #guerre_aux_pauvres