Update your Cookie Settings to use this feature.
Click 'Allow All' or just activate the 'Targeting Cookies'
By continuing you accept Avaaz's Privacy Policy which explains how your data can be used and how it is secured.
Got it
We use cookies to analyse how visitors use this website and to help us provide you the best possible experience. View our Cookie Policy .
OK
Release Anti-Mining Activist , writer, film-maker - Debaranjan Sarangi

Release Anti-Mining Activist , writer, film-maker - Debaranjan Sarangi

1 have signed. Let's get to
50 Supporters

Close

Complete your signature

,
By continuing you agree to receive Avaaz emails. Our Privacy Policy will protect your data and explains how it can be used. You can unsubscribe at any time. If you are under 13 years of age in the USA or under 16 in the rest of the world, please get consent from a parent or guardian before proceeding.
This petition has been created by Kamayani M. and may not represent the views of the Avaaz community.
Kamayani M.
started this petition to
Chief Minister Odisha

Mr. Debaranjan Sarangi is an anti-mining activist, writer and a documentary film maker. He is an active member of Ganatantrik Adhikar Surakyaa Sangathan (GASS),
In the early morning of 18th March 2016, Debaranjan Sarangi, a Human Rights Activist, was picked up by plainclothes police from the Kucheipadar village of Rayagada District, Odisha. Debaranjan was in Kucheipadar to attain a funeral ceremony of one of his friends’ father. The police claims of arresting Debaranjan while executing a non-bailable warrant issued by the court of JMFC, Kashipur, in pursuance of a criminal case registered in the Tikri police station of Raygada District in 2005. Everyone including his advocate was clueless about the whereabouts of Debaranjan, till he was produced before the court of JMFC, Kashipur, in the evening. Without considering his bail application the court extended his remand till 22nd March 2016.

The police is fabricating cases against the defender Mr Debaranjan Sarangi to intimidate and immobilise him. According to sources, Mr Debaranjan was in Malkangiri district on August 8 and 9, 2015 to shoot a documentary film on changing life and problems of tribals and during his visit to Malkangiri district he was harassed and intimidated by the police.


Mr. Debaranjan spent almost eight years with the anti-mining movement of the Adivasis in Kashipur, which inspired him to make a documentary film “At the Crossroads” on the oppressed tribals of South Orissa and their struggles with the state. The hapless adivasis and dalits of the region are caught in the crossfire between the state and the Maoists, rendering their existence completely unstable and miserable. He has been part of extended fact-findings that investigated attacks on Christians in Khandhmal in Odisha and Karnataka and on massacres of civilians by the paramilitary in South Chhattisgarh. As a prolific writer and human rights activist, he has been writing extensively on unbridled mining practices, displacement, police impunity, communalism, atrocities on dalits, women and adivasis in the state..It needs to be noted that Kucheipadar village had played a crucial role in the anti‐Bauxite mining movement and Sarangi was closely associated with the movement for many years supporting the community in their struggle against displacement.
The movement had to suffer tremendous state repression. In the year 2000, three Adivasis were killed in police firing. During 2005‐2006, hundreds of people were picked up by police and put in jail on false cases of which people had no knowledge. Even today, people are being arrested for cases registered ten years ago.

What is common to all these areas is the rich Bauxite deposits and the sinister design of the state to handover these resources to the corporate by silencing the voice of opposition. The arrest of Debaranjan is just an example of it
Posted (Updated )