Foil Vedanta
The time has come around again for our annual Global Day of Action against Vedanta at their AGM. We will bring the defiant energy of communities fighting (and winning) against Vedanta around the world to London! From pollution affected communities of Zambia who won their 9 years battle in their Supreme Court, and now won the right to have their case heard in Britain, to the indigenous Dongria Kond who are now demanding the dismantling of their refinery in Lanjigarh after winning their case in the Supreme Court of India (see below for more).
Parallel demonstrations are already planned in Zambia and India on the 4th August for this Global Day of Action and questions raised by the communities will be asked inside the AGM meeting.
Please join our Facebook event page if you can come to London on 5th August. Poster also attached. PLEASE SPREAD THIS INFO FAR AND WIDE to like minded groups and individuals with anti-neocolonial agenda!
If you would like to plan a demonstration or organise any event in solidarity with any Vedanta affected community, in any pat of the world please get in touch.
GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST the WORLD’S MOST HATED MINING COMPANY
Join us outside Vedanta’s London AGM and with communities protesting across Africa and India.
CELEBRATE THE VICTORIES WON THIS YEAR AT NIYAMGIRI AND ZAMBIA!
Bring drums, placards and loud voices.
Friday 5TH August 2016, 2 – 4pm.
Looter! Polluter! Criminal
Vedanta is a FTSE 250 British mining company controlled and owned by Anil Agarwal and his family through a series of tax havens and holding companies. It has become infamous for its violations of law, pollution and human rights abuses across India and Afrika. In Odisha their planned bauxite mine would displace a unique indigenous people from the sacred Niyamgiri mountain. This year we are celebrating the victory of the grassroots movement which has again saved the mountain from another attempt to over-rule the previous precedent Supreme Court victory! Protest marches have taken place across the mountain and walls built by Vedanta to divide communities have finally been knocked down.
At this year’s AGM we will echo the communities’ demands that Lanjigarh refinery is decommissioned!
In Zambia communities who have been systematically poisoned by toxic waste from Vedanta’s Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) since 2005 have recently won the right to have their case against Vedanta heard in London. The Zambian government is also taking Vedanta to court in London over $100 million owed to them. KCM has been exposed for misdeclaring profits, failing to pay taxes and not submitting any annual accounts in Zambia, enabling massive capital flight that keeps Zambia poor despite its valuable mineral wealth. Zambia’s elections are a few days after the AGM, and the opposition party is sponsored by another mining company – Anglo American, equally guilty of corporate crimes.
We will demand that KCM publish its annual accounts!
We will expose the links between the mining cartel in Zambia – First Quantum, Glencore, Vedanta and Anglo American, and demand an end to neo-colonial loot of Zambia’s minerals.
At Vedanta’s Korba aluminium smelter in Chhattisgarh up to 100 people were killed in 2009 when a chimney collapsed on workers. At last year’s AGM copies of the Bakshi report which held Vedanta guilty of this heinous crime were handed out by activists after the company had suppressed the results. Vedanta’s bauxite mines in Chhattisgarh have displaced and brutally exploited the Baiga people who occupied the area, forcing them to work in terrible conditions breaking up and loading laterite stones by hand.
We will demand an end to the exploitation of the Baiga people.
We will demand that Vedanta apologise and compensate all the families of the workers killed at Korba.
Vedanta is controlled and 69.6% owned by Brit Anil Agarwal and his family through a series of tax havens and holding companies. It was launched on the London Stock Exchange in 2003 with the assistance of the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), who continue with their support for the company.
