Advocacy and lobby EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNED

RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP According to the Forest Survey of India Report of 2003, about 37.82 of the forest cover of the country and 63 of the dense forests lie in 187 tribal districts out of a total of 449 districts in the country. Hence, the Adivasi were to face one of the worst expres- sions of state brutality in contemporary India. The current crisis was precipitated when the Inspector General of Forests issued a circular on 3 May 2002 to the chief secretaries, as well as the Secretary of Forests and Principal Chief Conservator of Forests PCCF of each state and union territory, outlin- ing a “time-bound action plan” for the eviction of encroachers by 30 September 2002. Between May 2002 and March 2004, evictions were carried out from 152,400 hectares. About 300,000 forest dwellers were removed from their habitat and deprived of their livelihood during this period. Their houses were burned, crops and food were destroyed, women were raped, and men were shot at and killed. Hundreds of villages were set on fire or demolished, and this led to clashes and deaths in police firings. Earlier, in 2000, the Supreme Court banned the “removal of dead, diseased, dying or wind fallen trees, drift wood and grasses, etc.” from all national parks and wildlife sanc- tuaries. This deprived about four million people living inside protected areas of access to a critical source of survival income. At the slightest sign of opposition, the Adivasi are branded as extremists, arrested, or shot at and killed. In May to June 2002, an estimated 40,000 families were evicted from their homes, with 15,000 families forced out in the Sonitpur District of Assam alone; eight people were killed in police firings in different parts of the state. Elephants were deployed to raze the villages. On 19 February 2003, mass police action forcibly dis- persed the peaceful protest occupation of barren, deforested land by the Adivasi, with one protester killed and hundreds injured in the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary of Kerala. Stories of this type were widespread across the country. The unprecedented nationwide eviction drive led to widespread protests. The Cam- paign for Survival and Dignity CSD emerged as a result in the latter part of 2002. In July 2003, the CSD held a public hearing in Delhi, the nation’s capital, where the horror sto- ries from different parts of the country were narrated. In a coordinated move to thwart large-scale evictions, hundreds of thousands of Adivasi and other forest communities in the states of Orissa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal started filing claims of their rights in the offices of the district collectors. This process of filing claims to their lands has taken the shape of a mass movement. Around 70,000 Adivasi from the impoverished districts of Kalahandi, Bolangir and Nuapara in Orissa declared their boycott of the par- liamentary elections if their ownership rights were not settled. Towards the middle of 2004, the United Progressive Alliance UPA came to power with the promise to settle the rights of the Adivasi. In October 2004, the government was seized by crisis, and dialogue with the CSD commenced. On 21 December 2004, the Ministry of Environment and Forests MoEF was forced to issue another order to all states and union territories to stop evictions of forest dwellers until their rights had been settled. Even this had no effect. The Prime Minister, in a meeting held on 19 January 2005 with the ministers and other heads of all concerned departments plus the Plan- ning Commission, decided that the Ministry of Tribal Affairs would formulate a “Sched- uled Tribes and Forest Dwellers Recognition of Forest Rights Act” with the assistance 94 Module-4 RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP of a technical support group, keeping the discredited MoEF at bay though not out of the process. On 15 August 2005, while the nation celebrated Independence Day, the forest dwell- ers launched a nationwide protest where well over a hundred thousand participated. The CSD declared filling up jails as a form of protest, demanding the forest rights bill. About 80,000 courted arrest from mid-November until 13 December 2005, when the bill was introduced in Parliament. The left political parties had also begun taking active interest in the issue. The CSD finally won the battle for legal recognition of Adivasi rights over forest- lands, with an Act that has the following key features: • the right of Adivasi to claim their ancestral lands; • customary rights over local natural resources; • rights of settlement of old habitations and unsurveyed villages; • the right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to forest biodi- versity and cultural diversity; • the right to protect, regenerate, or conserve or manage any community forest re- source that they have been traditionally protecting and conserving; • determination of the rights by the gram sabha village assembly. However, since its formulation, the Act has been met with opposition from the governments at the center and the states, the forest bureaucracy, and a section of the conservationist non-governmental organizations. Cases demanding that Adivasi forest rights be declared null and void have been filed in the high courts and the Supreme Court. Hence, the struggle is far from over, and the CSD continues to take the lead. The CSD now is composed of about 200 mass movements covering about 13 states in India.

C. Asserive Acion and Mobilizaion

Case study 1. People’s resistance to the creation of new state forest reserves in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh written by Devasish Roy Since the 1870s, about a quarter of the Chittagong Hill Tracts CHT region in south- eastern Bangladesh total area: 13,189 sq. km. has been classified as “reserved for- ests”. These lands are directly administered by the central Department of Forests, and the land and resource rights of the communities of indigenous people living there are denied. The communities – many of whom have been occupying the lands in question for generations, even centuries – are deprived of equal access to education and health- care services, and are often persecuted or harassed by Forest Department officials who falsely implicate them in criminal cases. According to some, the people are only a little better off than modern-day “serfs”. In the early 1990s, an attempt was made to expand the area of these reserved for- ests by 890.34 sq.km. of land, including homesteads, titled land and customarily held swidden, forest and grazing commons. Notifications were issued under the Forest Act of 95 Module-4 RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 1972. This would displace tens of thousands of people, mostly indigenous communities, including those that had earlier been displaced by the Kaptai Hydroelectric Dam 1960 and rehabilitated for government-run agro-forestry projects of the Jum Control Division of the Forest Department. Facilitated by the local NGO, Taungya, many of the community leaders gathered in Rangamati in the early 1990s to deal with the issue from a common platform. They in- cluded the headmen and communities of the Betbunia-Kashkhali areas and the Chakma Chief, who petitioned the Prime Minister and concerned forest officials, plus the com- munity leaders of the Rajasthali area, who even went to the High Court to protect their rights. The case is still pending. The meeting resulted in the formation of the Commit- tee for the Protection of Forest and Land Rights in the CHT, which was later re-named as the Movement for Protection of Forest and Land Rights in the CHT. Since its inception, the Movement has been raising awareness about the issue among CHT communities. They have mounted peaceful resistance programmes and campaigns, and even held direct dialogues with Forest Department and senior government officials and leaders. Although the possession of some of these lands have been taken over, and its in- habitants evicted, in most cases the Forest Department has been unable to take over possession. It is widely believed that unity among the concerned communities has suc- ceeded in preventing takeovers, even though the formal gazette notifications have not been removed. Case study 2. Jharkhand Jungle Bachao Andolan Jharkhand Save the Forest Movement Over the past decades, communities all over India have started to protect whatever forests remain to them, and to regenerate denuded forests. In 1996, a report was pub- lished, saying: An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 villages, primarily in eastern India, have mobilized to protect one to two million hectares of regenerating forest. The evolution of this approach to resource management draws on both ancient traditions and emerg- ing strategies. Poffenberger et al. 1996: 2 In Jharkhand, the Jungal Katai Andolan was launched as early as 1978, as a pro- test movement against the devastation of forests in the Kolhan-Singhbhum area, mostly inhabited by the Hos. The forest rights movement remained particularly strong in re- gions of Ranchi and West Singhbhum districts that were inhabited by the Munda and the Ho, and protests continued in a sporadic manner until the emergence in 2000 of the Jharkhand Jungle Bachao Andolan JJBA, the Jharkhand Save the Forest Movement. The JJBA emerged out of an initiative to launch a campaign for the restoration of the forest rights of the Adivasi in Jhakhand. The forest rights campaign is run as a project by the Bindrai Institute for Research Study and Action BIRSA with support from the In- ternational Work Group for Indigenous Affairs IWGIA. Under the still ongoing project, existing Forest Protection Committees have been strengthened, and the formation of new Forest Protection Committees has been promoted. Communities have launched the JJBA as a grassroots movement for the restoration of indigenous peoples’ forest rights, 96 Module-4