Vedanta: clean up your mess

Date: 31 August 2012

On Tuesday 28 August, WDM volunteers Farha and Isabel attended a demonstration targeting the Vedanta Resources AGM. Here they report back on the protest:

The demonstration was organised by Foil Vedanta, along with members of other campaigning organisations including Amnesty International and the London Mining Network to expose the truth about the company and counter the “sustainability credentials” Vedanta was presenting to its shareholders. As well as holding a protest outside the AGM,  Samar Indradas, a Foil Vedanta campaigner attended the AGM as a shareholder to ask the board questions.

Vedanta Resources is a mining company which operates in India, Zambia and Australia, mining copper, zinc and bauxite. It was founded in 1976 and was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2003. The company has been widely criticised for its ‘corporate irresponsibility’ in causing environmental damage and been accused of several human rights abuses. Last year Vedanta involved in a scandal for releasing toxic red mud from its Lanjigarh alumina refinery into local river systems and dumping toxic fly ash in woodlands around its Jharsaguda smelter in Orissa.

It is clear that Vedanta Resources and its subsidiaries […] have failed to respect the human rights of the people of the Lanjigarh and the Niyamgiri Hills.

(from Amnesty International’s report: Don’t Mine Us out of Existence: Bauxite Mine and Refinery Devastate Lives in India)

Vedanta’s history of running unsafe mining operations that have resulted in over a thousand injuries and 40 work related deaths caused the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the British Safety Council to withdraw two of Vedanta’s safety awards in May.

Despite facing such criticism, the British government through the Department for International Development continues to support Vedanta’s mining activities. DfID helped launch Vedanta on the London Stock Exchange and continues to support the company with its copper mining in Zambia. In 2005, DfID the ‘Orissa Drivers for Change’ research project was set up to promote mineral intensive industrialisation of the region and continues to fund Business Partners for Development (now renamed as Building Partnerships for Development) that supports industrial companies in India [http://www.redhotcurry.com/news/2010/foil-vedanta.htm]. This contrasts with Norway’s approach: In 2007, the Norwegian finance minister announced the Norwegian Government Pension Fund had sold its Vedanta shares and blacklisted the company after its ethics council raised qualms about allegations of environmental damage and human rights abuses in India.

Farha reports on her experience of the protest:

As we arrived at the Lincoln Centre on Tuesday, a sense of anticipation and excitement overwhelmed me. As we joined them, I was given a banner written “Vedanta, Quit Lanjigarth Now”, and proudly, I positioned myself behind the megaphones, held the banner high and started chanting the slogans. I say proudly because I have never before experienced the excitement public demonstrations as I did on Tuesday. Around 100 activists were gathered outside the Vedanta Resources AGM waving placards and chanting slogans such as “Vedanta, Dfid, here I say, Niyamgiri will make you pay”, “Vedanta, out out out”, “Anil Agarwal, blood on your hands”. During the demonstration, red paint symbolising blood was poured on a girl lying down on the pavement. People then started chanting: “Vedanta, clean up your own mess”.

I come from a little island in the Indian Ocean, Mauritius, but I have never felt as ‘part of something’ as I have when being on a demonstration. Being on a protest is quite new to me and is something I discovered when came to study at Durham University. It is an amazing feat that people can speak out against abusive policies of corporations and governments, and we have to keep doing so.

Isabel writes of her experience:

I come from a country in the global south where taking part in demonstrations can be dangerous. During the protest against Vedanta I was thinking about how by being allowed to protest we were able to express ourselves without risking our lives.

Extracting and mining natural resources directly impacts indigenous communities in developing countries. Whilst in the UK we may not be directly affected, the British government is complicit in supporting companies like Vedanta – and so it is important that we take action to prevent human rights abuses from taking place.

You can find out more about the Foil Vedanta campaign here.