PICTURES

Binayak Sen, Ilina Sen, Vivek Sundara and other activists in MUmbai

Anand Patwardhan with the National Appeal on Koodankulam

Mumbai activists in solidarity to koodankulam

Vandana Shiva releasing the national appeal in Delhi

Anand Patwardhan releasing the National Appeal in Mumbai

Binayak Se, Ilina Sen and others at Chaityabhoomi in Mumbai

Vandana Shiva with the national appeal on Koodankulam, at New Delhi

Pictures from Kolkata Coming Soon

Courtesy: Kafila.org

The “Urgent Appeal to the Conscience of the Nation on Koodankulam” open for signatures on DiaNuke.org was released yesterday in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Concerned people and activists are planning release events and readings of the appeal in Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and other cities in coming weeks. Grassroots organisations are distributing the appeal as pamphlet, translated in regional languages.

This Sunday, Vandana Shiva, renowned environmentalist and eco-feminist,  released the national appeal on Koodankulam at the India Gate in New Delhi. Releasing the appeal, she expressed her anguish on the undermining of democracy by the Indian government in its pursuit of nuclear energy. Inviting NIMHANS doctors to ‘treat’ the mindset opposing nuclear energy projects is reflective of the nuclear-obsessed government’s contempt for its own people and their concerns, she said.

In Mumbai, famous film maker Anand Patwardhan and  human-rights activist Binayak Sen released the appeal in Chaityabhoomi at Dadar. People expressed their solidarity to the ongoing struggle in Koodankulam and demanded that the police repression must stop immediately and the fabricated charges of sedition and ‘war against the Indian state’ put up against innocent local people protesting peacefully should be revoked. The government must not push India on a dangerous nuclear route without openly and democratically consulting its citizen, independent experts and concerned local communities.

In Kolkata, the national appeal on Koodankulam was released an its readings were organised in the morning 10.30 AM from Earthcare Books at 10 Middleton Street and at 5 PM from Shishu Mela (a children’s fair) at Shamil, a children’s school at Chittaranjan Colony, Kolkata. Another meeting was held at 5.30 PM at B 23/2 Rabindranagar. Jiten Nandi, Santanu Chakraverti, and other activist released the appeal and read out its Bengali translation.

The appeal, signed by eminent Indians like Prashant Bhushan, Vandana Shiva, Aruna Roy, Binayak Sen, Anand Patwardhan, Admiral Ramdas, Lalita Ramdas, Narayan Desai, Surendra Gadekar, EAS Sharma, Ilina Sen, Sandeep Pandey, Aruna Rodrigues, Praful Bidwai, P M Bhargava, Achin Vanaik, Gnani Sankaran etc. ‘the conscience of the nation’ – the people of India – to demand that the government immediately stops intimidating and harassing peaceful protesters in Koodankulam and puts a moratorium on reactor projects in the country and engages all sections of Indian people democratically in a wider consultation on the expansion of nuclear energy.