Despite the bad publicity (and sternly worded blog posts from me, here and here), the UK-owned corporation Vedanta Resources and the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests show no signs of backing down from this polluting project.  I also haven’t heard whether James Cameron has taken up the tribe’s plea for assistance.  I guess he’s pretty busy at the Oscar’s tonight, but wouldn’t it be great if he said something about this at the awards ceremony?

All in all, this really sucks for the people there because the air and water in Lanjigarh, Orissa are really nasty.  Heck even the Orissa State Pollution Control Board says so.  It’s a pretty grim situation that we’ve documented extensively in this report.

That leaves you– you can take action here.   In case you need to be guilt-tripped into taking the action, see this video below.  In other words, PLEASE take action.

Hindus all over the world are preparing to celebrate Holi, the festival which celebrates the victory of good over evil.  Prahalad, the human rights defender prevailed over the Hiranyakashipu (his father), the human rights violator.

Hiranyakashipu uses his more or less omnipotent powers to violate the human rights of Prahalad by attempting to poison Prahalad, trample Prahalad with elephants, placed Prahalad in a room full of hungry, poisonous snakes and made to sit in a funeral pyre with his evil sister.  All these efforts to squash the freedom to practice Prahalad’s religious beliefs failed and Hiranyakashipu was eventually brought to book by Narasimha, the reincarnation of Vishnu (although Amnesty International would rightly condemn the lack of a fair trial for Hiranyakashipu).

That’s akin to the situation in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, where Hiranyakashipu… oops, I mean the Vedanta Corporation, is violating the human rights of the people of eastern Orissa.  Like Hiranyakashipu, they have poisoned the water in the region and harmed the health of citizens in the area.

Like Prahalad, the tribal leaders have appealed to a higher power (James Cameron, director of the mega blockbuster movie Avatar) in addition to their government for help in stopping the mining project but so far their pleas have not been successful.

The decision rests with Government of India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests and you can help by taking action to stop this mining project until proper environmental studies have been done.

Let’s all celebrate Holi and ensure that the Prahalads of the world are protected from the Hiranyakashipus of the world.

Child labourers at a cassiterite (tin oxide mineral) mine in Numbi, South Kivu, April 2009. Copyright Amnesty International

Next week, activists like you are mobilizing across the country to push the House of Representatives to move forward on an important piece of legislation: the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (H.R. 4128).

The Conflict Minerals Trade Act was introduced a few months ago by Congressman Jim McDermott to improve transparency and reduce the trade in conflict minerals coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country where millions of people have died due to an armed conflict. H.R. 4128 would greatly advance the goals of regulating and stemming the flow of conflict minerals, thereby limiting the ability of armed groups to benefit from conflict minerals and perpetuate the conflict. This bill is a great step towards reducing human rights abuses and supporting peace and security in the DRC.

The bill is currently being reviewed by the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. It is especially important for the bill to garner greater support and more co-sponsors so that it can move forward and we need your help.

There are several ways you can get involved to help Amnesty push this legislation forward. We have an online action up on our website, where you can directly email your Representative and ask them to co-sponsor the Conflict Minerals Trade Act.

You can also use these talking points and schedule an in-person meeting or a phone call with your Representative. Next week, all Representatives will be working from their districts instead of in Washington DC, so this is a perfect time to do this!

This groundbreaking bill would enable the United States to take effective action to protect the rights of the people of the DRC by ensuring that the trade in minerals does not perpetuate conflict. Join Amnesty International and other organizations including the Enough Project next week to ensure that your Congressman or Congresswoman supports the Conflict Minerals Trade Act.

UPDATE: Apparently the tribes in Orissa have asked James Cameron, the director of record-winning film Avatar for his assistance in stopping Vedanta’s operations.

UK-based company is destroying the environment of indigenous people in Orissa.

Help to save lives in the Indian state of Orissa.

In my first blog post, I wrote about the plight of Adivasis in Orissa.  Well, we’ve done a report that has documented one such case in much more detail.

Dongria Kondh women at a protest meeting, Niyamgiri Hills, Orissa, India, 2009. Copyright: Amnesty International

Indian authorities have given local communities little or no information about the potentially disastrous impact of a proposed aluminum refinery expansion and mining project to be operated by subsidiaries of UK-based company Vedanta Resources in the eastern state of Orissa.

We document how an aluminum refinery operated by a subsidiary of UK-based FTSE 100 company Vedanta Resources in Orissa is causing air and water pollution that threatens the health of local people and their access to clean drinking water.

Adivasi, Dalit, women and other marginalized communities in the remote part of Orissa where the refinery is located have described to us how authorities told them that the refinery would transform the area into a Mumbai or Dubai.

The Orissa State Pollution Control Board (a state government agency) has documented air and water pollution from Vedanta Aluminum refinery in Lanjigarh, Orissa. The pollution threatens the health of local people and their access to clean water yet there has been no health monitoring.

Despite these concerns and the environmentally sensitive location of the refinery near a river and villages, the government is considering a proposal for a very large expansion of the refinery. Neither the Indian authorities nor Vedanta have shared information on the extent of pollution and its possible effects with local communities.

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At the end of December, the human rights movement had some disappointing news. Federal Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed the charges against the five Xe (Blackwater) guards accused in the shooting death of at least 14 innocent Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in September 2007.

While his decision indicates the need to examine more closely the conduct of the Justice Department’s prosecutors as well as the State Department’s practice of immunizing contractors’ statements given in the course of investigations, there is now reason for hope. On Tuesday, Rep. David Price and Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced companion bills under the short title of the Contractor Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (CEJA) of 2010 in the House (HR 4567) and Senate (S2979). The legislation closes gaps in U.S. law to ensure that contractors can be prosecuted for crimes committed overseas.

One of the single biggest hurdles to holding military and security contractors accountable for criminal acts committed overseas has been the duality of systems in place for Defense Department (DOD) contractors versus those working for other government agencies. DOD contractors implicated in crimes are subject, in theory, to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military’s judicial system, and the jurisdiction of federal courts by way of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA). But what about Blackwater, which was fulfilling the State Department’s Worldwide Personal Protective Services (WPPS) contract at the time of the Nisour Square shootings? Well, many feared that the Justice Department wouldn’t or wouldn’t be able to pull off a case against the shooters because of unsettled evidentiary and jurisdictional issues.

We – the human rights community, Congress, the President, the media, and others – have known about this inconsistent patchwork of laws for some time now. In fact, in 2007 Rep. Price and then-Senator Barrack Obama joined forces to try to amend MEJA to clarify that there would be no impunity for government contractors who commit crimes. While the House version of the bill passed with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 389 to 30, it fizzled on the Senate side.

Two years on, we don’t need any more evidence to indicate the importance of acting decisively to make CEJA law. The DOS is about to release the Request for Proposal for WPPS III. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll be asking you to call on your members of Congress in the House and Senate to endorse CEJA and end impunity for rights violators. Let’s make sure that the framework is in place to hold military and security contractors accountable for human rights violations before we send out the next round of armed guards in the name of the U.S. government.

Google made an unprecedented announcement this week by claiming it is no longer willing to continue censoring search results on Google.cn, its Chinese search engine. Meetings are underway with Chinese authorities to discuss removing filtering software from Google.cn and, the company further claims, if an acceptable agreement is not reached, Google may shut the search engine down.

Some in the media and some human rights advocates are heralding this announcement as a turning point in corporate America’s relations with China, given that Google attributes their sudden opposition to censorship is the result of a security breach of two Gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists.

But as Tom Foremski rightly points out over at ZDNET, a leading IT publication:

The question remains is why now? Google could have taken a stand on human rights in China on many occasions in the past.

Many Internet companies operating in China, including Google, have previously complied with the Chinese government’s censorship requirements. And this isn’t the first time that Chinese human rights defenders have been the targeted through their email accounts. Yahoo! handed over Shi Tao’s personal email records to Chinese authorities in 2004 which led to a 10 year prison sentence. He was targeted because of his effort to expose government-endorsed media censorship over the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen. More recently, the Chinese government blocked Twitter, Flickr, and Hotmail prior to the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen in June and attempted to mandate that all PC makers such as Hewlett Packard and Dell install software that filters Internet content.

Foremski also cites a Twitter feed from Guardian reporter Bobbie Johnson – who hits the nail on the head:

Goog [sic] acted after its rights were infringed, not the rights of its users.

That’s why AIUSA pulled out of the Global Network Initiative – a multi-stakeholder initiative – we joined in 2007, with the goal of establishing voluntary principles to promote and respect human rights on the Internet. We saw no tangible results.

We certainly welcome Google’s statements, but actions speak louder than words. And this is the internet company’s opportunity to be a leader. Google should stand with human rights defenders and support the Global Online Freedom Act (H.R. 2271) which could help IT companies resist information requests by the Chinese government.

By Tony Cruz and Anna Phelan, Amnesty International USA’s Business & Economic Relations Group

By Anna Phelan, Amnesty International USA’s Business and Economic Relations Group

Last week President Obama and Prime Minister Singh met to discuss U.S.-India relations; it was the first state visit of President Obama’s administration. According to news reports, the two heads of state discussed working together as natural allies on intelligence issues as well as energy security, clean energy, agriculture and climate change issues. Did President Obama use this opportunity to also address human rights concerns in India? And in particular, did they discuss Bhopal?

Twenty-five years ago, a toxic gas leak at Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, India caused more than 7,000 immediate deaths. Since then, 25,000 people have died and 100,000 suffer from ongoing health problems. Let me be more specific. The survivors and their children, a second generation of survivors, live with debilitating illnesses including cancer and birth defects. The plant site has not been cleaned up. Toxic wastes continue to pollute the environment and ground water. No one has been held accountable, despite years of legal proceedings in both the Indian and U.S. court systems. In short, survivors have been denied adequate compensation, medical care, rehabilitation of disaster site, and justice.

In India last week, the biggest daily newspapers — The Deccan Herald, The Telegraph, and The Times of India — all reported on the Indian government’s flawed decision to mark the 25th anniversary by opening the Bhopal disaster site to the public.

Government officials claimed they wanted to: (more…)

On November 11^th, 2009, the New York Times reported that in December 2007, top executives at Blackwater (currently known as Xe) authorized cash payments up to $1 million to Iraqi officials with the intent to buy silence and support from the Iraqi government over the Nisour Square shootings on September 16^th, 2007, in which 17 Iraqis were shot and killed by Blackwater guards. The Times received this information from four anonymous former Blackwater executives. Two participated in talks about the payments and the other two had heard about the payments from other Blackwater officials. According to the executives, the payoffs were approved by then-company president, Gary Jackson. The money was sent to a top manager in Iraq and one executive stated that the intended recipients were officials in the Iraqi Interior Ministry in charge of operating licenses.

After the Nisour Square shootings, Blackwater came under plenty of heat from media and the Iraqi government, which wanted the contractor out of Iraq. For Blackwater, getting booted from Iraq meant potentially losing lucrative Department of State (DOS) contracts.

The four executives do not know if the bribes ever reached their intended recipients and it is unclear if a federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating the matter. If it is found that Blackwater bribed Iraqi officials, those responsible could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice and violation of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits bribes to foreign officials.

Blackwater seems to be synonymous with “bad news” but perhaps the worst news is that the company – despite a growing list of human rights violations and various misdeeds – is not being held to account but rather is still winning new contracts with the U.S. Government. Perhaps what makes Blackwater and other private military and security companies (PMSCs) so bold and reckless is the culture of impunity in which they operate. The U.S. Government did not create mechanisms of accountability and regulation to keep up with the booming industry. But this is one area of corporate accountability with a clear record – the FCPA is a proven tool leaving no excuse for prosecutors to turn the other cheek. All that needs to be done is for the relevant U.S. attorneys to investigate.

By Anna Phelan, Amnesty International USA’s Business and Economic Relations Group

Since the release of Amnesty International’s report Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta (30 June 2009), our global membership has acted to get Shell’s new CEO Peter Voser to come clean on the impacts of its operations in the Niger Delta, during his first 100 days on the job. Here’s one of my favorite actions:

Parisian AI-ers show Shell how to clean up

AI’s report looks at the impact of pollution and environmental damage caused by the oil industry on the human rights of the people living in the oil producing areas of Niger Delta. Some of the key concerns highlighted in the report focus on health and livelihood — the lack of access to potable water and damage to fisheries and local farming.

Shell was quick to challenge AI’s report, claiming that Amnesty International made no attempt at open dialogue with Shell and that the report contained no new insights. We set the record straight providing dates and evidence. Shell should not think its recent $15.5 million settlement in the landmark Wiwa v. Shell case remedies more than 30 years of environmental contamination and inadequate clean-up.

When will Shell do more? AI-France says that over 2,000 cards and 20,000 electronic postcards have been distributed, but the company has not heard appeals by Amnesty International. AI-UK’s Protect the Human blog says Shell has not responded to their 3500+ emails. AIUSA members can lend their support to this global action. Very simply, we’re asking Voser to clean up oil pollution in the Niger Delta, clean up Shell’s practices, and come clean on the information Shell holds on pollution in the region, but hasn’t made public.

:: Take Action Now. Tell Voser to come clean in the Niger Delta. ::

The reality is that Shell’s pollution and exploitation in the Niger Delta has created a hell on earth for the 31 million people who live in a region that’s home to one of the top 10 most important wetland and coastal marine ecosystems in the world. Voser’s 100th day as CEO of Royal Dutch Shell is October 8th. Remind him that we’re watching. Tell him to come clean on Shell’s pollution in the Niger Delta.

by Lillian Tan, Corporate Action Network Intern

On September 11^th, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. District ruled 2 to 1 to dismiss Saleh v. Titan, a lawsuit brought against CACI International, a private military and security company (PMSC), which alleged that CACI personnel participated in torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib. CACI was awarded a Department of Interior (DOI) contract to provide translation services at Abu Ghraib.

Judge Silberman, in his majority opinion, concluded that the plaintiffs’ state law tort claims under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) were preempted by the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). According to his interpretation of the FTCA, contractors operate under the same sovereign immunity as U.S. military forces since they share a “common mission” with the military. Susan Burke, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, stated in the September 12^th, 2009 Washington Post article that the legal team will file for an en banc review of the decision by all nine judges of the Court.

If the Court’s ruling is not reversed, a dangerous precedent would be set in the U.S. judicial system that would make it extremely difficult for victims of human rights violations, like Saleh, to find relief. As things currently stand, federal criminal laws (18 U.S.C.) are not sufficient enough to hold contractors accountable for their actions.

The U.S. military greatly depends on PMSCs to support their operations in the “war on terror”, with the use of contractors in Afghanistan reaching a record high. In the Iraqi theater, contractors have been allegedly involved in a number of human rights violations, almost none of which have been prosecuted in Federal criminal courts. While there is a glimmer of hope now that the Department of Justice is finally spurring to action by appointing a special prosecutor to reexamine almost two dozen cases of detainee abuse that were transferred to the Eastern District of Virginia—some of which include abuses committed by contractors—this fact does not change that federal prosecutors would still have substantial hurdles to clear before obtaining a prosecution.

One of the hurdles is the paucity of legislation that would effectively allow for a criminal prosecution of contractors. Another is evidence; and yet another is the statute of limitations on cases of torture under federal criminal law, which are fast approaching expiration. Now with the decision from Saleh v. Titan, victims of torture and abuse are denied the option of civil litigation.

Judge Silberman writes that the plaintiffs will not be bereft of all remedies since under the Foreign Claims Act” (10 U.S.C. §2734) they can file claims to a commission composed of officers and employees of the U.S. Armed Forces.However, is that even an appropriate “remedy” for Saleh and the other plaintiffs who have brought grievous allegations of torture and abuse by contractors who “acted unlawfully and without military authorization”, as noted in the dissenting view of Judge Garland? Should such a precedent be set where plaintiffs such as Saleh are denied a civil law remedy, in effect barring them from a chance of vindicating their human rights with a speedy trial in U.S. courts of justice?