Dongria Kondh
The Dongria Kondh are an indigenous ethnic group belonging to the Kondh in the Indian state of Odisha with over 8,000 members. The Dongria Kondh, who are part of the Adivasis, live in villages around the Niyamgiri Mountains and call themselves Jharnia , which means “keeper of the rivers”, as they protect their sacred mountain Niyam Dongar and the rivers between its dense forests. Niyam Dongar is the seat of Niyam Raja, the god of the Dongria Kondh. The mountain is known as the "mountain of law" and is the basis of human existence.
Problems
There are large deposits of the aluminum ore bauxite on the Dongria Kondh mountain . The British mining company Vedanta Resources is planning to build a mine there to extract the valuable raw material. Despite international protests and the lack of a permit for the mine, Vedanta has already built a bauxite refinery near the mountain, but it is not allowed to expand it. In order to use this profitably, however, the bauxite of the mountain is necessary. The construction of the refinery has already cleared large areas of the ancestral forest of the Dongria Kondh and neighboring groups, which completely destroyed the village of Kinari. The people have been relocated to camps and are now dependent on social benefits. The refinery's waste product, a fine red dust, endangers the health of people and animals on site and threatens plant growth in the region.
The company recently suffered setbacks for the planned construction. Although the project initially received approval and was approved by the Indian government, India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh withdrew a permit shortly before he left. Open pit mining was stopped in August 2010 after independent experts warned that the mine would "destroy" the indigenous Dongria Kondh in the region. The Dongria Kondh are fighting bitterly against the project together with international organizations such as the human rights organization Survival International . Without their mountain, they explain, they would not survive and only when the refinery is no longer can they breathe a sigh of relief.
In April 2013, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that local residents should have the last word in this case. All twelve local councils in the area reportedly voted against. In January 2014, the Ministry of the Environment finally stopped plans to extract bauxite.
Web links
- German site of Survival International
- Information from Amnesty International on the subject
- News about the Dongria Kondh on www.survivalinternational.de
- Local inspection 2011 at www.taz.de