Fw: Forms of Terrorism: Vandana Shiva

[Guest guest]

SOLIDARITY AGAINST ALL FORMS OF TERRORISM

 

by Vandana Shiva

 

18th September was the day for solidarity with victims of the September 11th

terrorist attack on the U.S.

 

I joined the millions to observe two minutes silence at 10:30 a.m. for those

who lost their lives in the assault on the World Trade Centre and the

Pentagon.

 

But I also thought of the millions who are victims of other terrorist

actions and other forms of violence. And I renewed my commitment to resist

violence in all its forms.

 

At 10:30 a.m. on 18th September, I was with Laxmi, Raibari, Suranam in

Jhodia Sahi village in Kashipur district in Orissa. Laxmi's husband Ghabi

Jhodia was among the 20 tribals who have recently died of starvation.

 

In the same village Subarna Jhodia had also died. Later we met Singari in

Bilamal village who has lost her husband Sadha, elder son Surat, younger son

Paila and daughter- in-law Sulami.

 

The deliberate denial of food to the hungry is at the core of the World Bank

Structural Adjustment programmes. Dismantling the Public Distribution System

(PDS) was a World Bank conditionality. It was justified on grounds of

reducing expenditure. But the food subsidy budget has exploded from Rs.

2,800 crore ( 1crore = 10 million) in 1991 to Rs. 14,000 crore in 2001. More

money is being spent to store grain because the Bank required that food

subsidies be withdrawn. This led to increase in food prices, lowering of

purchase from PDS and hence build up of stocks. The food security of the

nation is collapsing.

 

While observing 2 minutes silence in the midst of tribal families who are

victims of starvation even while 60 million tonnes are rotting in the

godowns(warehouses), I could not help but think of economic policies which

push people into poverty and starvation as a form of terrorism.

 

Starvation deaths in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Orissa are a symptom of the

breakdown of our food systems. Kashipur was gifted with abundance of nature.

Starvation does not belong here. It is the result of waves of violence

against nature and the tribal communities. It is a result of a brutal state

ever present to snatch the resources of the tribals for industry and private

corporations, but totally absent in providing welfare and security to the

dispossessed tribals.

 

The starvation deaths in Kashipur and other regions are a result of the

ecological plunder of the resources of the region, the dismantling of the

food, security system under economic reform policies and the impact of

climate change which caused two years of crop failure due to drought and

this year's crop failure due to excessive and unseasonal rain.

 

Twenty years ago, the pulp and paper industry raped the forests of Kashipur.

Today the herbs stand naked, and the paper mills are bringing Eucalyptus

from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.

 

The terrorism of the pulp industry has already left the region devastated.

Now the giant mining companies - Hydro of Norway, Alcan of Canada, Indico,

Balco/Sterlite of India have unleashed a new wave terror. They are eyeing

the bauxite in the majestic hills of Kashipur. Bauxite is used for aluminium

- aluminium that will go to make Coca Cola cans and fighter planes.

 

Imagine each mountain to be a World Trade Centre built by nature over

millennia. Think of how many tragedies bigger than what the world

experienced on Sep 11th are taking place to provide raw material for

insatiable industry and markets. We stopped the ecological terrorism of the

mining industry in my home - the Doon Valley - in 1983. The Supreme Court

closed the mines, and ruled that commerce that threatens life must be

stopped. But our ecological victories of the 1980s were undone with the

environmental deregulation accompanying globalisation policies.

 

Mining has been " liberalised " and corporations are rushing to find minerals

wherever they can. The Aluminium companies want the homelands of the

Kashipur tribals.

 

But triabls of Kashipur refuse to leave their homes. They are defending the

land and earth - through a non-violent resistance movement -- the movement

for the Protection of Nature and People " . As Mukta Jhodia, an elderly woman

leader of the movement said at a rally on 18th in Kashipur,

 

The earth is our mother. We are born of her. We are her children. The mining

companies cannot force us to leave our land. This land was given to us by

God and creation, not by the government. The government has no right to

snatch our land from us.

 

This forced apportion of resources from people too is a form of terrorism -

corporate terrorism.

 

I had gone to offer solidarity to victims of this corporate terrorism which

was not only threatening to rob 200 villages of their survival base but had

already robbed off their lives when they were shot and killed on 16th

December 2000 by the police.

 

Abhilash was one of the victims killed in the police firing. His wife

Subarna Jhodia was expecting a baby when he was shot. When I went to meet

her in her village Maikanch, she was sitting on the doorstep of her hut with

the baby girl who was born after the father was brutally killed. I asked her

what she had named her child, she asked me to give her daughter a name. I

named her Shakti - to embody power in peaceful form - to carry in her the

`Shakti' her father and his tribal colleagues have displayed over a decade

of resistance against the terrorism of mining companies and a police state

and one combined shakti to fight all forms of terrorism.

 

50 million triabls who have been flooded out of their homes by dams over the

past 4 decades were also victims of terrorism - they have faced the terror

of technology and destructive development.

 

For the 30,000 thousand people who died in the Orissa Supercyclone, and the

millions who will die when flood and drought and cyclones become more severe

because of climate change and fossil fuel pollution, President Bush is an

ecological terrorist because he refuses to sign the Kyoto protocol.

 

And the WTO was named the World Terrirost Organisation by citizens in

Seattle because its rules are denying millions the right to life and

livelihood.

 

The tragedy of September 11 provides us with an opportunity to stop all

forms of terrorism -- militaristic, technological, economic, political.

Terrorism will not be stopped by militarised minds which create insecurity

and fear and hence breed terrorism. The present " war against terrorism " will

create a vicious cycle of violence. It will not create peace and security.

We are already witnessing a xenophobic wave sweeping across the U.S., with

Indians, Asians and Arabs being attacked and killed. We are seeing

fundamentalists of every hue emboldened by the mood for `revenge'.

 

Terrorism can only be stopped by cultures of peace, democracy, and people's

security. It is wrong to define the post September 11th world as a war

between " civilisation and barbarianism " or " democracy and terrorism " . It is

a war between two forms of terrorism which are mirror images of each other's

mindsets - mindsets based on this that can only conceive of monocultures and

must erase diversity, the very pre-condition for peace. They share the

dominant culture of violence. They used the same weapons and the same

technologies. In terms of the preference for violence and use of terror,

both sides are clones of each other. And their victims are innocent people

everywhere.

 

The real conflict is between citizens across the world longing to live in

peace and security and forces of violence and terror - denying them peace

and security.

 

The tribals in Jhodia Sahi had lit a lamp for me at the village shrine - a

small stone. These tribal shrines are insignificant when one measures them

in physical terms against the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. But

they are spiritually deeply significant because they embody a generous

cosmology of peace - peace with the earth, peace between people, peace

within people. This is the culture of peace we need to reclaim, and spread.

 

The whole world repeatedly watched the destruction of the World Trade Centre

towers, but the destruction of millions of sacred shrines and homes and

farms by forces of injustice, greed and globalisation go unnoticed.

 

As we remember the victims of Black Tuesday, let us also strengthen our

solidarity with the millions of invisible victims of other forms of

terrorism and violence which are threatening the very possibility of our

future on this planet. We can turn this tragic brutal historical moment into

building cultures of peace.

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